Schematic of a typical bacteriophage virus injecting its genome into a bacterium; could religions be doing this to us? (Wikipedia)
One hypothesis for the evolutionary basis of religion doesn’t rely on the traditional concept of biological adaptation. Rather, it proposes that Homo sapiens has been saddled with—or parasitized by— a tendency that is maladaptive. Not surprisingly, this idea comes from the fertile mind of a great evolutionary biologist who is also renowned (or infamous) as a vigorous opponent of religion: Richard Dawkins. Among Dawkins’ many intriguing ideas, one of the most widely accepted has been that of “memes,” which are essentially the cultural equivalent of genes. (Personal disclosure: Richard Dawkins is a friend, not only a fellow evolutionary biologist but also a fellow-traveling atheist. I’ve blurbed—the Brits say, “puffed”—some of his books and he has returned the favor for me, more than once, most recently with respect to my own Homo mysterious: evolutionary mysteries of human nature, about to be published by Oxford, and from which some of these blog posts have been and will be derived.)
Whereas genes are entities of nucleic acid that reside in living bodies, memes are entities of cultural memory and information that reside in society. Genes are inherited biologically, via reproduction; memes are acquired culturally, via teaching and imitation. Genes are Darwinian, projected across generations via reproduction and spreading by the process of organic evolution; memes are Lamarckian, acquired characteristics that are “inherited” culturally, passed along from ancestors to descendants, from parent to child, from adult to adult, rapidly and nongenetically via conversation, imitation, songs, schooling, books, radio, television, YouTube, email, Twitter, Facebook and, yes, religious indoctrination.
Memes are increasingly acknowledged, to the extent that they have entered normal language. There is even a word—“memetics”—for the study of how memes originate and spread. Memes, the concept, have themselves become a meme! There is no doubt, as well, that religious memes spread like their sectarian relatives: The language and doctrine of religion, patterns of dress, song, prayer, and other traditions are promulgated among congregants, varying slightly (mutating) on occasion, but for the most part being copied with remarkable fidelity. And they also reproduce differentially, experiencing a kind of “selection,” with certain ones out-competing others, the winners prospering while the losers go extinct.
Michael Pollan’s best-selling book, The Botany of Desire, provided many readers with a novel perspective on plant domestication, showing how cultivated plants—notably apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes—can be seen as agents in their own promulgation, not merely passive recipients of human attention but active manipulators of Homo sapiens. Actually, it’s a perspective long known to evolutionary biologists in general, and devotees of memes in particular. (Also, as we’ll see, parasitologists.) Just as genes orchestrate the behavior of the bodies they create and within which they reside, memes are, in a sense, replicating agents that succeed in proportion as they induce their “bodies” (human societies) to help them—the memes—to proliferate. Tulips, for example, have done well appealing to the human penchant for beauty. Apples have held us in thrall to their sweetness. Marijuana has taken advantage of our intoxication with intoxication. And so on.
Turn, next, to “The Parable of the Sower,” (Matthew 13), according to which “The Word of God is a seed and the sower of the seed is Christ,” and good Christians are called upon to follow in Christ’s footsteps. As Pollan pointed out, plants use seeds to spread themselves, and in the process, they employ us. We spread them, ostensibly for our own benefit, but at least as much to theirs. Who, then, is in charge, and can the same be said of religion? Perhaps human religions are a composite of “viral memes,” perpetuated and spread for the sake of the religions themselves, manipulating human beings to their meme-ish benefit (as well as that of their priestly, rabbinic, imam-ish and other human guardians) and to the disadvantage of those poor dupes—the congregants—who serve as unwitting hosts, carriers, or victims. Sowers of seeds may think they are in control, but the beneficiaries—and, in a sense, the ones calling the shots—are the seeds!
The technical phrase is “host manipulation.” For example, the tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularus causes its mouse “host” to become obese and sluggish, making it easy pickings for predators, notably foxes which—not coincidentally—constitute the next phase in the tapeworm’s life cycle. Those the gods intend to bring low, according to the Greeks, they first make proud; those tapeworms intending to migrate from mouse to fox do so by making “their” mouse behave in a way that turns them into fox-food. Highly adaptive for the worm, not so much for the mouse.
In another example of host manipulation adduced as a metaphor for the viral meme hypothesis, Daniel Dennett begins his book, Breaking the Spell: religion as a natural phenomenon (which I also blurbed–my, we’re an incestuous lot, we evolutionists!) by describing a creature much beloved of biologists, the lancet fluke or so-called brain worm, Dicrocelium dendriticum. This creature hijacks the brain of an ant, inducing it to climb a blade of grass and hold on, whereupon the ant (and its accompanying worms) are eaten by sheep, cow or horse, enabling the surviving worm to continue their life cycle. Dennett then asks whether anything comparable happens to human beings. His answer: “Yes indeed. We often find human beings setting aside their personal interests, their health, their chances to have children, and devoting their entire lives to furthering the interests of an idea [his emphasis] that has lodged in their brains.”
Of course, for all the importance typically associated with various holy objects, it is the ideas of religion rather than their material trappings that are generally acknowledged to be what really matters, and doctrines and belief systems are not physical entities like a worm. But as with all memes, the key characteristic for our purposes—and theirs—isn’t the structure of religious memes, but what they do. And what they do is promote themselves.
Christians make much about spreading the Gospel, disseminating seeds bearing the “good news” about Christ. Indeed, in many religions the Word itself trumps the lives of its practitioners. Among other things, it is this self-abnegation, often to the point of renunciation of various worldly pleasures, even celibacy and martyrdom that demands the attention of evolutionary biologists. Bear in mind, for example, that Islam means “submission,” and Muslims are proud of subordinating themselves to the dictates of Allah. But why? Has Allah deceived them, for His own benefit and their disadvantage, in the manner of a mouse-inhabiting tapeworm? Perhaps. Or is He using them for their own good? Could be. Or is it the various ideas of Allah and His dictation to the prophet Muhammad that are the ultimate beneficiaries? Again, maybe so. But if this is the case, why are so many people bamboozled into playing along?
The “viral meme” hypothesis is most convivial for atheists, since it puts religion in so unfavorable a light. At the same time, the validity of a hypothesis should never be judged by whether it supports one’s prior convictions. Moreover, memes aren’t necessarily pernicious; most of the time, in fact, they are likely to be either neutral hitchhikers or actually beneficial to their hosts (hence, their success). Useful devices, whether mnemonic or mechanical, prosper in proportion as they help their practitioners do so.
Applied to religion, the presumption of memic malevolence is an easy misunderstanding to make, since the concept was introduced by someone who is avowedly anti-religion and who has argued that religion memes are comparable to viruses or other parasites, doing harm to their hosts. But, to repeat, it is also possible for memes to be neutral or even beneficial; indeed, the great majority of them probably are.
Next: religion as a result of “evolutionary overshoot.”