The Religion Virus	by Craig A. James
	Why We Believe in God: An Evolutionist Explains Religion's Incredible Hold on Humanity

"An ingenious melding—a recombination, if you will—of genetics and memetics. 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

Have you ever wondered...

Who thought up heaven and hell, and why?
Why is guilt so critical to Christians?
Why doesn't God have a wife?
Why is teaching religion to children critical to all churches?

And how can evolution answer all of these questions?

"Full of powerful, ground-breaking ideas, packaged in a deceptively simple, easy-reading style. This is the most fun I've had reading non-fiction in a long time."

— Phil Steele, editor of The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics and Fragment (scifi, 2009)

Using tools from the powerful new science called memetics (the evolution of culture and ideas), the author takes you on a fascinating tour, around the world and through history, to learn the answers to these and many more puzzles. Whether it is monotheism, heaven and hell, sin and morality, intolerance, guilt, the author provides a fresh new perspective and understanding.

Continued below ...

Cultural Evolution – Understanding Religion with the New Science of Memes

From the book (Chapter 1)...

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" What a dumb joke. But you've heard it, right? And you know the retort. Why is this stupid joke one of the most pervasive and reliable bits of verbal information ever passed from one human to another? Why is it passed, with extreme accuracy, to virtually every child? What makes children tell it to each other, year after year, generation after generation?

This is not a trivial question; it illustrates a deep and profound insight into human culture, that some ideas can be passed verbally and with high fidelity, but additionally, that these facts are passed along whereas other ideas fade into history. Something about the chicken joke causes it to reproduce itself. The joke itself contains the means for its own survival – it makes children want to repeat it.

The chicken joke is a perfect example of a self-replicating idea, an idea that makes you want to repeat it to someone else. Whether it's a joke, an urban myth, a great story, or a hard lesson you've learned that you want to tell your children, each of these things carries within it the "seed" that causes it to be retold, to be copied from one human brain to another. In other words, each of these carries more than just the message itself; it also carries a motivation that makes you want to retell it. The message is the obvious, overt part of the joke, urban myth or lesson. The motivation is a consequence of the message's contents, yet it is equally important. Without the motivation, the idea would die out.

Notice that this is a lot like how our genes work: Genes carry information, just as a joke carries information ... your DNA shares a fascinating trait with jokes, urban myths and hard-learned lessons: They all contain a message and a motivation to reproduce.

Richard Dawkins was the first to recognize the parallels between ideas and genes, but he didn't think it was just an amusing analogy. Dawkins realized there was something deeper, that even though biological life and ideas are radically different, there is an important underlying theory that ties the two together. Because these self-replicating ideas were so much like genes, Dawkins coined the term meme (a "mnemonic gene").

... When I tell you a joke, I am essentially carrying out the joke's version of sex: I am using your brain to make a copy of the joke meme that was in my brain. It uses your brain's resources to keep itself alive (stored in your neurons), and if it's funny enough, you'll want to repeat the joke to someone else, thereby increasing the joke's population by one more. This sounds a lot like a virus, doesn't it?

This excerpt from Chapter 1 of Religion is a Virus begins our tour through the fascinating land of memetics, the evolution of ideas as they are passed from one person to another, across society and down through history.

Chapter 1 closes by looking forward to what's coming:

We will study three paths in parallel. The first is classical Evolution Science, first elucidated by Charles Darwin, one of the greatest minds in history. Darwin's Evolution Science is astonishing in its explanatory powers; with a single book, Darwin founded what is arguably the most important science in human history. We'll just skim the surface; a full treatment requires volumes, but it's important to our story.

Second, we'll learn more about memes, the field of study called memetics. We'll learn how memes follow nearly the same evolutionary rules as the physical lifeforms that Darwin studied, as these ideas and concepts "live and reproduce" in our brains, and we'll extend Evolution Science to see how it also sheds light on cultural evolution.

And third, we'll study religion itself. We'll show that religion is explained clearly and completely by memetics and by the lessons learned from Darwin's Evolution Science. Using Darwin's principles of evolution, applied to culture via meme theory, we'll see that modern religions are the inevitable result of Darwinistic evolution of culture and ideas. In this case, survival of the fittest does not necessarily mean survival of the truest.

Sounds fascinating? It is! People of all faiths, as well as atheists, agnostics, and seekers of knowledge, will all gain new insights and understanding of faith, religion, God, the Bible, and how human culture and memetic evolution have shaped these concepts into the powerful and pervasive ideas we know today.

Click here to see the Table of Contents.