A wolf. Not cute.
How can it be, the non-believer asks, that in spite of all the advances we've made in physics, philosophy, biology, and chemistry, that people still cling to religions that were formed thousands of years ago? Why is religion is so incredibly tenacious? God's existence is completely unprovable, and has no foundation in science or logic. So why is God's existence so passionately believed by so many people?
Since the whole affair had become one of religion, the vanquished were of course exterminated.
– Voltaire (1694-1778)
Can the International Red Cross save human lives by saving dogs? The answer to this question has surprising relevance to the question of the incredible tenacity of religion.
On Monday, October 22, 2007, my family and I awoke at dawn to the sound of a police bullhorn telling us to evacuate immediately. The Witch Creek wildfire was racing across San Diego County, and was almost at our doorstep. As quickly as we could, we gathered a few clothes, our three dogs and a cat, piled into our small Chevy RV, and drove toward the ocean, not knowing if we'd ever see our home again. We could see flames not a half mile away, and the sky was so dark with smoke that we had to turn on our headlights.
There were a few tragic deaths, including several heroic firefighters, but the mass evacuation of over 500,000 people was remarkably successful, and kept most people out of harm's way. I was among the fortunate – the firemen stopped the blaze just fifty meters from my house.
Now imagine you could replay that same scene: A frightening, wind-whipped wildfire approaching, police bullhorn blaring, smoke billowing across the neighborhood, a rush to pack our most precious things, but the dogs and cat have to stay behind. What would you do?
Emergency workers recently realized that many people think of their dogs and cats as full members of the family. Millions of Americans were heartsick at the sight of soggy, starving dogs on rooftops and tree branches in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. During the Witch Creek fire, one of my neighbors was despondent over a cat who ran out the door as they were evacuating, and had to be left behind. (The cat was later found safe.) When asked to abandon a pet, rescuers find that many people won't do it. They'll stay behind with their pets, risking injury and even death, rather than leave their beloved cats, dogs and horses to starve, drown or burn. By saving pets, emergency workers are able to save more human lives.
Man is a dog's idea of what God should be.
– Holbrook Jackson
We're accustomed to living with dogs and cats, and we feel a strong bond with our pets, so it's hard to "step back" and see just how odd it is from nature's point of view. It is highly unusual for an animal (human or otherwise) to risk its life to protect a member of a different species. But its not completely unknown, except that in any other species, we'd quickly call it by its proper name: Parasitism.
When someone says the word "parasite," most of us think of leeches, tapeworms, fleas, and other unpleasant creatures. But parasites come in many forms, and use a variety of tricks to take advantage of the "host" species. The plague bacteria known as the Black Death killed nearly one third of the population in Europe in the mid-fourteenth century because of a special trick: It first attacks what immunologists call your spleen's "innate" immune cells and destroys them, leaving your body without its most important immune system.
Larger parasites such as tapeworms have evolved mechanisms that suppress your gut's natural immune reaction. Your body wants to get rid of them, but can't, because the tapeworm exudes chemicals that tell your body, "It's OK, there's nothing here to worry about."
These creepy creatures fit our normal notion of a parasite. But far more interesting are the behavioral parasites. Rather than tricking the biochemistry or immune system of their host, they behave in a way that tricks the host. The nest-parasite cuckoo birds are probably the best known examples of this sort of parasitism: They lay their eggs in the nest of other bird species. The egg is colored or speckled so that the host birds can't tell it from their own. When the baby cuckoo hatches, the "parent" birds are fooled by its appearance and behavior, and nurture it as they would their own. Often, the cuckoo chick will even kill the other chicks by pushing them out of the nest.
This "behavioral parasitism" works because the baby cuckoo looks and behaves enough like the parents' own chicks that they are fooled. There is no leech-like bloodsucking, or black-death spleen damage, or tapeworm immune suppression. It all happens through visual and audio cues: The parent birds think they are raising their own babies.
All of the ills from which America suffers can be traced to the teaching of evolution.
– William Jennings Bryan.
How did our dogs become the behavioral parasites on the human species?
