New Second Edition!
Was $24.95, now
just $9.95 (paperback) and $4.75 (Kindle). Thanks to
everyone who made the first edition a success! I look forward to hearing
from even more readers.
A Kindle Best Seller!
Religions evolve, not metaphorically, but in a very real way. By applying
survival-of-the-fittest principles to religion, we can finally understand
how religion became incredibly infectious to the average human.
The Religion Virus will show you how infectious ideas like the
loving father-figure God, the promise that death is not the end, the
attraction of heaven, the threat of hell, and many others evolved from
prehistoric to modern times. You will finally understand why today's
religions survived while thousands of other religions and sects died
out. Like biological life, over ninety-nine percenty of the world's
religions are extinct, but the ones that remain are quite remarkable. They
are the strongest and best. More importantly, "survival of the fittest" does
not necessarily mean survival of the truth, but rather the survival of the
things people want to believe, whether true or not.
Why do you worship Abraham's God instead of Zeus, Pelé or Thor?
Why is a single all-purpose god far better than a bunch of
special-purpose gods?
Why is religion necessarily hostile to science?
Why can't polytheism compete with monotheism?
Why do heaven and hell have to co-exist?
Why is "shunning" (casting out non-believers) so critical to
religion's survival?
You'll find answers to these and many more fascinating questions
in The Religion Virus.
Buy it today and get started!
Dan Barker, author of Godless:
"Ingenious ... Craig James has cracked open the mystery of
religion's tenacity. What Guns, Germs and Steel did for
anthropology, The Religion Virus does for faith. It puts the
pieces together into a fascinating, coherent model that makes sense!"
– Dan Barker, author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists,
and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Secular News Daily:
"I don't say this about very many books, but Craig
A. James's The Religion Virus can
facilitate a wholesale change in the way we think about religion ... an
engaging, entertaining, and educational journey ... packed with a lot of good
information."
"The Religion Virus will open your mind, offering a perspective on
religion and social evolution that few have presented, and none with such
delightfully reasoned enthusiasm and varying analogies. ... This book
will keep you awake and engaged. I learned something new on so many
levels that it was truly enjoyable and informative reading, and the ideas
presented reverberated in my mind for days after each chapter. So much
so, that as I sat down to write this review, I decided to read it all
over again, just for the sheer joy of it."
"[A] fascinating read ... an easy recommendation to anyone curious as to how religion has
survived and what makes it so difficult to shake ... tolerant people of all walks have
something to gain from checking it out."
– amazon.com review
Overstock.com Review:
"This book ... just sort of changes you,
in a good way, to a new, deeper understanding of all the stuff we were
taught as gospel. Read it, I guarantee you'll be glad you did, and you'll
never think of religion the same way again."
"Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
This quote illustrates one of the most difficult parts of leaving
religion behind. For millenia, religion provided us with very appealing
and soothing answers to life's difficult and perplexing questions. Nature
is harsh, we all face death in the end, and during our short lives we are
plagued by disease, natural disasters and by fellow humans who prey on our
good nature.
Religion (Christianity in particular) has evolved remarkable answers
that help us cope with these harsh realities. However difficult life is,
there will be a reward: loved ones who die aren't really lost forever, evil
people will be punished eventually, good will be rewarded, and when natural
disasters strike, God has a purpose (even though we can't always understand
it). Whatever happens here on Earth, it will all be OK in the end.
If you're like most people, abandoning these reassuring answers was (or
will be) one of the hardest parts of losing your faith.
The Religion
Virus won't magically make it all better again. But it will help you to
understand why religion evolved these incredibly infectious ideas, and why
it is so very difficult for you to leave religion behind.
"I feel so much better now!" – Carolyn, after reading
The Religion Virus
Carolyn is a real person, born in 1930 in the Central Valley of
California. In fact, you'll read her story in
The Religion Virus. After years of soul searching and study, and
witnessing a tragic natural catastrophe, Carolyn made the difficult
decision to leave religion behind forever. But lingering doubts and fears
remained. She knew her decision to leave Christianity was the right one,
but Christianity had planted its incredibly infectious concepts of guilt,
heaven, hell, and original sin deep in Carolyn's brain.
The Religion Virus showed Carolyn exactly why the
two-thousand-year-old infectious ideas in her head were so hard to leave
behind, and why she'd been plagued by uncertainty, doubt and regret for
so long. When she finally got to the end of the book, all of Carolyn's
uncertainty had evaporated, leaving her free to pursue life on her own
terms.
Religious
The histories of Christianity and Judaism are absolutely fascinating, yet
many (perhaps most) believers know very little about the true history of
their own religion. Take this for example:
God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the
gods. ... I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most
High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
– Psalm 82
Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?
–Exodus 15:11
Did you know that in the early history of Judaism and Christianity, most
followers of Yahweh (the one you now call God) were polytheists? They swore
their loyalty to Yahweh, but did not believe He was the only
god.
The God you worship today is dramatically different than the Yahweh that
Moses and Abraham worshipped. In fact, if Abraham could come forward in
time to sit beside you in your church, he would barely even recognize your
almighty, omniscent God, creator of the universe. Abraham thought of Yahweh
as more of a flesh-and-blood god of wars, just one of many gods that Abraham's
people worshipped.
How did this happen? Why was Abraham's and Moses' understanding of God
so different from yours?
In The Religion Virus you'll learn why your God has changed
so much in the eyes of His believers, and why the God you worship today is
a better God.
And the story of God Himself is just the beginning. Just about every
aspect of Christianity and Judaism – Genesis, the afterlife, heaven
and hell, original sin, the divinity of Jesus Christ – has changed
dramatically over the centuries. It's a fascinating story.
