Introduction: The Selfish Meme

Richard Dawkins, Professor of Biology at Oxford University, is the best-selling author of many scientific books, such as "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker". Dawkins discovered that in addition to the original biological evolution, there is a new process nowadays, and that is the evolution of ideas. According to him, ideas replicate themselves in our minds, like the genes replicate themselves inside our body. He calls the ideas Memes (Meme). This is an abbreviation of the word Memory, and the term Meme was chosen also because it sounds similar to "Gene". Dawkins claims that there is resemblance between cultural transmission and genetic replication. The human ideas spread themselves from brain to brain. Dawkins stresses that the new process (the natural selection process of the "Memes") is very fast relatively to the original genes evolution. We constantly invent many new ideas, and when they are accepted, they quickly push aside previous ideas. Dawkins notes that the fact that ancient Memes survived unchanged for thousands of years until today is an evidence that these ideas have "high survival value". This expression originated from the science of genetics, and its original meaning is: the higher is the importance of the gene, the smaller is the chance that a new mutation will occur in it. Dawkins asserts that this genetic rule is valid also in the new case of the Memetic evolution. Is it possible that the high survival value of the (mythical) ideas appearing in the Bible is derived from their ability to multiply threefold the (natural) reproduction rate of their carriers (us)?

The first part, "The price of faith", is about mortal diseases, caused by believes we conceive as biological facts. These beliefs are causing our body a continuous damage, often developing into a chronic illness and mistakenly conceived as a sort of "natural physical deterioration". The reason for this unfortunate phenomenon: our ideas are based on myths and are coded using the abstract language. Sometimes it is very difficult to find the differences between cultural beliefs and the truth.

In the following chapters we shall reveal together a small part of this surprising issue of internal diseases caused by faith, and discover the clear influence of the "Memes" (cultural codes) upon the health of the gene carriers (human beings). Read More...