Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id VAA14764 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 2 Jun 2000 21:13:02 +0100 Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20000602144702.02359470@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 15:09:56 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: Re: Cui Bono Chuck? In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.21.0006021258510.29909-100000@frost.umd.edu> References: <4.3.1.0.20000602094735.022ed340@popmail.mcs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 01:00 PM 6/2/00 -0400, Lawrence H. de Bivort wrote:
>Aaron, if I may crudely summarize: are you saying that Christians in Roman
>times simply out-populated non-Christians, rather than increase their
>numbers through conversion?
Lawrence,
No, I am saying that both parent to child transmission and peer to peer
transmission (as well as ideological and physical preservation effects)
account for Christians coming to out-number non-Christians. My book
discusses a variety of both peer to peer and parent to child mechanisms,
along with faith-preservation mechanisms and survival mechanisms. Stark,
whose book came out the same year mine did, was actually finding ancient
evidence that happens to back my evolutionary hypotheses of both peer to
peer and parent to child transmission playing important roles. Stark
documents how Christianity rose in prevalence without looking at it as a
form of natural selection.
Many would label parent to child propagation as "natural increase," but I
find no more reason to call this "natural" than to call peer to peer
persuasion "natural." Mathematically, parent to child is treated in the
first two terms of my differential equations, while peer to peer is treated
in the third and fourth terms of my differential equations. Those terms
take different forms, but do not imply any special status as "natural" for
parental transmission.
--Aaron Lynch
PS, What is the Evolutionary Services Institute? It sounds interesting.
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