Difficulties With Memetics

While I think the portrayal of how religions develop is a little simplistic, the advocacy for general religious education is right on. I agree that the obsession with some more fundamentalists idea that they should keep their children ignorant of other religions to keep beliefs pure is quite misguided.

I can’t help but think that over-reliance and an obsession with “fitness” and using “fitness” models for things is wrong-headed, as I think it could slip too easily into a false meta-narrative, an idea of inevitable progress. Recently at an archaeological conference Ian Hodder discussed re-terming evolution to operate on terms of “fitting-ness” rather than fitness. I’d like to second this.

The religion question is tough. I don’t much care for the “religion is a cultural virus” sort of Dawkins / meme approach. Don’t care much for memetics period, actually. The problem is with the term “religion,” and that it allows us to think of people with and without it. I prefer “cosmology.” Ben Kamphaus