Meme Theory & Religion (1 Viewer)

[Cookie182]

The idea of "culturally replicating" ideas was first coined "memes" by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. Since then, there has been great discussion of the topic with particular attention paid to its applications in respect to human psychology, politics and religious thinking. Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine provides an excellent discussion. However these ideas are not without controversy and appear to still be in heated contention (see Dennet etc), given it is very difficult to produce any empirical evidence for the existence of a meme.

I was wondering what you guys thought about Meme Theory and in particular its application to say Christianity. If you use the model of a "mind virus" Christianity does appear to have all the elements. The "Christian Meme" exists solely for its own survival and proliferation, indocrtrinating hosts at every stage through prosthelyzing (particularly as children) and publicly condemning (though more contained in a secular society this century) actions which work against its goal (contentious science, reason over faith, blasphemy and apostasy, abortion (as it kills potential hosts)). In essence, "True Christians" working under the meme are even forced to contradict their own "moral values" such as not bearing false witness when it comes to issues such as homosexuality, "creationism" etc. Christianity promotes a form of "compulsive love", which from the perspective of reason not faith (a position not allowed by the meme) is immoral: love me/fear me.

Viruses lose out if they overtake all of the organisms cells and the host dies. In many ways we can see this first hand when we observe "religious martyrs" [example islam]. Christianity promotes a "pro-life/sanctity of life stance"; the meme will die with out new hosts. The recent rush to prostheylize Africa shows the natural competitiveness of the religious meme, Christianity v Islam. Encouraging large families [no contraception] with ("strong values", the conservative position) ensures many children at once will be raised under the household religious position and continue to spread the virus.

Do you consider meme theory as being a good model to conceptualise the major tenets of modern religions? Is this a fair judgement? Obviously it is only useful to think of memes as if they could "think" or had purpose, the host is still in control yet there is a strong argument that memes have a negative effect on their free will.

*Apologies for the length but a fascinating topic. Anyone actualy formally studied this theory in sociology, psychology?

 

[KFunk]

I like this topic so I thought I would pilfer something I posted a while ago, including a passage from a book (Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1991) by the philosopher Daniel Dennet. Briefly, the 'meme' concept arose because the notion of 'evolution' is so abstract that its basic requirements - (1) variation, (2) heredity or replicability and (3) variable fitness - might be realised in a number of different situations.

Take a cultural practice like "Uncle Joe's fishing method". (1) it competes with other fishing methods (maybe cousin Peggy-Sue devised one), (2) it can be inherited/replicated since your Uncle Joe may teach it to you, among others, and (3) it may be more likely to be passed on by virtue of its being a better method for catching fish (versus, say, Peggy-Sue's) or perhaps the method is simply more entertaining/ennjoyable to practice. In any case, with that context I thought this quote may be of interest here:

"... whatever virtues (from our perspective) the following memes have, they have in common the property of having phenotypic expressions that tend to make their own replication more likely by disabling or preempting the environmental forces that would tend to extinguish them: the meme for faith, which discourages the exercise of the sort of critical judgement that might decide that the idea of faith was all things considered a dangerous idea; the meme for tolerance or free speech; the meme of including in a chain letter a warning about the terrible fates of those who have broken the chain in the past; the conspiracy theory meme, which has a built-in response to the objection that there is no good evidence of conpiracy: "Of course not - that's how powerful the conspiracy is!"

...

Other things being equal, population memetics predicts that conspiracy theory memes will persist quite independently of their truth, and the meme for faith is apt to secure its own survival, and that of religious memes that ride piggyback on it, in even the most rationalistic environments."

 

[KFunk]

Also, prior to Dawkins there is a body of literature stemming from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. While Lamarck's theories are a bit sketchy when applied to the Girraffe's neck, they gain traction in the cultural sphere.

Evolutionary economists, e.g. Schumpeter and Veblen, provide an example of meme-style theory which arose in the early twentieth century when biological concepts from Darwin's theory (and Lamarck) started permeating the social sciences.

