Myth Busted: Religious People are Not Happier

Are religious people happier than atheists? It turns out that this statistic, while strictly true in America, is quite misleading. The deeper truth is far more interesting ... and it's a perfect case study in meme theory.

Tom Rees over at Epiphenom posted a fascinating new bit of data that just calls out for an explanation:

"Much is made of the apparent fact that religious people are happier and better adjusted than the non-religious. However, as regular readers of this blog will know, this is to a large extent an illusion. ... [If you dig deeper] you'll find that religion is only linked to happiness in countries where a lot of people are religious.

... Although non-religious people feel uncomfortable in religious countries, religious people have no problems living in non-religious countries.

In other words, religious societies reject and shun atheists, so naturally non-religious people are unhappy in these societies. But Dr. Rees makes an even deeper point: secular societies make religious people feel welcome, so there is no converse effect. In secular societies, everyone is equally happy.

The conclusion is inescapable: atheists and agnostics are unhappy in religious countries because of the religious people, whereas religious people do well in secular countries because they're made welcome. You can be an evangelical Christian in Sweden or Denmark, but it's hard to be an atheist in Turkey, Iran or even America.

It's very satisfying to deflate this myth. Religious bloggers and ministers love to crow about the fact that atheists and agnostics are unhappier than "the faithful." Now we can turn and point to them as the cause.

But while this solves one mystery, it presents us with a challenge: why is religion so hostile to atheism? A cultural factor like this that spans so many countries and cultures begs for a deeper analysis.

It's easy to find some superficial reasons for the hostility that atheists and agnostics feel. Maybe Christians aren't "hostile" but rather are doing atheists a favor by saving their souls from eternal damnation. Or maybe atheists are unhappy because humans naturally yearn for God's love, and the atheists won't accept that love. Or maybe atheists actually know God exists, and their unhappiness comes from the stress of having to deny the truth (I've been accused of this by readers).

I think we can dismiss these reasons out of hand. They're false and insulting.

The real reason for religion's anti-atheist hostility is because it's good for religion. Religions that foster hatred and hostility toward atheists are, simply put, better than religions that don't. And we use "better" here in the Darwinian sense.

One of the most fascinating facts about biology is that 99.99% of all species that ever existed are extinct today. If we merely look at the successes (for example, homo sapiens) without considering the failures (such as neanderthals), we're not being very good scientists. It's competition and death that drive evolution forward. In order for the more fit species to survive, the less fit species has to die. And in order to understand the survivors, we have to study the failures.

The same thing applies to the evolution of religions. We have to look at the ones that died along with the ones we know today. In the cultural-evolution or "memetic" way of thinking (the study of how ideas evolve and spread across society and down through history), religion isn't a set of distinct faiths, but rather is a great mass of competing ideas fighting for "survival of the fittest." At any point in history, there have been many thousands of religions around the world. Within each religion there are often hundreds of differing opinions and interpretations of the main ideas.

In order to survive, a particular idea has to spread across society and down through history. But that's no trivial task: there are plenty of others competing. At each generation, only the "fittest" ideas survive to be passed along. This is the primary driving force that shapes any one religion's beliefs as time passes. And it's also true between religions: eventually, the "fitter" religions steal away all the believers from the "weaker" religions, which die out and pass into the history books.

What makes one religion more "fit" than another? There are many factors indeed (that's why I wrote The Religion Virus), but it brings us back to today's topic.

Children are born atheists and must be indoctrinated early and thoroughly in order for their faith to stick. Atheism is a huge threat to that process. If a culture allows atheists in their midst, the children will be exposed to powerful and persuasive ideas (logic, science, rational thinking). These atheistic ideas challenge the faith-based dogma that the children have to learn. Children are much more likely to have weak faith or no faith if they are exposed to atheism. (See Teach the Children for more on this topic.)

Thus, hostility to atheism is a "good" trait for religions to have. A religion that persecutes atheists will be more successful than one that doesn't. As generations and centuries go by, it's almost inevitable that religion will become more and more hostile to atheism.

