Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” as a cultural analogue to genes. A meme is an idea that is capable of self-replication and mutation, and is therefore subject to evolutionary pressures. Memes spread between human hosts in the same way germs do. And like germs, some are good and some are bad. They all have their own unique strategies for survival. Some are useful pieces of advice and technology that you wish to share. Some are artistically compelling and demand your attention. Some are just funny.
That’s where the more well-known definition of “meme” comes from. Internet memes are self-replicating ideas. I sometimes see disagreements about what kind of content is a meme. Image macros only? Just something funny? Personally, I use the original definition and say everything that’s ever been posted on the internet is a meme, provided someone else saw it. As they spread, edits and remixes and combinations compete for the most attention. The successful organisms are those with the greatest fitness. It’s all very Darwinian.
Richard Dawkins’ other claim to fame is his militant atheism, and hatred for belief in the gods. But as I, and he, said, all ideas are memes. Belief in gods is a meme. Religions are made out of memes. Organisms made up of many memes (just as you are made of many genes) compete with each other and adapt as they spread through populations, trending towards more powerful, more attention-hogging and devotion-demanding memotypes. In other words, ideas-of-gods have agency.
History may blame a pope seeking to control the masses for ordering the crusades. But it was a meme that delivered the order to the people. That gave that power to that pope and permitted the order to be made. A living idea is directly responsible for ordering a hundred thousand men to a genocide. An idea of a god. I argue that a living creature which exists in our thoughtscape and commands such power to influence our daily lives is a god.
There is a theory popular in the parogenesis community that Deus is a parogen. Parogenesis is the technique of using meditation and directed attention to bring another consciousness into being within your brain. Deliberate practitioners of parogenesis, who call themselves “tulpamancers”, have argued that parogenesis is remarkably similar to the daily prayer practiced by millions of christians. It is inevitable, they say, that a parogen, or “created mind”, would come to exist in the head of a devout christian. That a voice would appear which personally answered their prayers. They argue that religious concepts are well explained by fringe psychology.
And tulpamancers are not the first to explore these ideas. A staple of chaos magick is the “egregore”, a divine being created from the invested will of a collective people. Chaos magick is a magickal tradition that emphasizes results, repeatability, and the scientific method. Chaos magicians believe that science is the proper way to understand magic. Reading about the traditions of 20th century chaos magicians with the knowledge of Dawkins’ discovery, it’s difficult not to draw parallels.
According to Dawkins, the ideas of gods that people worship are alive. According to tulpamancers, the gods are created by human attention and desire. According to chaos magicians, new gods can be created deliberately through collective application of attention and devotion. A definitive shape unifying all these theories emerges.
Deus, who I will continue to use as an example representative of all gods for our purposes today, is a guy. He doesn’t live in the material world, he lives in our minds. He is most present in the minds of his most devoted followers, but tendrils of his existence extend throughout all of us, and we all collectively bring him into being, believers or not. He has evolved and grown over the millennia, just as organic life has, across many incarnations that have often reproduced, diverged, split, and combined. Just like a living being. He has a will, born of the evolutionary pressures that shaped him into a creature capable of survival. He directly commands millions. His decisions shape our world, as surely as ours do, and while they are the result of natural processes, I doubt many atheists would argue with me when I say so are our decisions and minds.
The idea that gods are created by human will keeps cropping up. Not just among occultist and fringe scholars, but also among writers. It even has a tvtropes page. The reason people keep coming up with this idea again and again, is that it’s true.
Unless you are a soulist, I don’t expect you to immediately start believing the myths of all religions are literally true. It’s what I believe, but it’s not what this article is about. What we can prove with science, thanks to thinkers like Mr Dawkins, is that there is at least one powerful, living being at the head of each religion, who receives all those prayers. I call that a god. You may have a different word for it. But you’ve gotta admit, no matter your spiritual reference frame, it does exist.
