Reactions
The idea that "God" and "Faith" are viruses of the mind has provoked some hostile criticism, including John Bowker's 1992–1993 Gresham College lectures, in which he suggests that Dawkins' "account of religious motivation ... is ... far removed from evidence and data" and that, even if the God-meme approach were valid, "it does not give rise to one set of consequences ... Out of the many behaviours it produces, why are we required to isolate only those that might be regarded as diseased?"
Alister McGrath, a Christian theologian, has also commented critically on Dawkins' analysis, suggesting that "memes have no place in serious scientific reflection", that there is strong evidence that such ideas are not spread by random processes, but by deliberate intentional actions, that "evolution" of ideas is more Lamarckian than Darwinian, and that there is no evidence (and certainly none in the article) that epidemiological models usefully explain the spread of religious ideas. McGrath also cites a metareview of 100 studies and argues that "If religion is reported as having a positive effect on human well-being by 79% of recent studies in the field, how can it conceivably be regarded as analogous to a virus?"
Read more about this topic: Viruses Of The Mind
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