Atheists aren't really such a sorry, unhappy lot. It's religion's fault, and now we know why: it's good for religion to be hostile to atheism. Religions with a live-and-let-live attitude died out a long time ago. They're extinct, and we're left with the survivors, the "fittest" religions ... the ones that don't like atheists.

A Sad Joke: Christian Intolerance Fighter is Hypocritical

Why is the Friendly Atheist, known for his conciliatory approach to religious/atheist debates, criticizing a Christian who is trying to do the same thing?

When non-Christians are asked to describe the typical Christian, words like smug, homophobic, judgemental, hypocritical and closed-minded are often the first things that come to mind. According to atheist-turned-Christian Brad White, there's a good reason for these adjectives: too many Christians really do fit these descriptions. So Brad founded Changing the Face of Christianity, an organization devoted to educating Christians about negative Christian stereotypes and why they're true.

Christian hostility is no surprise to non-theists. We've experienced the aggressive intolerance of our non-belief first hand. But even Christians are often embarrassed by their brethren. Many Christians forget even the most basic lessons of Jesus:

• Judge not, lest you be judged
• The meek shall inherit the Earth
• The peacemakers will be the children of God
• You are not your brother's keeper

So I was pleased to hear of Brad's efforts. Who wouldn't be? If there's one thing we should all agree on, it would be the respect and tolerance of one another's beliefs.

But before I had a chance to check Brad's web site, Hemant Mehta over

Killing Babies: Why Spanish Conquistadors are like Male Chimpanzees

I received a fascinating email from R.H., a professor at a university in Texas. R.H. drew a clever parallel between infanticide in animals and the history of the Spanish Conquistadors in America.

In nature there are numerous examples of infanticide carried out by "step fathers." For example, when a new male joins a chimpanzee troop he will often kill infants. While this horrifies us, it makes evolutionary sense. When a female chimpanzee enters her fertile period she will typically mate with almost all of the males in her troop. This means that the males in the troop have no idea which male fathered which baby. If a male from the troop kills an infant, it could be his own.

But when a new male joins the troop, he can be certain that he's not the father of any of the babies. If he kills the babies it causes their mothers to become fertile again, and he has a higher probability of passing his genes on. So that's exactly what he does.

You see this in humans too. Sadly, human step fathers are roughly fifty times more likely to kill a step child than the natural father of a child – remarkably parallel to the statistics you find in chimpanzees and many other species. We'd like to think we're evolved, that we've moved past our animal instincts, but it just isn't so. You see this pattern throughout nature: a new mate (male or female) is far more likely to kill the "step children" than the natural parent.

So what on Earth does this have to do with Conquistadors? I thought you'd never ask...

Professor R.H. wrote, "The Spanish destroyed many temples, idols, and customs that connected the indigenous population to their ancient religion." That's an understatement. They also killed

Is Christianity Dying? Who is that guy hanging on the plus sign?

Is Christianity dying? Here is a nutshell summary from a Christian writer:

"A couple came into my office once with a yellow pad of their teenage son's questions. One of them was: 'What is that guy doing hanging up there on the plus sign?' "

The falling attendance of America's churches is getting to the point where even Christians are writing about it. According to Drew Dyke in Christianity Today, young people are leaving Christianity in droves. And unlike previous generations, this isn't just a folly-of-youth period in their lives. They're leaving for good.

Some Christian scholars claim the trend isn't worrisome. They point out that young people have always drifted away from church as they leave home, only to return later when they marry and have children. But according to Dyke, these are false reassurances for three reasons:

• Today's young adults are dropping their religion at "five to six times" the historic rate.
• The life-phase argument is no longer relevant. People now marry and have kids in their 30s instead of their 20s. After ten years away from a church they are much less likely to return.
• Past generations lived in an overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian society with strong social pressure to stay "in the fold." Today there is little pressure to attend church, and TV, movies and media portray alternative lifestyles as acceptable. The "cultural gravity" toward religion is gone.

I like the "cultural gravity" argument the best. Religion memes are having more and more trouble propagating and reproducing themselves because of the changing memetic ecosphere. Kids today are exposed to scientific memes that directly conflict with religion memes. They're exposed to more accurate history that documents the horrors of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, slavery and many other religion-sanctioned atrocities. Kids are taught that all beliefs deserve respect.