Although the title "The Religion Virus" sounds anti-religious, it is
actually something quite different: it will teach you about religion's
history, but from a completely new perspective. You'll learn where
Christianity and Judaism came from, how they changed and evolved over the
centuries, and most importantly, why your religion has taken its
modern form.
Atheist or Agnostic
As an atheist or agnostic, you've either rejected the concept of gods, or
perhaps you never were infected with those ideas in the first place. Or
maybe you realize the question of God's existence is unanswerable. Yet
you look at the religions of your friends, neighbors and family, and are
baffled. How can they believe things that to you are so clearly wrong?
These are smart, thoughtful people ... how is it that many consider the
Bible, written over two thousand years ago, to be one hundred percent
accurate in every respect? How is it they believe in miracles and magic,
angels and demons?
And why is religion so incredibly tenacious?
The Religion Virus answers these questions with the new field of
study called cultural evolution, or memetics.
Darwin's Theory of Evolution revolutionized our understanding of biology,
turning it from a science that could merely categorize into a science
that predicted and explained the amazing variety of life on this
wonderful planet of ours. By applying these same principles to culture
itself, we can predict and explain the evolution of religion.
Most religion books focus on the what or when of religion.
Like the biologists of Darwin's time, all they can do is describe and
categorize. But in The Religion Virus, you'll learn why
religions evolved to their present-day form. The new science of cultural
evolution – applying Darwin's principles to the flow of ideas
(memes) as they move across society and down through history
– has revolutionized our understanding of our culuture.
A number of excellent books have been written about memes, but all of
them have skirted the biggest meme of all: religion. The Religion
Virus tackles religion head on, showing how and why religions evolved
to their present-day forms. With this new understanding of how cultures
evolve (not metaphorically, but in a very real way), you'll see why
religion is an almost-inevitable part of human culture.
You'll finally understand its tenacity, and why people are so incredibly
attached to the set of ideas collectively called "religion."
Deist and Unitarian Universalists
Deism and Universal Unitarianism share a central idea: there are no
simple answers, and each person's theology is the result of a search for
truth and meaning rather than something handed down by an authority.
Within this framework of inquisitiveness, The Religion Virus gives
new insights into how and why the major religions arose. Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, along with the many branches of Eastern
religions, provide very satisfying answers to the deep questions of
life. Are these answers right, or are they just the answers that
people want to hear? Or (as some suggest), are they answers that keep the
major religious institutions in business and in power? These are difficult
questions that have been asked for centuries, with much heated
opinion but very little progress.
The Religion Virus takes a new approach. Instead of asking, "Is
this idea right or wrong?", it asks, "Does this idea appeal, whether it is
right or wrong?" A new branch of study called memetics, parallel to
genetics, treats ideas very much like genes: they spread, they mutate, and
they compete against each other for survival. Ideas live in your mind, not
your cells, but otherwise behave remarkably like genes. And like genes, it
turns out that ideas evolve – not metaphorically, but in a very real
way.
Using the insights provided by memetics, The Religion Virus will
take you on a tour of the Abrahamic religions' histories. You'll learn the
real history of each of the major tenets of these religion: monotheism,
Biblical infallibility, heaven and hell, morality, and many more. Each of
these ideas is traced through history as the inexorable forces of "survival
of the fittest" shaped it into the most appealing idea of all. You'll learn
why it's not truth that counts when it comes to the spread of ideas, only
whether the idea survives better than its competitors in the "ideosphere."
As one reviewer explained, "... The Religion Virus can facilitate
a wholesale change in the way we think about religion." In your search for
truth, morality and purpose in life, an understanding the origin and appeal of
today's religions is a good foundation.
Meme Geek
Memes and cultural evolution are nothing new to you, you get it. You've
read Dawkins and Distin, and maybe even Brodie and Aunger. You watch
with fascination as the Fifth Avenue marketing gurus spin their memetic
webs, YouTube videos "go viral" (a term that you actually understand),
fads sweep the country, urban legends get retold ad nauseum, and a dozen
copies of the next viral meme pile up on Twitter, spread across Facebook,
and clog your Inbox.
But there's a piece missing ... why haven't any of these authors writing
about memes taken a serious look at religion? Religion is by far the
biggest, most intricate, and most pervasive memeplex in the world's
history. So why has religion been almost completely ignored by the
memetics community?
The Religion Virus takes this controversial topic head-on,
and there is plenty of material to study: God, death, heaven and hell,
anti-rationalism, anti-science, Jesus' divinity ... the list goes on and
on. Each of these memes has a fascinating history, some stretching back
over ten thousand years.
For example, why did monotheism supplant paganism? It's a hard question
for historians, because without an evolutionary approach, there's no real
reason to expect one form of religion to dominate over another.
But a memetic view makes it obvious: using well-understood population
dynamics, one can easily see why a single, all-purpose god-mem will be more
successful than a host of lesser (often squabbling) god-memes.
Moreover, monotheism is a direct result of three other memes whose
evolution was almost inevitable: the All-Purpose God meme (one god
who can answer all prayers), the Intolerance meme (suppress or
kill those who don't believe in your god), and the Globalization
meme (God is universal, he can answer your prayers even if you leave
Israel).
A memetic analysis completely explains religion's fascinating
history, and furthermore actually predicts the features of
religion that we see around the world today.
Most Christians, Jews and Muslims are amazed to learn that the modern God
they worship today bears very little resemblence to the God of the
Israelites two thousand years ago. Historians can show what
happened to God in those two millenia, but only memetics can
explain why.
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