A Note to Fellow Atheists

Atheists are killing evolutionary (and memetic) theory. 
If we want to set ourselves apart from religions, we have to stop practicing the out-group derision, attraction-based recruitment, lack of self-criticism and leader-worship we've inherited from them.  Maybe we need some ego-stroking to counterbalance public and private ridicule we've faced.  At some point, however, it becomes counterproductive.


Religions are intricate memeplexes which interface with personal identity and action (what Blackmore terms the "selfplex").  So it is not as simple as Richard Dawkins recently claimed in a tweet on November 1,
        "It's possible to offend or insult a person, or hurt a person's feelings. 
         But you can't offend a belief. Beliefs have no feelings to hurt." 


Beliefs interfaced with a brain can respond defensively, throwing the host into intellectual and emotional turmoil.  Of course the host will respond negatively to the other person, identifying them as the cause of their pain.  That is what our brains do...they look for human action and intention.


If you want to reach someone & not just preach to the choir or "save the few who will listen", you have to reach out effectively, with consideration for the person and their ability to think critically.  Don't berate and don't infantilize.  Understand how thought processes, due to memeplexes, evolve over time.  Education doesn't happen overnight.


If we let our frustrations get the best of us, we'll sink evolution and memetics.  Frustration is good:  it shows when we're hitting heads against a brick wall.  Find ways to dig deeper if you truly want to get through. 


Most importantly, don't alienate allies. Don't tie science, evolutionary theory or memetic theory exclusively to atheism.  Even the most hard-set, true believers can learn the scientific method and begin to apply it to parts of the world which they feel comfortable with.  Let them dig deep into the history of religion.  Let them study evolution to discover flaws which they can discuss with you.  Don't alienate them from the scientific discourse.


Educate, don't be a "frustrated hammer".  Value intellectual growth.


Let's not approach this as saving the few that we can.  I'm not for converting everyone to my point of view, either in an instant or a lifetime.  I value diversity of viewpoints.  I'm for the collective improvement of our human lot. I'm not ok with sacrificing the few or the many to get to a better future.  I'm delighted if a believer looks deeply into memetics, picks up the torch and runs with it.  I won't turn them away.  I assume atheists will make the most headway in memetics, but that's just an assumption. I look forward to someone proving it wrong.  I think most atheists are too protective to evaluate the scientific process in light of meme theory, and perhaps believers could have valuable insights there.  We all have something to contribute to the conversation.  Deny no one a seat at the table.

Why Richard Dawkins is Unatractive in the USA

When Americans, especially believing Americans, hear Richard Dawkins speak, they perceive it through the filter of the American experience.  Our experience is a collection of political myths, small historic facts and unarticulated insecurities over economic structures.  When we hear "evolution" we think "survival of the fittest" and we think:  "I know that all too well".  It's a jungle out there.


We've been placed in competition with other workers since before the spinsters strike in Lowell, MA.  Social Darwinism was debunked in academic circles long ago but no one has informed the economic systems of this.  So when we hear "evolution" we think of brutish, harsh resource restrictions, not the intricate emergence of stellar systems, geography, life and culture.  We think "competition" not "cooperation" nor "interdependency".


Science fascinates and frightens us.  It has dubious ties with political funding of arms races, industrial health care, and elite power.  It's something we are taught to believe in, not something we are taught to practice.  Because we are fed the mythic history, because we are discouraged from criticizing the economic system, we often place blame on Science.  It seems cold, mechanical, calculating.  The human element is left out.  We deal with the complexities of religious organizations because they seem to humanize the markets and help us believe that something better is possible.  It might be an illusion, it might be short-term rewards with long-term costs, but we are humans who don't always see the long-term picture.


We embrace normative conformity and admire or privately dismiss those who accept religious ideology more than we do.  But we also are cautious of anyone who openly bucks the system.  We worry about falling into a lower circle of hell in this existence.


So we trust our own experience over religion and science.  We are skeptical of any new person claiming authority.  We want to learn but we don't want someone to point out how little we know as we grovel for crumbs of knowledge.


If science wants to make headway in the USA, it will have to learn from the mistakes of Religion.  And Science must accept the good lessons from the Religious Era too.  Be an ally of the poor, the weak, the disenfranchised, not just in word but in deed.  Reach out and improve this existence, person to person, make the human connection and empower others.

Most importantly, be truthful about the advance of Science:

Darwin is not a saint:  He sat on the shoulders of scientists who came before him and he had his bias.  His studies in a tropical environment shaped his focus on competition.  Russian evolutionary theorists who succeeded Darwin studied the Siberian tundra and saw cooperation and interdependency as the main drive of evolution, not competition.  Let's value that contribution & insight. 