For the memeplex that comprises Christianity, this is a complete calamity, a virtual memetic ice age. The memetic ecosphere for religion is being invaded by science memes, tolerance memes, and think-for-yourself memes, and it's reflected in the attitudes of young people. From Dyke's article:

Christians Beaten by Atheists, Jews and Mormons on Biblical Knowledge

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life just published an interesting new survey about how much Americans really know about religions. Much to everyone's surprise, the atheists and agnostics came out on top!

The headlines are filled with stuff like Atheists Outdo Some Believers (NY Times) or Atheists and Agnostics Know More About the Bible than Religious (National Public Radio).

But not so fast! It turns out that Atheists didn't really win, it was more like Christians lost. The atheist/agnostic category got the best score at 20.9 out of 32 questions. But look at how it really went down:

Does Embarrassment Keep Christians Faithful?

A friend of mine has become agnostic/atheist, but can't "come out of the closet" because it will probably destroy his marriage. This makes me very curious. How many people are in this predicament? How many have lost faith but can't talk about it because spouses, children, parents or friends would abandon them?

Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, tells of fighting this very problem in his book Godless. He was an evangelical Christian preacher and actually found himself giving sermons about a God he had rejected. Reason won out in the end – Barker became a prominent atheist activist but the price was high. He split from his wife and lost many friends.

One of the amazing parallels between biological evolution and memetic evolution (the way ideas change and mutate as they move across society and down through history) is that we find fully-developed immune systems in both.

We're all familiar with our body's defenses: antibodies, white blood cells, T-cells, and so forth. Our bodies have concentrated a bunch of food that other creatures would like to have, and without an immune system we would quickly perish.

It turns out religion has also evolved immunity memes that protect it from external attacks. Ideas (memes) compete for space in your brain,

The Anti-Rationalism Meme is confirmed by science

One of my favorite topics (I wrote about it in The Religion Virus) is called The Anti-Rationalism Meme. It's the idea that faith is more powerful than reason, that when there is a conflict between your mind and heart (more scientifically, your logic and your emotions), that faith must ultimately win.

"Divine revelation, not reason, is the source of all truth."
– Tertullian of Carthage (150-225 AD)

Strong words indeed. Basically the Anti-Rationalism meme declares that all of physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology and archeology can be dismissed out of hand if you believe something is true.

So I couldn't pass up this headline: When science clashes with belief? Make science impotent. The article describes some clever social experiments where they investigated people's willingness to discard scientific evidence or dismiss science as irrelevant.

The basic problem is that everyone wants to feel well educated and modern. They want to think of themselves as enlightened and informed. You can't just dismiss science as wrong and still get any respect. So science still rules the roost when it comes to respect.

And yet ... what do you do when you want to believe something that science says can't be true?

Elton John: Gay Lover's Suicide was from Christian Guilt

When it comes to homosexuality, Christians (and other conservative religious groups) like to claim that they aren't bigoted, and that their "Hate the sin, love the sinner" teachings are loving and kind. The latest tragic news out of London shows the real truth: this Christian philosophy is cruel and heartless.

Yesterday singer Elton John revealed that a former lover's suicide was caused by guilt over his homosexuality. His lover couldn't reconcile his gay lifestyle with the teachings of the Christian Church, and threw himself under a lorry. This is a story that is tragically repeated, over and over, around the world. And for every suicide, there are probably a thousand tortured men who live depressed lives, and a million angry men who feel needless guilt but manage to reject the Christian's unnatural and unhealthy attitude.

Christians need to face the reality. They hurt people.

Is America Too Nice for Christianity to Survive?

Are you a positive person, or a negative person? Is your life full of joy, or misery? Are you mostly happy, or mostly sad?

I happen to have a pretty good life, and since you own a computer and have time to read blogs like this, you probably do too. Sure, I have a few troubles, but I have food to eat, a roof over my head, and my family and friends do too. Life is good!

So if you're a happy person, why would you adopt a negative religion, one that preys on people's misery?

I re-read the short blog I wrote about the "GOD IS" posters that Christians are putting on New York subways, and was startled by the ad's contents. Pure negativity. The GOD IS campaign is nothing more than an appeal to our misery. And I wondered, is this what Christianity is? Is this why Christianity is slowly dying?

