- Oct 2022
-
Local file Local file
-
this course considers at the very end the question of the essence of thereligion: Through all this change, does anything remain constant?
Religion co-evolves with the people, places, and times in which it exists. Much like human genes, it works at the level of the individual, the local group, the larger groups and communities (of both the religion itself as well as the polities around it), and when applicable at the scale of all people on the planet.
The Selfish Religion: How far might we take this religion/gene analogy with respect to Richard Dawkins' thesis (1976). Does religion act more like a gene that is part of the particular person or is it more like a virus which inserts itself? The latter may be closer as one can pick and choose a religion rather than it being a core part of their genetic identity.
(highlight: anchor only)
Tags
Annotators
-
- Jan 2022
-
www.noemamag.com www.noemamag.com
-
The scientific consensus has shifted so much that Richard Dawkins, in the 30th-anniversary edition of “The Selfish Gene,” wrote that he could just as accurately have called his book “The Cooperative Gene.” Perhaps decades of our economic and political lives would have been much less harmful if he had.
I do like the more positive framing of "The Cooperative Gene."
-