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What do you think of the idea of religion as a memetic virus? Of course the idea is not new, but usually the analogy is used in a critical way, as an attack on religion.
What if we view modern major world religions as a huge memetic symbiotic viruses, that largely evolved to INCREASE the fitness and competitiveness of societies (not necessary individuals) they infected - because that allows these societies to more effectively spread the virus further (prozelityze).
We can view all the holy books and writings that stood the test of time as additional libraries and modules of a virus that serve as sort of patches hijacking basic human "firmware" that we evolved as prehistoric hunter-gatherers and using it for new purpose. A simple example - monotheistic anti-idolatry "module" that serve tu supress our innate spirituality (pantheism/ancestor worship) and rechannel it in such a way as to allow us to organise in much larger and complex society (that can propagate the virus that much more effectively).
>>1166863
You could say this is true of literally any ideology. You could even say that the idea of ideology as a virus is itself a new virus.
>>1166928
>You could say this is true of literally any ideology
Yes, but to effectively infect our minds an ideology must have a way to profondly affect us on an emotional level. Religions mostly play on out greatest fear - fear of death and our greatest hope - having an afterlife without suffering. Often they introduce an additional idea - some sort of hell/afterlife retribution, this serves as an additional motivator to submit, introducing the fear that even death might not be an escape from suffering if we don't do as we are told.
You can see these ideas in one form or another in all the major religions. Religions without the concept of afterlife are simply not competitive judging from their influence and the number of adherents.
>>1166928
Came in here to post this.
I like you anon.
>>1166949
And ideologies all similarly play on other fears or desires.
All this discussion is going to lead to is the understanding of religion as a particular family of ideologies
>>1166960
Well, I don't argue with that, only pointing out that religions tend to be much more influental and have much more power to motivate their adherents than most ideologies. The main difference is you can fear only limited liablity if you fail to support an ideology, and any religion worth its salt threatens you with an unlimited (or nearly unlimited) liability like an eternity in hell or an eternity of bad reincarnations.
>>1166960
If you look at the history of ancient theological debates no on even invoked the concept of pascal's wager. Look up some pagan criticism of Christianity, they aren't arguing about who has the best carrot on a stick. History simply does not support the idea that people chose their religion based min-maxing their after-life.
And what this annon said is true
>>1166949
All ideaology play on emotion because humans are always thinking emotionally to some degree. Your ideology partially plays on the fact that humans become upset when they are deceived.
>>1166863
Geertz defines religion as a set of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
While this definition has some problems, and is by no means definitive, it is highly influential.
>>1166949
You are, in my view correctly, getting at that what separates a religion from another ideology is a discourse of the transcendent. Communism does not have a metaphysics, so it is not a religion. Confucianism is often seen as a system of ethics because it co-opts other metaphysical frame-works.
>Religions without the concept of afterlife are simply not competitive judging from their influence and the number of adherents.
I disagree with you on this conclusion. Many religions that lack a detailed metaphysics, or a large institution, are often seen as a cultural phenomenon, but nonetheless are highly influential. Two primary examples being Shinto in Japan, and Chinese folk religion. Both have had and continue to have long lasting effects on the population, which is a large number of people.
>Communism does not have a metaphysics, so it is not a religion
That's why a communist society always needs a big secret police apparatus to function, and many religious societies can work just fine without Inquisition or Sharia police.
> Two primary examples being Shinto in Japan, and Chinese folk religion
As far as I know, these have a concept of the afterlife. And they are not exactly very infectous beyond their immediate region anyway. You don't see Chinese folk/Shinto missionaries converting many people in other parts of the world, do you? They only succeed at resisting the influence of Islam/Christianity, so they are barely holding their ground, while these, more successful, religions have being on the full-scale offensive for the last thousand years or so.
>>1167044
>As far as I know, these have a concept of the afterlife.
Yes, but they offer no means to get to that afterlife. There's no "do this and get into heaven", and they actually take much of their metaphysics from other religious frameworks, namely Buddhism and Taoism.
>You don't see Chinese folk/Shinto missionaries converting many people in other parts of the world, do you?
They are highly ingrained with their respective countries' identities, and have no imperative to convert. That does not mean they are lesser religious traditions. Christianity and Islam both have doctrinal and historic reasons for actively seeking converts. And I'm not too well versed in Chinese folk religion, but Shinto has traveled beyond its immediate area(into Korea and Manchuria), albeit under the nationalizing project of pre-war Japan.
>>1167044
>You don't see Chinese folk/Shinto missionaries converting many people in other parts of the world, do you?
You don't see missionaries from these religions at fucking all. They don't give a shit.
>>1167057
>They are highly ingrained with their respective countries' identities, and have no imperative to convert. That does not mean they are lesser religious traditions. Christianity and Islam both have doctrinal and historic reasons for actively seeking converts
If we agree with the basic premise and see these religions as competing memetic viruses, it does mean they are lesser, because they are less universal and influental. However their relative success in their region does mean they are viable at least for now. They WERE actively converting people in the immediate vicinity in the very beginning of their history, it's just that at some point they hit a brick wall.