If this is the best Christianity has to offer the subway riders of New York City, then Christianity is in deep trouble. Take a good look at what's actually on those ads that the Christians are placing on the subways:

God is there when no one else is
God is husband to the widow
God is the one with your answers
God is aware of your struggle
God is the one who loves you
God is able to protect
God is willing to help
God is a good listener
God is a father
God is able to protect

What disheartening negativity! Is everyone really so miserable?

I don't know about you, but none of these thing appeal to me. Sure there are bills to pay, but a struggle? Hardly. And God has answers? To what? God is willing to help? I'm doing pretty well on my own, thanks. God is a good listener? Yeah, but so far I've gotten pretty good advice from family therapists when loved ones died or I had family problems.

The Christianity memeplex, that complex web of ideas and sayings, evolved during a time in humanity's history when most people were, in fact, pretty miserable. Half of our children died, mothers died in childbirth, sickness, disease, and hunger were rampant. In good years there was plenty, and in bad years everyone starved.

Against this backdrop, when people were miserable, Christianity probably looked like a pretty good answer. Life sucks now? Just hang in there, worship Jesus and Yahweh, and in a few years when you die, life will be unimaginably good. All of your babies and children who died? They're up there, waiting to greet you when you die.

This is what the memetic approach to religion is all about: Understanding why people want to believe things, how these religious memes became so incredibly powerful. These are ideas that had over 2000 years to evolve, adapted, and they became incredibly appealing.

Ideas evolve, survive and are passed on because people want to believe them. Truth only becomes a factor when the majority of people can tell that an idea is impossible. And if you're miserable, these Christianity memes are pretty darned appealing.

Unfortunately for Christianity, the ecosphere is changing. The environment in which it evolved was harsh, and these negative ideas were well adapted to that environment. But as life gets better, these memes find themselves in an unfriendly new place.

Christianity evolved these "negativity memes" – the promise that God will help you out of your misery – during a time when people were truly miserable, and needed something to give them hope. But, while there is plenty of sorrow left in the world, many of us today no longer lead lives of misery. Life is good, and the Christian memeplex of misery is no longer relevant.

That is why Christianity is inexorably disappearing in the developed world. Places like Germany, France and England, where most people are healthy and prosperous, have very high rates of atheism, in some cases over 50%, and Christianity is falling to stunning lows.

The Christians need to reevaluate their memeplex if they want to survive. The "GOD IS..." campaign is straight out of the past, and just doesn't have the appeal it used to. Life is too good in America for Christianity to survive.

New God Campaign on NYC Subways

I guess the Christians are fighting back. The Atheist/Humanist ad campaigns deserve a reply, so a Christian Group is placing 1,000 "God Is..." ads in the New York subways.

These ads have a large "GOD IS" in the center, surrounded by things like "there when no one else is," "aware of your struggle," "incredible," and many more. All of the very best Christian God memes, those incredible self-replicating ideas that we all want so much to believe.

I love this stuff – meme wars. It's what The Religion Virus is all about, how memes compete with one another for our attention. Usually meme battles are subtle and hard to see, but these ad campaigns are totally in-your-face.

I hope the atheists and humanists do their part to keep this meme war going! Time for a new ad campaign!

Influenza and the Power of Religious Evolution

Welcome back, faithful readers! I'd like to tell you that my hiatus from writing over the New-Year holiday was because of all the fun I was having, but influenza was the real cause. Evolution is a marvelous science to study, but when I get hit with a new virus, I'm reminded just how deadly and relentless the battle for survival is.

And the New Year is a time to remind ourselves of the great battle of memes going on in our culture, the constant evolution of ideas, the "survival of the fittest" that pits science and rationality against faith.

One of the most subtle lessons of evolution is the incredible flexibility it provides. The Earth has experienced an astonishing amount of change over the last four billion years, causing almost every species that once lived to become extinct. Yet somehow, at every turn, something adapts and survives. Life is everywhere, from deep in the rocks to high in the stratosphere.

