Faith is Just a Meme
• Happy Skepticism
Part of Dennett’s response to a a criticism of Breaking the Spell:
The main importance of the concept of memes is precisely to get away from the otherwise extremely attractive position [Alister]McGrath mentioned — that if religions have survived and are so dominant in human life, it must be because they aid our survival. Maybe, maybe not. They may aid our survival, or they may survive as unshakable habits. If you resist that hypothesis at the outset, you’re not doing objective science. The way to find an objective standpoint from which to investigate the hypotheses is to acknowledge that cultural items can spread whether or not they’re good for us — graffiti, pornography, all sorts of dubious fashions. You don’t have to suppose that they’re good for us to look at them with an evolutionist’s eye. Maybe some of the memes of religion are really good for us. That is an open question we can explore scientifically.