C. Conclusion.
So why are there so many believers in God and His Heaven? Why are there so may Christians, so many believers who take the bet? The answer is that the sub-meme "God is beyond question'' returns to play. People have an ordinary way of thinking of Heaven as not being bothered by all the terrible things which now plague them. In Heaven, there is no pain, war, suffering, horror, theft, sore throats, and so on. These are real experiences that are truly felt and known. But, because God and His works are beyond question, not much can be said positively about Heaven save an affirmation that it is infinitely good (which I have already shown to be a highly doubtful conceptual item). However, if Heaven is the ABSENCE of all the bad things that happen, THAT is an understandable and tangible negatively described good which talks to the average crunched Joe. Hence, the sub-memes play on real evils to make an inconceivable good desirable, and they do it well enough so that the good becomes immanently desirable and beyond question. The sub-memes reframe Heaven to be so not like anything in this world (with all its pains and torments), that it must be a great good. The above theoretical arguments against the conceivability of Heaven or the nature of personal identity over an extended period of time or the consideration that consistent beliefs are ultimately the foremost good "slip to the back of the mind," as it were, and are replaced by the immediate desired goods of being free from worldly trials and tribulations. Being consistent doesn't have the immediate desirability that being without psychological or physical pain does.
Back to the $64 question. If reason is a meme, can it compete effectively with the meme religion? I think for the most part, in certain scientific areas, yes. However, in social areas, given the above discussion, maybe not as much as we would think. The Catholic Church has just recently endorsed Darwin's position, although Southern Baptists have not. In fact, many religions have not done so. What it boils down to is a matter of commodious living. If religion provides the means for such, then it will triumph over reason in the form of consistency.
A sub-meme, so far unexamined, now enters as Pascal's ace of trumps. It is that if one believes in God, "One can never be alone and unloved," even if he does wrong actions or turns away from God. Given the psychological trauma of being alone and unloved, the belief that there is a Person who truly cares about you is one with so much emotional magnetism that it is hard to imagine someone's not choosing God. Who in the world wants to be alone and unloved, especially when the chips are down? Christianity provides an important emotional factor; one can never be alone and unloved. If a person had to choose between a life of strict reason and one of being never alone and unloved, I think the matter is moot. Almost everyone would choose the latter. So much for the philosophers' "love of reason."
Reason and religion have something in common, which is that they both rely on some kind of abductive process or faith. If abduction and faith allow a mind to "jump'' to the best explanation, then religion and reason have somewhat of a common basis. The radical differences come in with the sub-memes, especially those which appeal to other criteria for believability than consistency. What makes religion interesting is that the sub-memes which have a basis in an appeal to ignorance and remaining in a state of ignorance look to be dangerous on a prima facie basis. That does not mean that they are dangerous to the group of believers in which they operate, but only to certain individuals within or external to the group who do not support the basic tenets of the religion. In fact, the overall moral structure of the world may depend upon the religious sub-memes working; that is, it may be that reason is not a meme that is transferable to too many minds, whereas religion is. And if the general welfare of the world is at stake, memes which support a basic order are more valuable than those which do not have that ability. Those memes and their hosts will survive longer. When humans or "rational animals" become more rational, maybe reason as a meme will come into dominance. Until then, it is survival of the fittest: if we are to live the best life possible, then we must do it with God and His sub-memes.
References:
Daniel Dennet, Consciousness Explained.
Robert Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Jeff Jordan, Gambling on God
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