Memes & Christianity

Every Sunday morning I am GRATEFUL that I no longer attend church. I am GRATEFUL that I am freed of that guilt. I NEVER wanted to go to church, NEVER, but my parents and other relatives put intense pressure on me to conform. If I went to church, they inferred that this would make me a GOOD person, and if I didn't, then I would become a BAD person. They used guilt and intimidation. My favorite line from mother: "I'm grieving for you and your family." If someone wants to grieve for me, I'd rather they re-focus their grieving to all the AIDS patients. Funny how God has never healed one single AIDS patient. Oh, right, that's because AIDS is the disease of sin.

The point here is to show the power of a MEME. A meme is any information that is transferred from one human to another. In humans, a small amount of information is passed on genetically, but the vast majority of everything we know comes from memes. A classic example of a meme is fire. Even before humans could talk they were showing one another how to start fires, and everyone thought that was a great idea — it can warm you up and cook your food. So, the fire meme hung around.

And after fire was invented, humans were enjoying the warmth, hot meals, and, behold, they even had light to see at night! This gave our ancestors time to, you guessed it, come up with more memes. During those nights around the fire, people began wondering how they came to exist, and what made night and day, and what happened after death. So, people developed stories to explain stuff, and after many generations these memes became accepted as fact, even though they were just cavemen campfire stories.

From Fire to Pyramids

The Egyptians expanded on the caveman story to create this complex religion that was used to provide order and continuity in their society. It worked so well that Ancient Egypt existed virtually unchanged for millenniums! During this time, basic concepts like heaven, hell, good, bad, etc.. were set in granite.

Hebrews lived near the Egyptians, so a lot of this ideology rubbed off on them, plus they were influenced by many other cultures and empires in the Middle East. But, they pretty much just ripped their religion from the Egyptians.

Meanwhile, in Ancient Greece, the inhabitants mastered farming and they had so much free time on their hands that they began to ponder the Universe. They brought intellectualism and philosophy to a whole new level.

When Greek intellectualism began mixing with the Hebrew and Egyptian religious concepts, an even more, complex religion evolved.

Then came the Romans. Having tried everything else, in the third century the Romans officially adopted Christianity to unify their crumbling empire. The idea worked so well that the Roman Empire still exists today. Except, now instead of calling their leader the emperor, they call him the pope.

Now, advance the clock two thousand years, and here I am, laying in bed on a rainy Sunday morning, and defying the Christianity meme. A lot of people believe this meme is hard fact, and if I don't follow it I'll go to Hell (or the "Netherworld" if you are an ancient Egyptian).

Memes are not a bad thing by any means, since they often contain good information. But sometimes memes transfer false information, and because they are a meme, well, it HAS TO BE TRUE.

People will go to great extremes to justify and validate their meme, because their meme is TRUTH and it's all they know.

Christianity did not suddenly begin with the mythological birth of a god-man in a manger. Rather, Christianity is a continuum of ideas that slowly evolved over time. These ideas were borrowed from other cultures, refined, and then reguritated as a meme variant.

Christianity is not a bad thing because it is simply a compilation of thousands of years of human ideological evolvement. There are a lot of lessons and wisdom to be found in the Holy Bible. But the important thing to remember is that Christianity — and ALL religions — are simply a modified caveman story, and nothing more. It's important for everyone to keep that in perspective, and not take their religions too seriously.

And the Point Is ....

Christianity is one example of how a meme can grow, become "truth," and assume a life of its own. The important thing is that while a meme can provide useful knowledge, every meme must be constantly questioned and challenged. When a meme can turn unproven stories into "fact," then humanity has a huge problem.

Recommend reading: Christ In Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection by D.M. Murdock

From Wikipedia:

Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (in a manner similar to that of biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Theorists point out that memes which replicate the most effectively spread best, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.

"Christianity is a caveman campfire story that was embellished by the Egyptians, stolen by the Hebrews, intellectualized by the Greeks, and used by the Romans to unify their empire."

— The Goose