And so it is with religion. Its memeplexes have been evolving for somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years, and during that time, most religions have become extinct. Human culture has changed, grown, been destroyed, rebuilt, and has taken just about every shape imaginable. Where once religion was needed to explain just about everything, now science fills that role. And yet ... irrational religious beliefs continue to survive. As each advance in human knowledge is made, religion adapts to accommodate it. It is a survivor, because that's what evolution does.

The problem with biological life is that good an evil are irrelevant. Nature has no feelings. Tapeworms survive and adapt just as readily as koala bears. One is (from our viewpoint) horrifying and ugly while the other is cute, but to evolution, both are equally successful.

And so it is with religion. Truth is only relevant if the average person can understand it. Any science that's beyond a high-school education is irrelevant. The Earth is flat? OK, that one's out because it's obvious. The Earth is 6,000 year old? That takes some serious understanding of physics, chemistry and geology, and so the religious memes evolve and adapt, truth goes out the window, and millions believe that Genesis is a true story.

So as we go forward in this new decade, let's remember that however brilliant science is, whatever new discoveries are made, and however carefully we try to explain them, the religion memeplexes won't go away quietly. Science has made tremendous progress, but harmful religious ideas will continue to thrive for centuries.

Evolution's power makes its own victory against irrationality a very distant hope.

Green is a Conspiracy to Overthrow Christianity!

Damn, we've been caught! Cliff Kincaid over at Right Side News finally saw through our ruse, to the true purpose of the green movement and environmentalism: It's just a cover to subvert Christianity and begin "the reconstruction of a pagan world order."

Wow, and I thought environmentalism was about ... the environment! You know, trying to ensure that there's something left for my grandchildren besides a hot, stinking mess. But ol' Cliff set me straight:

... these forces "have infiltrated Christian higher education by careful placement of teachers and teaching materials on environmental activism in [Christian] schools... Many of these schools are conservative in politics or theology. What they teach ... will surprise their supporters. ... Little by little wolves try to douse Christian resistance and lead sheep by troubled waters to accept the inevitability of a divine environmental movement.

And if that's not enough to convince you, consider this:

...attempts by Church leaders and Christian organizations to synthesize a Christian environmentalism can succeed "only by exorcising truth, and ultimately, by expelling Christianity..."

In other words, Christianity and environmentalism are incompatible.

According to Kincaid, environmentalism is nothing more than a new religion (I wish it were so, maybe it would have a chance!)

[Environmentalism] is a religion with a vision of sin and repentance, heaven and hell. It even has a special vocabulary, with words like 'sustainability' and 'carbon neutral.' Its communion is organic food. Its sacraments are sex, abortion, and when all else fails, sterilization. Its saints are Al Gore and the InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

If only it were true. Religious memeplexes are, without a doubt, the most persuasive and persistent in history. Hey, maybe Kincaid has something there. Maybe I'll be the founder of The Church of Green, and I'll be its Pope! Hey, Saint Al, you ready?

The Lie Called Thanksgiving, and Squanto's True Heroism

Thanksgiving? It's complete historical bulls**t.

You know the story: Pilgrims land, a bad winter, things look worse the next year, the local Indians, including the special friend Squanto, showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn and catch fish, they finally have a wonderful fall harvest, and everyone, settlers and natives alike, sits down at a table groaning under the weight of plentiful food to give thanks.

Nothing but lies.

The true tale is far more fascinating. Lies My Teacher Told Me is a fascinating book by historian James Loewen, which I highly recommend.

Tisquantum, who we know as "Squanto," was an amazing man. American schoolchildren are taught that he was a simple Indian who befriended the Pilgrims, but in fact he was nothing of the sort. Tisquantum was captured and enslaved, and taken to Europe, where he learned English and European ways.

After his first enslavement and return to America, he was captured and enslaved again, to be sold in Spain. He was rescued by some Spanish friars who took control of the slaves and tried to convert them to Christianity. After four years and at least one aborted journey, Tisquantum made his way back to America, only to discover that his entire family and village, everyone he knew, had been killed by a plague, probably smallpox.

This was the Indian who helped the Pilgrims survive the second winter – a man who was enslaved twice, forced to learn English ways, and who had just discovered everyone he loved was dead.

