How Memes Die: Southern Baptists Confirm Hell is Real

Well, the Southern Baptists have confirmed that they still believe in Hell. And it's still the horrible place where a sadistic God sends most of us to be cruelly tortured forever, merely because we don't fall for that whole strange story about Jesus.

Their declaration was a rebuttal to the immensely popular Pastor Ron Bell's new book, Love Wins, in which Bell questions the traditional view of Hell. Bell, like most thoughtful Christians, rejects the outdated eternal-torture idea of Hell. He sees Hell as grossly immoral and a misinterpretation of gospel.

I love this sort of infighting. It's like watching evolution in real time, something we don't get to do very often in the biological world. When we view religions (and all of human culture) as a vast set of interacting and competing memes, we become detached from the details of the you're-right-I'm-wrong battles. Instead of caring about the fine points of the competing theologies, we can be objective observers who record the outcome of an evolutionary struggle. We actually get to see the survival-of-the-fittest battle of religion memes in their ecology, the collective brains of humanity.

In this case, we get to see the Baptist memeplex losing territory because

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

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,

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.

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.

H1N1 inspires religious immunity

I now have the H1N1 vaccine in my body, running around stimulating my immune system, in a "fake fight" that will prepare my immune system for the real thing. And this got me to thinking about how religion does the exact same thing, but via ideas (memes) that it uses to inoculate the young against atheism and "false" religions.

One of the cool things about studying religion via cultural evolution, called "memetics" (the application of Darwin's "survival of the fittest" to ideas as they move across society and down through history) is that religion exhibits all of the same survival mechanisms as biological life, including a robust immune system. Just as your body reacts to threats, so does religion.

How do you keep a child from "catching" a religious "disease," that is, from straying from your faith? It's simple. Starting from an early age, you have to implant immunity "memes" (ideas) into the child, ideas that make the child resistant to the "disease" (other religions, or atheist ideas).

There are two parts to this immunity: First, you teach the child that your religion is great and wonderful, and that the rewards for staying on the "true" course are magnificent. And second, you teach your child that the other religions are false, and that if the child strays from your path, unimaginable punishment awaits.

Once these ideas are implanted in the child, it becomes very hard indeed for any other ideas to infect the child. He or she can be turned loose into adult society, and will resist all other religious infections for a lifetime.

It's critical to get my H1N1 vaccine before the disease strikes, because without immunity I'm likely to fall victim to the virus. And not surprisingly, this is also true of religious immunity: If you wait too long, the child might be infected by the wrong memes (other religions, or even atheist memes) before you've had a chance to develop the child's immunity via your own memetic inoculation.

That's why all major religions have highly-developed programs to teach children starting from a very young age. It's never too early to begin the religious indoctrination. To those of us who study memetics, it's exactly parallel to the H1N1 inoculation that is now circulating through my body.

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!

Is Evolution only for Smart People?

To Evolutionists, the tenacity of Creationism is baffling: Why do people continue to believe ideas that are thousands of years old, at best unsupported by any facts, and at worst plainly wrong? And as a corollary, why is education (especially in science) inversely correlated with religious beliefs?

Is it possible that only smart people can understand evolution? Is the problem simply that Evolution Science is too complex, too intricate, for a person with an average education to understand? (This is one of those unpleasant questions that you may secretly wonder about, but not want say out loud, for fear of being labeled an elitist.)

Happily, the answer is "No!" And the insight that shows why, ironically, comes from evolution itself: Memetic evolution.

Religion is a highly-evolved memeplex, one that is perfectly tuned to the human psyche. Religion memes appeal to our deepest emotions: fear (hell), hope (heaven and the afterlife), egotism and xenophobia (we're special in God's eyes), and our desire for love (God/Jesus the father). The religion memeplex has been evolving for many thousands of years; at any particular point in history, dozens and hundreds of religions, each with uncountable minor "mutations" (different opinions, interpretations, and misunderstandings) have been competing for survival. The ones that survived are the best of the best.