"Survival of the fittest" is a remarkably flexible concept. When we learn about evolution, we study things like big teeth, sharp claws, faster feet, longer fur, and better camouflage – all traits that are important in the wild. It's easy to see that the rabbit who escapes from the coyote is "fitter" and can pass its genes on to its little rabbits. But what about a pet rabbit that doesn't escape from a human, because it has beautiful white fur, floppy ears, and big, lovable eyes? Is that rabbit "more fit" than its brother rabbit with less snowy fur, smaller ears, and eyes that aren't quite as cute?
The answer is an emphatic Yes! Evolution doesn't care why a particular trait is more or less likely to lead to reproductive success. The word "nature" in "natural selection" seems to suggest that human activities don't count, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Any force that alters the survival of a gene is part of evolution.
My three dogs are the perfect example of this. When wolves took up residence with humans, our likes and dislikes started transforming the wild wolves into canis lupus familiarus, the familiar dog. In the wild, wolves have to catch their prey, survive bitter, cold winters, and compete with each other for mates. But once they hooked up with humans, the evolutionary forces changed dramatically. Humans provided most of the food, and built fires and houses to keep the dogs warm. The sharp teeth and warm winter coat were not as important as they used to be. But humans also introduced a new "fitness" criterion: Whether humans liked the dogs.
A wolf. Not cute.
Camping while evacuated from the Witch Creek Fire. Would you leave these three behind?
Take a look at the photos above. A wolf doesn't look cute, and even one that is raised as a pet never becomes very friendly. No amount of love or training can change a wolf into a lovable family pet. But Brisby, Skittles and Rocky are just about as lovable and cute as can be. Notice how they look childish compared to the wolf, especially their large, pretty eyes. And it's not just their looks; these three are an integral part of our family social life. They go on walks with us, watch TV with us, are fiercely protective when strangers knock, and know just how to give you "the look" when you're eating something they want. We don't just like our dogs, we love them.
These three small dogs together consume roughly a kilogram of quality food each day, high in protein and nutrients. The money I spend on these three cute parasites could easily support several families in impoverished countries.
Over the last 15,000 years, we humans have made this happen. We've done such an excellent job breeding for cute and friendly dogs that I'd trust my three dogs around a baby. Dogs that were friendlier, happier, cuter, and that fit into the human social hierarchy better, were more likely to be kept and nurtured by humans. Dogs that were dangerous, mean, ugly, or unfriendly were less fit, and were not as likely to be kept as pets.
It's easy for us to recognize parasitism in a cuckoo, because we're objective. But it's much harder for us to see that we are in a similar relationship with our pets. Dogs and cats appeal to our nurturing instincts – the instincts that tell us to feed and protect our own babies, and to seek out other humans as companions. Dogs and cats are behavioral parasites, acting as our surrogate children and family, satisfying our maternal/paternal instincts, just as the cuckoo chick makes its surrogate parents happy.
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology.
– Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
We started this chapter with the the non-believer's perplexing question: Why is religion so incredibly tenacious? Why is it still around, in spite of the advances of science, and the complete lack of any proof of God's existence?
Religion memes have been around for the 10,000 years of recorded human history, and certainly much longer than that, far back into prehistory. It is safe to say various forms of the religion virus have been around for at least 1,000 generations, and probably more like 10,000 generations or even more.
During those millennia, the many competing religion memeplexes have constantly changed and evolved. In each generation, thousands of variants (mutations) competed against one another for "space" in the ideosphere – our collective brains. For example, today we have Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Jews (just to mention the world's major religions), and within each one there are many, many sects. Christians have two major divisions, Eastern and Western, and just within the Western there are Catholics, Lutherans, Methodist, Baptists, Protestants, and hundreds more. Jews and Muslims have an equally diverse list of variants, as do Buddhists and Hindus. The lists go on and on. That's a lot of competition, and a lot of variation, among the various versions of the Religion Virus.
All through recorded history, the ideosphere has been full of thousands and thousands of competing god-memes and religion memeplexes. We've already discussed the early history of religion, how simplistic human-like gods gave way to more powerful (and fewer) gods, and how that changed to monotheism. At each step, each one of the religion memes was competing against all the others other for attention, for retelling, for believability, and for appeal. Each meme "wanted" to be the one meme passed on to the next generation of the human ideosphere.
As a result of this evolutionary process, the religion memeplex evolved into a behavioral parasite. It has evolved to please us, to fit into an important place in our society, and in our wishes, desires, hopes and fears.