>Christianity and Islam both have doctrinal and historic reasons for actively seeking converts
Yes, but how and why these doctrinal reasons evolved?
>>1167044
If you want to take an evolutionary view of religion you'd need to remember that evolution does not represent linear progress but adopting to different environments.
Shintoism is better for the Japanese than Christianity and Islam just like Judaism was better for the Jews. The idea that a religion would have equal fitness in all environments for all life-forms is nutty, it's like saying that all life forms should evolve gills and flippers.
If the primary fittness benefit is the value-system of the religion, trying to appeal to the after-life as the primary reason why one religion fails while another falls is a contradiction in terms. The primary reason would be the value-system itself and you can see this in some theological debates. This would be especially true in today's post-modern period. A lot of arguments for or against Christianity today center on what people say it's value system is.
>>1167071
What if we have two competing entities, one of which are only viable in environment A (and highly adapted to it) and other is constanly mutating and aggressively expanding to all the possible environments, including environment A?
As an example, Korea was in Chinese, Japanese cultural sphere for a very long time, and now Protestantism is probably MORE influental in South Korea than all the Eastern religions. As far as I know Christianity is making slow but steady progress in mainland China too.
As for the importance of the afterlife, I may have overestimated it. It's probably one of many important factors, not THE primary one.
>>1167071
>If the primary fittness benefit is the value-system of the religion
The value system of any successful religion goes against all our natural instincts. (Almost) no one would adapt and hold it willingly, unless you have a way to manipulate their innate fear/reward circuits.
>>1167084
Christianity has an incredibly good min-max of the after-life. Yet they couldn't assimilate Jews, who's dominate theology gives them no after-life what so ever. If a religion would appear to bring harm to you or your group it would be very hard to buy it even if the after-life created a net-benefit. Imagine a society faces a choice between two religions one with no after-life but a value system that clearly benefits them and another region with a top-tier after-life but you have to fuck up your own society, which one will become the mainstream religion? Going back to the example of Judaism, ethnocentric religions have a massive fitness bonus to their ethnic group. This is why Jews have done so well historically and can assist each other more easily. It is also why it doesn't really prosyltze, Jews are already born into their religion and bringing in non-Jews is contrary to the ethnocentric strategy.
In general Christianity is the religion of the lower class, people that there is a foot under them. It started out very much a religion for slaves, prostitutes, and the down-trotten. It is no surprise it is booming in China where being poor truly is a nightmare. You can also imagine that if the whole society is poor an ethnocentric religion doesn't mean much since your support network is also broke. Notice how it is also Protestantism that is booming, it is not in the interest of China to give up political power to some foreigner in Rome who does not share their culture. However in a very desperate place like an African country it might be wise to trade political power for extra finical support from the Catholic church.
>>1167066
>see these religions as competing memetic viruses
I think this is a problem in your theory of religions as a virus, in that it is bred from a Judeo-Christian view wherein there is a sharp distinction between religions. My research -admittedly limited- has been primarily on East Asian schools of thought, which often times sees concurrent religious beliefs being adopted, or religions seeking synthesis with other ideas and models. It is not a "winner-take-all" scenario. Judeo-Christian traditions have developed a strict monotheistic view to this, whereas you can see overlap in practice in other religions. For instance, one can be a practicing Buddhist and still practice a Taoist system of geomancy.
>They WERE actively converting people in the immediate vicinity in the very beginning of their history, it's just that at some point they hit a brick wall.
I think this is an over simplification of a larger issue. Shinto, for instance, only became divorced from Buddhism in the Meiji Restoration, where it was used by the State as a mobilizing and nationalizing force. It only became what we now think of as Shinto after WWII and can be seen as an invented tradition and modern religion. It's "conversion" lies in what it gives to the community, namely ways to alleviate anxiety in times of crisis and important social rites (ie rites of passage). And yet these people still may be affiliated with a Buddhist temple or Christian Church.
No religion "hits a brick wall". All are constantly transforming under a variety of different shifting factors.
>Yes, but how and why these doctrinal reasons evolved?
I don't know.
>>1167071
>Shintoism is better for the Japanese than Christianity and Islam just like Judaism was better for the Jews.
I'm not sure I would agree with this statement. I think ethnocentric religions, like Shinto and Judaism, developed these characteristics from a state need for a unifying identity, rather than being a "natural" faith
>>1167102
I've found it more effective to look at what religion offer the individual; mainly, I see it as a system to alleviate both existential and immediate crisis. It provides methods to deal with the anxieties of both.
>The value system of any successful religion goes against all our natural instincts
Could you elaborate a bit more on this?
>>1167134
>Christianity has an incredibly good min-max of the after-life?