By contrast, we evolutionists are just children, babes in the woods, compared to our Creationist counterparts. Darwin's ideas, and the memeplex we call the "Theory of Evolution," have only been around for 150 years, a mere eyeblink compared to religion.

And worse, the Evolution Science memeplex evolved in a scientific ecosphere. The memeplex that we call the "Theory of Evolution" spread because it appealed to scientists, who are trained in logical, deductive thinking. Scientists are trained to ignore their emotions, and only accept theories that are based on observable facts and logical deductions from those facts.

Unfortunately, human emotions are far more powerful and persuasive than human logic.

A polar bear is well suited to the Arctic, and a camel to the desert; neither can travel to the other's part of the world and live for long. Each is adapted to the ecology in which its species evolved. If the Evolution Science memeplex is going to spread outside of its evolutionary niche, it too will have to evolve, to be better suited to the needs of non scientists. It will have to develop memes that appeal to human emotions and desires, rather than merely to logic.

To those of us who study culture and history from a Darwinistic perspective, that is, using memes, there is no mystery at all. The answer to our question – Is evolution only for smart people? – is in the memes. It's not evolution itself that is only for smart people, it's just the current memeplex, the one that evolved in an "ecosphere of smart people."

If the Evolution Memeplex is ever going to truly competative with Creationism, it has to evolve.

Tags: evolution memes memeplex darwin science intelligence religion ecosphere ideosphere science scientists

How Many Died from Religion's Opposition to Stem Cell Research?

European news is carrying a wonderful story about the first woman to receive a new organ made from her own stem cells. The woman's bronchus (part of her windpipe/trachea) was destroyed by tuberculosis, and without the transplant, doctors would have had to remove her lung entirely.

Our scientist colleagues in the UK deserve our congratulations for this wonderful achievement &ndash Well done! – but it also reminds us Americans of yet another sad example of religion impeding scientific progress.

Anti-abortionists brought stem-cell research in the United States to a virtual halt. Who knows what lifesaving discoveries might have been made in the last decade? Who knows what crippling diseases, painful disabilities, disfiguring conditions, and dementia that robs us of our loved ones, might have been cured?

Religion has, once again, shown that it is the enemy of science, knowledge, and progress. The religious zealots (a minority, by the way) whose disproportionate political power forced this policy on America, directly caused thousands of deaths, and many times that many people to live in misery, of people who might have been cured, if stem-cell research hadn't been stopped.

Why does it have to be this way? Why is religion so consistently the enemy of knowledge and progress?

The answer is plain when you view religion from an evolutionary, memetic viewpoint. Education and science are not the friends of religion, especially dogmatic religions that cling to ancient ideas. Science has a way of undermining religious scriptures, of proving that biblical "facts" are in fact wrong.

Religion memeplexes always evolve toward survivors, the "fittest" ideas, and the memes that encapsulate anti-science and anti-rationalism ideas are very beneficial to the religious memeplexes. They keep believers from learning the facts and logic that would undermine the foundations of these dogmatic religions.

So, while we can lament the unconscionable setbacks that religion has caused, in this case by delaying medical progress, we shouldn't be surprised. A memetic point of view actually predicts that this will always be the way religious memeplexes – and the people who believe them – will respond to science and rational thought.

Tags: abortion christian christianity memeplex memes organ transplant religion science stem cell

Most Atheists are RIGHT: Religion really does cause violence

Having spent two blogs (part 1, part 2) explaining why religion doesn't cause violence, it's time to refute that statement.

More exactly, I'm going to refine it: Religion isn't at the root of violence (evolution is), but religion greatly amplifies violence.

A huge portion of the "laws" laid down in the Bible are, by today's standards, barbaric and primitive. If a priest's daughter becomes a prostitute, the Bible says she should be burned at the stake (Leviticus 21:9). The penalty for blasphemy is death (Leviticus 23:10-24). Adultery, incest, and homosexuality, any of these and more call for the death penalty, often by stoning.

