Religion as a (benevolent) meme- virus

This. Every system is a thought virus you dip

Yes, everything can be thought of as memetic viruses, and viewed through an evolutionary perspective. You can even go planetary human neural net scale.

But about religion. Religious communes have been observed to have increased survival/fitness. Also, participating in religious rituals has proven substantial benefit ( think stress reduction etc. )

You are being a memetic version of a creationist here.

>think stress reduction
I was thinking taboos and ceremonies gives them extra weight, which keeps people from dying.
eg.
A chief eats a new insect from the river.
Chief gets ill soon after and eventually perishes.
New taboo for eating shellfish.
Society survives.

If we are to distill the central point of all successful religions' value systems it would be anti-hedonism and training to delay gratification. Basically, it trains us to do better on this test:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment

>If we are to distill the central point of all successful religions' value systems it would be anti-hedonism and training to delay gratification. Basically, it trains us to do better on this test:
There are some other components not necessarily covered by that but that is a component of most of them. Basically they set out a blueprint that allows a complex society of millions of people to coexist. This is no small feat, considering our size. Other mammals top out at groups of a few hundred.

Well, that's basically what I said in the OP. Our default "software" can not support societies of such size, you (meme virus) have to "patch in" ideas like monotheism that are "unnatural" to our species.

Well you don't necessarily need monotheism, but you definitely need to brainwash a large proportion of the population the same way.

What part of monotheism makes it better than other memetic viruses?

Well, of course big civilizations predate the idea of monotheism, but they already have organized religions that went beyond all the "default" beliefs you can see in hunter-gatherer tribes all over the world.

Probably the centralization of divine authority. It eliminates the idea of multiple truths or directions from competing gods of polytheistic pantheon and leaves only god and usually anti-god like Satan. It adds stability to the system.

OP wasn't calling it good or bad you SJWs, he was just saying that it arose to casue/follow the increase in the size of social groups and societies

Not exactly, memes are just trying to replicate, it's just that memes that happen to increase fitness and size of societies start to replicate much much better.

ITT: let's assume religion is the best society model method!

We don't assume we observe.
Religious cultures have always prevailed over non religious cultures and monotheistic religions have prevailed over polytheistic religions.

Thatbis simply a matter of survival of the fittest. Non religious groups, packs or whatever just never had the means to pull large amount of population together to create high civilizations.

Then, sociology?

Religious tribes have been able to conquer other religious groups.
Monotheistic religions are just another word of the variable religion: "Unique God"

Also, religion doesn't assure social benefit nor comfort, nor economic prosperity. It's just a derivation of a natural human tendency of believe and polemic mysticism.

Instead of being a good model, it's actually a good propaganda method for non-globalized countries.

The campaigns and wars which religious nations won were the main income of gold and culture. Now, it seems that religion is not that necessary as before.

>Now, it seems that religion is not that necessary as before.

And you base this off what? Societies that abolished religion all quickly vanished and were replaced by a different society.
A construct that keeps individuals of a society connected to their past and their future through shared traditions is what makes a society stable.

All this multi culti shit will be the downfall of western society, don't tell me you're honestly so naive that you think we'll prevail over Islam or chinese communism.
We have nothing that connects us as people. And that's thanks to westeners slowly abolishing their strongest asset against all other cultures.

>And you base this off what? Societies that abolished religion all quickly vanished and were replaced by a different society.
A construct that keeps individuals of a society connected to their past and their future through shared traditions is what makes a society stable.

Theoretically once society and civilization institutions are firmly established it may try to get away from religion in favor of certain secular ideologies. This have been happening in the developed world for quite a long time. The final outcome remains to be seen. Currently it seems like religious societies are "winning" demographically, but this is just a snapshot of current trends that may change in the future.

There is something deeply unknowable about the universe and our place within it, that science does not even attempt to address. Religious belief is an expression of that. It jumps to conclusions too readily, but that I think is its true origin.

>This have been happening in the developed world for quite a long time. The final outcome remains to be seen.
Sort of. Among intellectuals perhaps. But western society on the whole was still very religious not a century ago. Literally within living memory this has changed. That's quite a recent change if you ask me. And in that time our side of the world does seem to have regressed rather rapidly.

Religions are as necessary as viruses, they help natural selection ;)

I can only find advantage to the existence of HIV.

It keeps humanoid apes in check but I must say it does rather inefficiently.

I am still waiting for that HIV-Zika hybrid virus.

I like your theory but it sounds more Veeky Forums than Veeky Forums.

Rest assured, viruses are an integral part of human life like it is with all co-evolving parasites. Viruses need us and we need viruses. Viruses pretty much contributed to mammals with their syncytin that gave rise to "placenta" without which mammalian life wouldn't be possible.

Side note: The only reason why fetus develops correctly is because syncytin makes it possible to mooch off its mother's resources while fooling the mother's immune system making it impossible for natural killer cells to do their job and kill the fetus as the intruder it really is.

Yes all of those things are pretty bad, autist.

>Also, religion doesn't assure social benefit nor comfort, nor economic prosperity.
Not necessarily true. In the middle ages jews were able to outcompete other merchants because their religion had specific codes that allowed trust transactions between jews.

Just read Snow Crash for the first time?

A good example. Islam prohibits eating pig because humans and pigs are similar enough genetically to have shared diseases. And apparently pigs in the middle east got quite sick., or at least at some point in time some observant imam made the connection between people getting sick and eating sick pigs.

Makes a lot of sense, but 1000 years later, still adhering to it is obviously ridiculous.

Yeah but viruses in the body can do good shit. There's viral elements to the human microbiome. Bacteriphages can kill pathogenic bacteria, for example. (thought I doubt inside the human body as part of the microbiome) I'm not really getting your religion argument, but at least get your virology right, jeez

t. not a virologist but someone who finds it interesting

I recommend checking out Sapolsky's excellent Biology of Human Behaviour course. You can find the lectures on youtube, there's also one on religion specifically

And a follow up, do you know how much of the human genome of viral or bacterium material? It's like 2% or something. They're as big a part of us as we are.