The American Myth called Thanksgiving paints the Pilgrims as hard working and resourceful. In reality, they landed in a virtual paradise, with the previous farmers all dead from smallpox, and their fields cleared and ready to plant, and fish aplenty, and yet they still nearly starved to death. Tisquantum, in spite of the mistreatment he'd received at the hands of the English, and in spite of the tragedy of losing his people, decided to help the Pilgrims. Historians agree that without Tisquantum's help, the Pilgrims would probably have starved to death.

And the most fascinating part is that Tisquantum may have been the only man alive who could do this. He knew how to fish, how to farm American crops, and he also spoke English well. His presence in the Plymouth area changed American history.

So why has this fascinating story of a resourceful and kind Native American been replaced by the boring story we now tell at Thanksgiving? The answer is remarkably parallel to religion itself: People believe what is most appealing, not what is true.

In the case of religion, memeplexes like the Christain religion, with its promise that the meek will inherit, and that all of this suffering on Earth is nothing compared to the wonderful rewards to come, are very appealing. The atheist will tell you that when you're dead you're dead, and so it goes. Which do you want to believe? The Heaven myth is much more appealing, so that's the meme that survives. Truth has little to do with it.

Thanksgiving is very much like that. We want to think of the founders of America, our spiritual forefathers, as being strong, capable explorers who opened up the "new world." The fact that we exterminated the Native Americans with disease, war, slavery and simple murder is an embarrassing footnote that we'd like to forget.

So when the stories are told (America's history memes), they evolve. The memes that make the Europeans look better get retold, become the memetic survivors in the "survival of the fittest" battle of stories. Conversely, the memes that make Tisquantum and his kin look like clever, resourceful people get diminished. Ultimately, we get a story in which our ancestors endured hardship but prevailed through courage, etc., etc. to found this great nation.

It's a damned shame, because the true story is one in which there were many heroes and many villians. If that story were told, instead of the myth that we call Thanksgiving, we'd all be richer, and our view of current events would be far more mature.

One small footnote: It happens that one of my ancestors was aboard the Mayflower, and became one of the very Pilgrims who Tisquantum helped. If not for Tisquantum, I wouldn't be here today.

Let's All Wear "God Sucks" Buttons to Work

I have an idea – let's get a bunch of big, red "God Sucks" buttons, pin them on our chests, and go to work! If you work in a grocery store, or a bank, or at the welfare office, or maybe even as a Justice of the Peace ... no problem! I'm sure your employer won't fire you. Offend shoppers? Piss off welfare recipients? Horrify the couple you're marrying? It's your right!
Don't believe me? Just listen to this attorney about an identical case, defending her client:

"There are federal and state laws that protect against religious discrimination. It's not like he was out in the aisles preaching to people." – Kara Skorupa, attorney.

But you know, I have a pretty good feeling Skorupa wouldn't take my case if I got fired for wearing a "God Sucks" button. Like many conservative religious people, Skorupa and her client,Trevor Keezor, probably think the law should protect Christians (I'm guessing he's a Christian) who violate their employers' policies, but if an atheist or Muslim did the same thing, I'd be willing to bet they'd sing a different song.

Keezor was fired for violating Home Depot's dress code, which prohibits any and all buttons and badges, except those issued by Home Depot. He took the job knowing full well what was expected of him, and Home Depot's dress code is 100% legal under the US Constitution, yet he thinks that he should be exempt, just because, "I support my country and God."

This is another great example of a "proselyzation meme," a technique that religions have developed down through the centuries as they evolved and mutated in the "survival of the fittest" battle we call cultural evolution, or memetics. Cultural evolution treats ideas as evolutionary raw material, and uses Darwinistic principles to predict how they'll reproduces, mutate and evolve.

It's a lot like sex, in fact, it's exactly parallel. In biological systems, each creature has to have a way of making copies of itself in order to carry on. Whether it's a bacterium splitting, or two whales mating, we all gotta do it! Otherwise our species goes extinct.

And the cool thing about sex is that we like it, because all of our ancestors, every single one of them, liked sex too. If even one of them didn't, well, we'd have never been born.

