Is Christian belief more or less a product of Darwinian survival than atheism?

Question

Is atheism above the blind machinations of natural selection? If so, how? If not, why not?

Answer 1

All sets of ideas follow the standard form of evolution. Christianity is a memeplex -- that is, it is construct of multiple memes (the simplest components of thought -- a single idea, as it were). A few of these memes mutated (ie: someone interpreted a thought slightly differently) and you now have over 30,000 Christian denominatons in the USA alone.

Atheism, however, is not a memeplex. It does not have a hook meme, a reward meme, nor a punishment meme (our god loves you, he will give you heaven, but don't believe and he sends you to hell!). It is in fact an memetic-immunoresponse. Of course, in order to do this, it must itself be a meme -- but that's the interesting thing, and it's proof that atheism is not a religion. It is ONLY a single meme, not a memeplex. The singular meme of atheism is immunological and can be summarized as "There is no deific force."

The interesting thing with Atheism is that it is far, FAR more stable than any potential or existing memeplex because it is inherantly stable and fundamentally simple (it is, after all, one meme, not a memetic complex [memeplex]). In order to defeat the meme, you must completely remove it, not just mutate it slightly and then absorb it.

In short, no... all human thought is subject to evolution via memetic evolution -- which has roots in darwinian hypotheses, but does not exactly follow those hypotheses.

Answer 2

Are you postulating that a belief in the Christian myth is a necessary element to Darwinian survival of the fittest? How can that make physical let alone evolutionary sense given the discrepancy between one stating the earth's age in the billions while the other believes the thousands?

Natural selection impacts all life on this planet and is subject to environmental forces. It has absolutely nothing to do with religious philosophy.

Answer 3

"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a phantasy" (*Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, 1887, Vol. 2, p. 229).


“As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of being, as we see them, well-defined species?”—*Charles Darwin, quoted in H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation (1866), p. 139.

Answer 4

Being that Christ has been alive for all eternity and Darwin lived from 1809-1882, I would have to say no.