Even people who claim to follow the Bible's laws, and believe the Bible's inerrancy, can't stomach these laws today. We've evolved, we now know better, but the Bible is frozen in time.

Should we accept these millenia-old rules as our laws, just because two thousand years ago, a group of Jewish scholars declared that these were God's own words?

My primary thesis is not wrong, quite the contrary: Violence is part of our genetic makeup (our instincts), and religious memes that support violence are just an example of memetic evolution at work, shaping the religious memeplex to fit well into its environment (our brains).

But we're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to move beyond our primitive animal instincts that make us fight and kill one another. We've evolved brains that are powerful enough to understand good and evil. We've evolved culture, and empathy, and the concepts of right and wrong. We understand that sometimes the individual has to subjugate his/her own raw desires for the good of the family, the village, or the world.

Unfortunately, some religions are holding us back from these achievements.

Somewhere along the way, a bunch of parables, historical "tall tales," and good advice, got converted into the inerrant Word of God, purportedly correct in every respect and for all time. The Inerrancy Meme, one of the evolved tricks that religion uses to defend itself from criticism, arose in the Jewish culture a few hundred years before the time of Christ. Since then, it's become a huge barrier to progress in human ethics: If we left it to religions that follow the Inerrance Meme, human ethical advancement would be frozen in time forever.

Religion is not the root of violence and war; that distinction goes to evolution, keeping us in keen competition with one another for survival of the fittest. But religion is holding us back, exacerbating and amplifying the worst parts of our animal nature, and preventing us from evolving to the next level of ethical achievement.

Tags: atheism atheist religion morals ethics evolution memes virus christian jew memes memeplex dawkin harris hitchens

Did Religion exacerbate the Worldwide Financial Meltdown? Surprisingly, Yes.

It may seem like a stretch to blame religion for worsening the world's financial meltdown, but it's not. The entire conservative free-market approach to government is based on a flawed understanding human nature. The Creationist viewpoint is not just a religion, it is also a way of thinking that permits and encourages illogical thinking. Religion teaches people to reject facts in favor of opinion and hearsay.

Worse, the Creationist approach discards the most valuable tool available to an economist: An accurate, scientific understanding of human behavior. An economist who rejects Evolution Science also rejects the profound insights that come with it.

One of the cool things about Evolution Science is that the principles apply to a wide variety of interacting systems, not just biological life. Any time you have competing, mutable entities, whether they are corporations, memes (ideas), nations, or plants and animals, a clear understanding of the principles of evolution can give amazing insight into the way these entities interact.

To those who understand evolution, topics like predation, competition, and especially parasitism, are no mystery at all. When we view banks, brokerages and insurance companies as evolving, mutating memeplexes, that compete with each other in the classic "survival of the fittest" battle, we can predict certain things. We can predict that, in an unregulated marketplace, unethical (but successful) memeplexes will evolve. We can predict that "parasitic" (but successful) memeplexes such as "derivative funds" that are nothing more than quasi-legal casinos, will evolve. We can predict that the "tragedy of the commons," where each individual makes decisions that, collectively, hurt everyone, will be an everyday occurance.

By contrast, a Creationist rejects this sort of thinking. Or perhaps a better way to say it: A Creationist is incapable of this deep and profound insight into the financial world. By rejecting evolution, they reject the insights that go with it. The religious explanation of nature is simplistic: God created the world and its plants and creatures, and created humans to look over everything. Evil was introduced when Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent's temptation. Morals are God-given, and are enumerated in the scriptures.

Religion offers no insight into human behavior, and even less into the behavior of complex social structures such as banks, insurance companies and stock brokerages. It is worse than silent ... it offers only ineffective solutions, such as prayer and wishful thinking.

Any useful model of the world economy must be based on an understanding of evolutionary systems. Anything else is just a fairy tale. Given that the Republican Bush Administration is filled with Creationists, is it any surprise that they can't understand the economy?

So, as you look in dismay at your stock portfolio, our the declining value of your home, or maybe you even lost your job, you can chalk up one more way that Creationists are damaging society.