Think back to the baby cuckoo bird, whose "parents" are happy because their instincts tell them they're raising a fine young bird. And think back to my dogs, highly evolved to look young and cute, and to fit into my family in the same role as one of my own children – to please me. The Religion Virus has done the same thing: It has evolved to give us satisfying answers to some of life's most perplexing mysteries, to make us happy. But unlike my dogs, the Religion Virus also has a darker side, in that it also works through our fears. It also scares us into believing it.
Nature, that is, evolution, has equipped us with hunger and sexual desire, to ensure that we feed ourselves and mate. It has equipped us with pain and fear, so that we will avoid injury and danger. It has equipped us with jealousy so that we keep others from our mates, with xenophobia so that we're wary of strangers, and with a deep love for our children so that we'll protect them until they grow up and have children of their own.
The Religion Virus has evolved to fit perfectly into our hopes, fears, hunger, lust, jealousy, xenophobia, and parental love, to hijack these instincts for its own survival. It gives us hope when there is none. It tells us that when bad things happen, there is a reason, and there is a reward that will come our way if keep our faith. It tells us that those who harm us will get their punishment, if not in this life, then in the next one. It tells us that death is not final, that it is merely the start of something even better. It tells us that our children are going to be punished with eternal damnation if we don't pass the virus to them. The list goes on and on, including the main memes we've studied so far, and a host of others. And the truth of these beliefs is irrelevant. "When you die, you're dead and gone," isn't nearly as attractive as, "When you die, you'll live on forever in eternal joy," regardless of which one is true. The Religion Virus today is made of the memes that we really, really want to believe.
Each Religion Virus today is the result of ten thousand generations of competition with other Religion Viruses, and only the best survived. Your parents taught you their religion because it was the most believable to them, and the religion your parents learned from your grandparents was the variant your grandparents found most believable, and so on back through history. The religion virus that infected you is the one that was the best at each generation, the most attractive, the survivor. At each point in history, it out-competed the other ideas, to be carried down to you. The survivors were the ideas that fit the very best into the human mind, that were the best at manipulating both our hopes, desires, dislikes and fears.
The Religion Virus is good at infecting your brain. It's damned good, because if it wasn't, some other memeplex would be the one you believed in.
Give me the boy, and I'll give you the man.
– Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
One particular aspect of the Religion Virus' evolution is so important that it deserves special attention: The need to teach religion to children, while they are still impressionable.
One story that illustrates this point is from a wartime letter by Arthur Evelyn Waugh regarding his close friend, Randolph Churchill (son of Sir Winston Churchill), when Churchill and Waugh were officers serving together in World War II. Churchill had somehow managed to become an adult without ever reading the Bible or being exposed in a serious way to Christian theology. He kept going on about it, until Waugh got exasperated. He wrote:
In the hope of keeping him quiet for a few hours Freddy & I have bet Randolph 20 [pounds sterling] that he cannot read the whole Bible in a fortnight. It would have been worth it at the price. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud 'I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible "bring down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave'" or merely slapping his side & chortling 'God, isn't God a sh**!'
– A. Evelyn Waugh, letter to Nancy Mitford, November of 1944
In our chapter about human language, we noted that for memes to be passed reliably from generation to generation, the human brain has to be open to absorbing vast quantities of knowledge and information during youth, and then as the human reaches adulthood, the brain must "solidify" its beliefs so that the information will be passed accurately to the next generation of children. Most of our deeply held beliefs and culturally acquired behaviors must therefore be taught to our children. By the time we're adults, it's too late.
The Religion Virus, like any other evolving entity, has adapted to fit its environment. As its evolution proceeded down through the millennia, religious memeplexes that didn't emphasize the religious education of children were far less likely to be stable, to resist mutation. On the other hand, religious memeplexes that included strong memes for teaching children were far more likely to survive and propagate.
This is readily seen in the fact that all of the major religions begin teaching children at a very young age. Children are taught their bedtime prayers almost as soon as they can talk. Houses of worship, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindi, all include special classrooms for toddlers, children, and teenagers. And just as significant, children of atheists are far more likely to be atheists, since they too were taught their atheistic beliefs starting from a young age, mostly by the lack of any training in religion.