Religions are like that too. Any religion that doesn't have a way to spread itself, both across society and down through time, will quickly become extinct. More importantly, the religions that have the strongest proselytizing efforts (i.e. the memes that tell members to "spread God's word") are the ones that steal members from other churches and thereby gain memberships.

With sex, the ones who like it the most are the ones who have the most babies, and generation after generation, their descendants will inexorably grow at the expense of those who like sex less.

It's identical with churches. The ones with the strongest proselytizing memes are the ones that grow. Think about the Mormons, for example: They're the fastest growing church around. When was the last time a Catholic knocked on your door? The Catholic church is losing ground as a percentage of our population, and most other Christian churches are shrinking even faster than the Catholic Church.

So it's no surprise that most religions have a strong meme that says their members should actively spread God's word. And Mr. Keezor was just helping his Church with the memetic version of sex: spreading the memes, helping them reproduce, making sure that his particular branch of religion will survive in the endless Darwinian struggle of my-God-versus-yours.

Halloween Candy, the Evil Pagan Ritual

While recalling fun Halloween memories with friends, one lamented that she'd never been allowed to go trick-or-treating because her parents thought it was anti-Christian, a pagan holiday.

All I could think was, "Geez, get over it!" I mean, let your kids have a little fun! Even kids know it's just a silly leftover celebration from the old days of fall harvest rituals, a bit of fun. Why do some people have to make every trivial little thing into a huge offense?

But then I went back to my "philosophical roots," of looking at everything from the cultural-evolution point of view (memes and memetics). After heaving a heavy sigh, I realized that this sort of extreme behavior is predictable when you understand how churches evolve and compete.

Immune systems are among the most complex structures in our bodies. To a parasite or disease, our bodies are like a huge dinner table, full of ready-to-eat food, and a warm, comfortable place to live and grow. To fight these invaders, we've evolved a huge array of defenses. Our skin is tough and impervious to keep things out. Our blood is full of all sorts of antibodies and attack cells that kill anything that gets in. When we get sick, our bodies heat up with fever to "burn out" the invaders.

Cultural evolution, the way that ideas compete with each other, change, and are propagated across society and down through time, is remarkably parallel to biological evolution. So, it's not surprising to find that memeplexes (collections of related ideas, such as religion) have evolved immune systems too.

Consider, for example, the idea that the Bible is inerrant, the perfect word of God in every respect. It's a widely held believe these days, but it wasn't always so. In fact, for most of Judeo-Christian history, most people couldn't even read, and Catholic mass was even conducted in Latin, so the Bible's many contradictions weren't apparent to most people. People didn't think much about whether the Bible was correct in every detail.

Modern literacy, and widespread availability of Bibles in the last few hundred years, has changed all of that: the many inconsistencies in the Bible are there for everyone to see.

This caused a huge problem for Christian leaders. If they admit, for example, that the story of Jesus' death and resurrection as told in the four gospels doesn't add up, that there must be errors somewhere, then where does it stop? It's the classic slippery slope: Either it's God's word, or else you can start questioning everything.

To solve this dilemma, the Christianity memeplex evolved and mutated a new set of ideas: The Bible is inerrant in every respect. All of those glaring inconsistencies can be explained by the fact that we're not as smart as God and just don't understand God's mysterious ways. Or something.

(This, and many other immunity memes, are discussed at length in my book, The Religion Virus.)

Religions have a fundamental flaw: All of them claim to be have the truth, but there is no scientific test to see which is right. Unlike scientific theories, it's impossible to use any rational method to distinguish one religion from another and say conclusively which one is right. Instead, religions have developed the "I'm right, you're going to Hell," meme, which basically avoids the question by asserting loudly that horrible consequences will befall those who follow other religions.

And this leads us back to Halloween. Christianity has one of the strongest immune systems ever developed, and it's particularly damning of pagan religions. Those who won't let their kids go out trick-or-treating are just victims of the age-old "I'm right, you're going to Hell" meme, a meme that survives because it's been tremendously useful in the "survival of the fittest" battle of religion-against-religion down through the centuries.

Oh, the Catholics, Hate the Protestants...