Going back further you might look to Marx or Hegel as thinkers who thought a great deal about the intellectual and social forces which produce social change. While their outlooks each featured a specific kind of determinism (in a materialistic and an idealist sense respectively) their theorising of dynamic movement (of social structures) through antagonistic forces remains quite relevant. Kant too described social change over time mediated by our 'unsocial sociability' (i.e. we desire a community and a social life but we also desire independence and satisfaction of individual desires) which over time, say though conflict and war, will lead to more stable forms of society based on consitutions which better moderate this intrinsic antagonism.

Earlier still, it is worth noting that David Hume bumped up against something starting to resemble evolutionary theory in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (during a discussion in which he ponders different ways that the world could have come to be):

"Let us suppose that matter is finite. A finite number of particles is only susceptible of finite transpositions: and it must happen, in an eternal duration, that every possible order or position must be tried an infinite number of times."

 

[Cookie182]

I like this topic so I thought I would pilfer something I posted a while ago, including a passage from a book (Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1991) by the philosopher Daniel Dennet. Briefly, the 'meme' concept arose because the notion of 'evolution' is so abstract that its basic requirements - (1) variation, (2) heredity or replicability and (3) variable fitness - might be realised in a number of different situations.

Take a cultural practice like "Uncle Joe's fishing method". (1) it competes with other fishing methods (maybe cousin Peggy-Sue devised one), (2) it can be inherited/replicated since your Uncle Joe may teach it to you, among others, and (3) it may be more likely to be passed on by virtue of its being a better method for catching fish (versus, say, Peggy-Sue's) or perhaps the method is simply more entertaining/ennjoyable to practice. In any case, with that context I thought this quote may be of interest here:

"... whatever virtues (from our perspective) the following memes have, they have in common the property of having phenotypic expressions that tend to make their own replication more likely by disabling or preempting the environmental forces that would tend to extinguish them: the meme for faith, which discourages the exercise of the sort of critical judgement that might decide that the idea of faith was all things considered a dangerous idea; the meme for tolerance or free speech; the meme of including in a chain letter a warning about the terrible fates of those who have broken the chain in the past; the conspiracy theory meme, which has a built-in response to the objection that there is no good evidence of conpiracy: "Of course not - that's how powerful the conspiracy is!"

...

Other things being equal, population memetics predicts that conspiracy theory memes will persist quite independently of their truth, and the meme for faith is apt to secure its own survival, and that of religious memes that ride piggyback on it, in even the most rationalistic environments."

A book that's been on my 'to read' list for quite some time!

Good analogy, very clear. I like Dennet's discussion of conspiracy theories. IMO conspiracy theories often gain momentum in the face of critcism as they can be angled in such a way that it is predicted the whole world will laugh/ridicule the C. Theorist, and this only helps to reinforce their intuitions. I think Dennet here is basically putting religious ideas in the same kettle; whenever faith is held to be greater then reason, the religious meme is "hedged" against downside risk or in a sense has a "price floor" in place.

From your reading, do you view Meme Theory as just a good rational, model of the spread of ideas or do you think the theory is essentially falsifiable? It would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to empirically test for 'meme' effects would it not?

 

[Cookie182]

Also, prior to Dawkins there is a body of literature stemming from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. While Lamarck's theories are a bit sketchy when applied to the Girraffe's neck, they gain traction in the cultural sphere.

Evolutionary economists, e.g. Schumpeter and Veblen, provide an example of meme-style theory which arose in the early twentieth century when biological concepts from Darwin's theory (and Lamarck) started permeating the social sciences.

Going back further you might look to Marx or Hegel as thinkers who thought a great deal about the intellectual and social forces which produce social change. While their outlooks each featured a specific kind of determinism (in a materialistic and an idealist sense respectively) their theorising of dynamic movement (of social structures) through antagonistic forces remains quite relevant. Kant too described social change over time mediated by our 'unsocial sociability' (i.e. we desire a community and a social life but we also desire independence and satisfaction of individual desires) which over time, say though conflict and war, will lead to more stable forms of society based on consitutions which better moderate this intrinsic antagonism.

