From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Thu 26 Dec 2002 - 03:51:35 GMT
At 02:22 PM 24/12/02 -0500, you wrote:
>At 07:51 AM 12/24/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>
>
>>A CONVERSATION WITH | DAVID SLOAN WILSON
>>
>>
>>
>>The Origin of Religions, From a Distinctly Darwinian View
>>
>>
>>
>
>I'm in agreement with Wilson on religion. Although I'm an atheist, I'm a
>'nice atheist' and don't regard religion as parasitic. I'll have to take a
>look at this book.
I have been thinking about this a *long* time. While I think "religions"
are helpful symbiotes, they evolved from dangerous, sometimes fatal cults
which *are* memetic parasites. (Typically takes about 300 years.)
The evolution of parasites into symbiotes is a common story in evolution so
this is not a surprise.
Keith Henson
>By way of connection, Wilson wrote a highly critical review of 'The Meme
>Machine' that appeared in Science in July of 1999. Lee Alan Dugatkin,
>whose 'Imitation Factor' concerning cultural inheritance in animals
>received some attention on this list last year, earned his PhD studying
>under Wilson. From what I can gather, Dr. Wilson is well regarded within
>the field of evolutionary biology.
>
>Ray Recchia
>=============================================================== This was
>distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics
>- Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about
>the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see:
>http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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