Today's beautiful lesson in evolution is the question, "Why do Churches inevitably want more members?" It's a lovely illustration: The Roman Catholic Church is stealing people from the Anglican Church over the issues of gay and women's rights. They're even (*gasp*) letting married Anglican priests become Catholic priests!

Today's lesson starts with a thought experiment: Suppose you were head of a church and decided that proselytizing (getting new members) was unimportant, that you'd found the very essence of God's wisdom, and too bad for everyone else. You and your followers worship correctly, follow all of God's laws, and get the golden ticket to Heaven. Pretty cool!

But a hundred years down the road, your church will be completely gone! Some other church, one that happens to believe in "spreading the word," will still be going strong whereas your followers will all be dead and buried.

So, churches inevitably believe in expanding their memberships. It's a lot like sex for humans: We like it because every one of our ancestors did too, and the people who didn't like sex had no children. Proselytism, plain and simple, is a church's version of sex, and all successful churches inevitably have a strong proselytism meme.

So back to the Anglicans and Catholics...

The Anglicans are having a big fight because some of them want to actually give equal rights to women and gays. The Roman Catholic Church is whispering, "Hey, come over here, we're not like those wimps, we still put women and gays in their place!" And not surprisingly, these Anglicans who are still trying to cling to the evil past, the days when oppression and discrimination were tolerated, are jumping from the Anglican ship an into the open arms of the Roman Catholic Church.

This is a perfect example of the proselytism meme hard at work. The Roman Catholic Church can't help itself, any more than humans can't help liking sex. Because if they didn't continue to try, all down through history, to gain new converts and steal follows from other churches, they'd be extinct, and I'd be writing about some other church that fostered a strong proselytism meme.

It is said that 99% of all plant and animal species that ever existed are extinct, that the 1% remaining are the best of the best, the fittest that survived. The same is true of churches, what you see today are the survivors, the memeplexes (the collection of ideas) that had more appeal, better defenses, stronger proselytizing, and kept up with other changes in our culture and environment.

So when you see churches fighting over members, you don't have to ask, "Which is right? Which one is interpreting the Bible correctly?" Those questions aren't relevant from a memetic point of view. All that matters is, "Which one will survive to the next generation?" And the answer to that question has more to do with what people want to believe than what's true.

Giving a person equal rights, whether its a man or woman, gay or straight, is only relevant to a church to the extent that the church gains or loses membership. Worrying about what's right and wrong, what God or Jesus might actually say about it, is fairly irrelevant.

Just for fun, let's go out with Professor Tom Lerher's song, National Brotherhood Week...

Oh the Catholics hate the Protestants
and the Protestants hate the Catholics
and the Hindus hate the Muslims
and everybody hates the Jews!

The Religion Virus: Is it Incurable?

Today I had an email exchange with my publisher, in which we decided to revert back to the original title, The Religion Virus. We'd decided a while back to change it to The Evolution of Religion, because in addition to atheists, we'd like to appeal to people who are still religious but seeking new answers. Our thinking was that The Religion Virus was a bit too in-your-face, a bit too much of a direct affront to people's religion. But several people, including some friends of my mother, who are exactly the demographic we're hoping to find (religious but inquisitive), said they very much liked The Religion Virus as a title, and that they were much more likely to pick up a book with that title than one called The Evolution of Religion, which sounds like a history book or something.

Then, coincidentally, I was accosted on the beach by two Christian women during my evening bike ride, when I paused to enjoy the sunset. I made the mistake of letting them engage me in a dialog, but quickly realized it was hopeless. They were so thoroughly infected with the virus, their condition is "terminal." In the span of a few minutes, they used practically every meme that I discuss in depth in my book: Biblical inerrancy, Heaven and Hell, the fatherly loving God, ... one after the other, in just a few minutes, they demonstrated in very vivid terms, that they were thoroughly infected with these powerful ideas.

It was very discouraging for me to see the religion virus in action in such stark reality; sometimes I feel like it's hopeless, that irrationality and superstition will be with us forever. But then I remembered: That's why I wrote the book. If I can help just a few people, then it will have been worth it. If it becomes popular and helps a lot of people, then I'll have contributed, in my small way, to a better world.