Earlier still, it is worth noting that David Hume bumped up against something starting to resemble evolutionary theory in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (during a discussion in which he ponders different ways that the world could have come to be):

"Let us suppose that matter is finite. A finite number of particles is only susceptible of finite transpositions: and it must happen, in an eternal duration, that every possible order or position must be tried an infinite number of times."

I didn't know its history was that deep; I guess Dawkin's pulls some unwarranted credit.

Good reading list, cheers.

 

[KFunk]

A From your reading, do you view Meme Theory as just a good rational, model of the spread of ideas or do you think the theory is essentially falsifiable? It would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to empirically test for 'meme' effects would it not?

Meme theory is an interesting background theory which has the potential to explain social change over time. However, it is highly abstract and somewhat limited by the kind of explanations it can offer. Just as evolutionary biology is unable to supplant physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology and so on when understanding organisms, meme theory is only really a sideline theory compared to anthropology, psychology, politics, etc. These disciplines are still essential if we want to understand the structure and dynamics of any particular kind of system. Note well that there may well be forces which generate change but are not evolutionary in nature. Aggregate change in the long term is often amenable to evolutionary treatment, but short term processes are perhaps better studied by those sciences which study the dynamics of social structures.

No doubt meme theory is empirically problematic, but so is much social science (e.g. the majority of economics), not to mention evolutionary theory in general or other theories which aim to explain some process which occurred in the past - alas, we can forget about randomised-controlled trials. However, much of the validity of evolutionary theory is a priori, though importantly is also conditional insofar as it requires a system to satisfy certain properties. Personally I think the interesting debate is whether sociocultural phenomena can be argued to have the appropriate properties.

I think that meme theory is a useful theoretical framework with which we can conceptualise the process of social change in general, but it strikes me a relatively weak when it comes to explaining particular processes given that proof is difficult to obtain if not impossible in some cases, and it is hard to say what constitutes a cultural 'unit' given that such things are typically strewn with vagueness and will often exist on a spectrum of some variety. I find the criticism that mimetic evolution would be chaotic in some instances plausible and interesting.

 

[ad infinitum]

So this is the noise that comes out of the low minds when left unsupervised by us thought givers?

 

[Tangent]

I'm finding this extremely enthralling.

Does the meme theory apply to anything other than religion?

 

[KFunk]

Does the meme theory apply to anything other than religion?

Anything you can put your mind to hombre.

 

[mirakon]

Also, prior to Dawkins there is a body of literature stemming from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. While Lamarck's theories are a bit sketchy when applied to the Girraffe's neck, they gain traction in the cultural sphere.

Evolutionary economists, e.g. Schumpeter and Veblen, provide an example of meme-style theory which arose in the early twentieth century when biological concepts from Darwin's theory (and Lamarck) started permeating the social sciences.

Going back further you might look to Marx or Hegel as thinkers who thought a great deal about the intellectual and social forces which produce social change. While their outlooks each featured a specific kind of determinism (in a materialistic and an idealist sense respectively) their theorising of dynamic movement (of social structures) through antagonistic forces remains quite relevant. Kant too described social change over time mediated by our 'unsocial sociability' (i.e. we desire a community and a social life but we also desire independence and satisfaction of individual desires) which over time, say though conflict and war, will lead to more stable forms of society based on consitutions which better moderate this intrinsic antagonism.

Earlier still, it is worth noting that David Hume bumped up against something starting to resemble evolutionary theory in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (during a discussion in which he ponders different ways that the world could have come to be):

"Let us suppose that matter is finite. A finite number of particles is only susceptible of finite transpositions: and it must happen, in an eternal duration, that every possible order or position must be tried an infinite number of times."

From what I've heard, some aspects of Lamarcks research were proven wrong by Darwin. Is this true?