The Human Question

Useless for determining truth or falsity of ideas.  Next!

To propose as RD does that religion is a kind of "bad virus" (memetically speaking, of course) requires that one grant that there could be "good viruses" as well. But such viruses are judged good or bad only in light of how they affect the well-being of the affected organism(s). So in speaking of bad viruses RD is to bring memetics into conflict with his genetics (that is, with SelfishGeneTheory). For according to the latter, everything that an organism does is to be evaluated as if it existed ultimately for the sake of enabling the gene to duplicate itself. When memes, as viruses, are judged as good or bad, however, they are evaluated not on the basis of how they affect the reproductive success of their possessors, but on on the basis of how they affect their possessors' experience well-being. To speak of good and bad viruses, therefore, is to depart from natural science and enter into the realm of ethics. One may object to the above analysis by claiming that...

...meme theory or intelligent design? (that is, which is harder to test) That is, which proposal is less likely ever to come up with a testable hypothesis? Another question: doesn't meme theory show a basic ignorance of the difference between social science and natural science? For it tries to gain an understanding of cultural phenomena (shared thoughts, practices and goals) by comparing them to the kinds of things you might find in the bottom of a test tube. Well those are two different sorts of cultures! Who needs to thematize meaning, intentionality, evidence and TRUTH (especially universal and necessary truth)? Let's drop all of those themes from our study of religion and society: let's instead treat cultural patterns like viruses! To borrow from HLA Hart, this is like trying to understand a traffic signal by noting patterns of stopping and starting but ignoring the possibility that the light functions as a sign: self-stultification. To this criticism one mi...