Science and the Theory of Evolution are not cold and calculating.  They aren't the ally of the strong against the weak.  They show how our desires to work together, to be considerate and to improve our collective circumstances are a natural drive, not some gift to brutes from the beyond. 


But when Dawkins speaks, we do not hear this.  We hear ridicule.  We hear shame and devaluation of the internal experience of transcendence.  We hear a British preacher saying "this is the new and only way" and we are a rebellious people.

Gravity, The Occult and Original Sin

Meme theory is playing a slightly different tune but with a familiar chorus.  The concept of "meme" was coined by an evolutionary biologist (Dawkins)  who cautiously subscribes (as any scientist thoroughly inculcated by "normal science" should) to the existing paradigm of mental health.  Why shouldn't he?  These ideas were formulated and tested using scientific methods.  It would be hubris for him, an evolutionary biologist, to go ransacking and questioning the presumable foundations of another scientific discipline. 


Dawkins takes the conservative route.  He looks at the existing framework of mental health, what he knows of human history and biology and he sees otherwise decent, healthy people behaving in arrogant, hateful and destructive ways.  He perceives this behavior is due to the beliefs they hold and their unwillingness to question them.  He theorizes there is a percentage of people who just aren't quite right in the head who have traditionally played the role of shaman and priest, leading the rest of humanity astray.  He places memes in the service of the existing mental health framework, when memetics should be rewriting the mental health paradigm. 


Without the framework of the new memetic paradigm we attribute odd and undesirable behaviors to a flaw in an individual's neurobiology. Memetics offers a second, primary cause: contagious ideas.


Dawkins inherited a very traditional meme.  In accepting the mainstream psychological paradigm (build from the de-mythologizing of a Western religious paradigm of human nature), Dawkins mirrors the beliefs of those who adamantly disagree with him. 

"Mental illness" is a re-working of "original sin", just as "gravity" was originally a reworking of "nature".  


"You have the wrong ideas.  Here are the right ideas, accept them from my authority.  Repent.  Seek help.  Acknowledge your failings and you can be treated, though never fully cured. "  Only without the resurrection of the dead, life everlasting and a hope of social justice, it's a rather bitter pill to swallow.  Believers don't see the hope of Science and Reason when they hear Dawkins speak: they hear something too familiar, too stripped bare to be comfortable with. 


The current mental health paradigm is not an elite conspiracy.  It's not an evil scheme to make psychologists and drug companies rich.  It's a naturally evolved outcome from the application of science to the individual mind in the petri dish of Western Civilization.  It's unpleasant but we can work through it.  We are in the crisis stage of an obsolete paradigm. 

The current Mental Health paradigm preserves the traditional explanation of human nature because there was (until now) no alternative to replace it with.  Normal Science doesn't throw paradigms out, it tries desperately to make them work until they shatter under pressure. 

It's time to embrace human nature in all that fascinates and troubles us; it's time to move forward.  'Meme' allows us to investigate cultural bits of the human experience and distinguish them from the human actors.  We stop talking about who coined and invented what idea (and what their mother must have done to cause it) and instead consider the movement and mutation of the ideas themselves. 

So as long as we don't have a means of measuring and testing memes, they remain "philosophical".  "Meme" is just a new word for "thought", "idea" or "word".  But without using the term "meme" we get caught in the current paradigm.  "Meme" is a thought tool on the cusp of becoming a theory.  And like every adolescent, it's development will be an awkward and fascinating journey.

An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Professor Dawkins,

You coined the term "meme" in 1976 to describe a second replicator impacting the biosphere.  You posited this second replicator but did not reinterpret sociology, psychology or linguistics to support the new theory.  As social science is not your professional focus, this was entirely sensible.  You left the endeavor for others. 

 

Skeptics criticized you for a perceived belief in non-material, un-provable agents influencing human behavior.  Religious leaders jumped at the chance to point out that you must have metaphysical beliefs after all.  This placed you in a rather thankless position.  It was prudent to take several reflective steps back and withhold comments on the subject.

You once said in an interview, 

"I used not to think this but I'm increasingly thinking that nothing but confusion arises from confounding genetic evolution with cultural evolution.  Unless you are very careful about what you are doing and don't talk as though they are different aspects of the same phenomenon.  Or if they are just different aspects of the same phenomenon, let's hear a good case for regarding them as such." ¹

 

In the following blog you will find such a case.  It is crucial to remember Meme Theory  is a paradigm shift.  The initial response to a scientific revolution (which can last for several generations) is skepticism.  The current paradigm is not simply ingrained in scientific literature; it is ingrained in our culture and in the English language.  We have a long road ahead.


Continue to The Second Replicator

 

1.  Shermer, Michael  The Skeptic's Chaplain Skeptic Magazine Vol. 13, No. 2, p. 45; 2007