>but a value system that clearly benefits
Most of these value systems are beneficial in the long run (and might not be beneficial to particular individuals), but they require you to delay gratification and give up many immediate pleasure. For many people (especially primitive people) it's very counterintuitive at first, so there must be a way to infect them using their primitive fears. Of course this is not the only way, the other major way is showing by own example that this religion leads to success (like missionaries showing much superior technology, if there are not missionaries to guide them, it this case people may even create their own non-viable virus - like the famous cargo cults).
Eh, no? You have much greater chance of going to hell, than heaven. "Narrow door to heaven and broad path to hell", you know.
And what are you trying to say? Yes, Judaism is very successful, but in a very narrow ecological niche. Christianity and Islam (and most likely Buddhism) are much more successful globally.
>>1167139
>I think this is a problem in your theory of religions as a virus, in that it is bred from a Judeo-Christian view wherein there is a sharp distinction between religions. My research -admittedly limited- has been primarily on East Asian schools of thought, which often times sees concurrent religious beliefs being adopted, or religions seeking synthesis with other ideas and models. It is not a "winner-take-all" scenario. Judeo-Christian traditions have developed a strict monotheistic view to this, whereas you can see overlap in practice in other religions. For instance, one can be a practicing Buddhist and still practice a Taoist system of geomancy.
That is exactly the major reason of much greater overall success of Judeo-Christian religions - they are actively intolerant of competition and try to subvert and destroy it. It's a very evolutionary successful strategy.
>>1167174
>Judeo-Christian
Correction: not Judeo-Christian, but Christianity and Islam only.
>>1167167
Going back to the evolutionary metaphors. Would you say that rabbits are more successful than lions? If you were to judge success by shear numbers than insects and bacteria would be the most successful animals. In general more powerful species such as lions tend to have smaller populations since only a few things can be at the top. In this regard I would say Christianity and Judaism fulfill common roles and reproduce quickly like the rabbits. Christianity is a good religion for the poor, Islam is a good religion for marauders.
Continuing with the metaphors the equivalent of the lions would be a religion that is good for a very small, powerful group of people. Something like Enlightenment age's Free Masonry which had all manner of influential people (or the modern day Illuminati that control 80% of the world's finances and have Atalantian technology).
So the basic lesson is when an ideology has a higher population it means that it is more fit for a larger pool of people. Judaism is a niche ideology for a niche population pool. It is not so much about "what is the best religion" but "what is the best religion for a specific group".
>>1167174
But even then there is a process of indigenization. The religion won't be the same in, say, England as it will be in Canton. It's not a single entity, but a variety of different actors participating on both a national and local level for various ends.
>>1167190
Well, of course there are regional differences, but all the variants belong to the same family, similar to biological hierarchy of family-genus-species. In case of Catholicism the hierarchy is even more obvious, with the pope as the supreme authority.
>>1167189
Are you a Jew? You seem to really like the idea of Judaism being some elite religion representing "quality" as opposed to Christianity and Islam representing "quantity"?
All the successful Jews are mostly only Ashkenazi, which is usually explained by the unique selective pressures they faced in medieval Europe more than by religion itself.
>What do you think of the idea of religion as a memetic virus?
Pretty accurate. Religion in essence is, or at least contains, heuristics that promote risk averse behavior, which is very useful in a chaotic world with a lot of unknown risk. This is also the reason why religion is still around to this day. Much of it may not seem very rational, but as far as utility goes, religion is pretty successful
>>1167208
>heuristics that promote risk averse behavior,
WHAT? All the various martyrs and missonaries were risk averse?
If we are to distill the central point of all successfull religion it would be anti-hedonism and training to delay gratification. Basically, it trains us to do better on this test:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment
>>1167196
How do you account for its synchronization by other religious frameworks? Or its seeming
"defeat" by other forms of worship in areas once thought of as strongholds as seen in, for instance, the international growth of the Soka Gakkai movement?
>>1167223
With the globalisation and modern communication, memetic evolution accelerates to such levels that we can notice changes within our lifetimes. Evolution never stops.
>>1167204
>All the successful Jews are mostly only Ashkenazi, which is usually explained by the unique selective pressures they faced in medieval Europe more than by religion itself
It's generally accepted that about 150 people or so were the original seeders that made the Ashknazi genes. Now think about this? Would happen if all of those people gave up their religion? They would probably marry non-Jews (seeing as how non-Jews were a much bigger part of the population, and if they converted to Christianity they would almost certainly not marry another Jew). That special set of genes would be diluted and lost.
Your value system (ideology) has a real effect on the material world, memes influence genes.
>You seem to really like the idea of Judaism being some elite religion representing "quality" as opposed to Christianity and Islam representing "quantity"?
There are two ideologies I really like: elitism and ethnocentrism. Guess which religion I am going to conclude is the top tier?
>Are you a Jew?
No, I see religions as something to learn from, you figure out what's good in them and take it.
>>1167250
>modern day Illuminati that control 80% of the world's finances and have Atalantian technology
Is it a joke? Please don't bring /x/ to this thread.
