Memes: Christian Message, Transmission, and Distortion
Okay. To start off, people do not usually look at me and think that I am one to be into meme culture. However, I have a had a soft spot for memes since all my siblings watch memes on their spare time. Somehow they have sucked me into the meme world. Now that I have been practically acquainted with the power of modern memes (how memes adjust a generation’s customary understanding of humor, how memes influences groups into accepting certain spheres of life as axioms), this thinking about memes brought me to a particularly odd philosophical subject: memetics. Now, I know this idea is controversial, so I do not fully subscribe to this epistemology of belief. And you heard me right, memetics philosophically is an epistemology of belief.
Let me explain what memetics is now before you are completely lost on what I am thinking about. Memetics is a philosophy of ideas, beliefs, and values where a culture transfers information as time continues. This cultural transfer of information is described in evolutionary models similar to the process of Darwinian natural selection. Basically, this means a message evolves over time due to cultural and sociological factors.
Now, you may be thinking, “Rellim, who even started this idea?” And I say to you it is none other than the highly esteemed and infamous biologist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins used this as an assertion for explaining religious beliefs in human societies, especially the power and influence of Christianity.
Dawkins postulated that just as species in biological evolution attempt to survive based on superior genetics and suitable phenotypes, the same model of survivability could explain religious phenomena in groups. Dawkins uses this model as an argument to prove the epistemological errancy of Christian belief described in his book “The Selfish Gene.” What I think Dawkins attempts to prove with his critique is whether or not the Christian narrative is a message for objective truth.
Furthermore, Dawkins postulates and argues that the Christian narrative of Jesus’ story and life is revolved around a phenomenal psychological manipulation of the masses. He attributes psychological tactics of manipulation such as irrational and unwarranted belief, condemnation, and coercion amongst the masses of those who are Christian. Now, I do believe Dawkins idea per se is very insightful and may prove socially and psychologically true amongst diverse religious groups (especially abnormal religious groups aka cults), but for him to attribute this phenomenological explanation to most of Christendom is an egregious error. Maybe this is why no serious religious scholar has critiqued him on this as of yet.
Picking Over the Bones of Something
There are many issues with this purely philosophical critique of Christianity. Mainly, it ignores the mode of how the Christian message has spread. Yes, the Christian meme was originally propagated in the mode of oral tradition, and yes it may be plausible that oral tradition per se is capable of making errors.
However, if oral tradition is the mode of a message being transferred, and the information is simple, then it would logically follow that this information could not be easily convoluted or distorted. For example, in the Gospel of John, there are multiple affirming occasions where it is recorded that Jesus himself teaches on the simplicity of the good news that he brings. First it is prominently recorded in John ch. 3. In this chapter, Jesus explains on how to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus explicitly attributes the kingdom of God in this chapter and other portions of the synoptics (cf. Mt. 13:47; 22:2–14; Mk. 12:28–34; Lk. 9:23–27; 18:15–17) as the salvific experience that Christianity entails. How has this message changed, Dr. Dawkins?
If you look at verses 14 through 15 of John 3, you will observe that Jesus is recorded stating that he gives eternal life to those who believe (or trust) in him. Then the author further elaborates in verse 16 that Jesus is the salvation of the world. In verses 17 through 19 we have a Johannine refutation of the philosophy that the Christian message would be expanded through psychological manipulation. John says that Jesus came not to judge the world (viz. condemnation) but to save the world (viz. redemption).
The simplicity of the good news about Jesus (which I presuppose is the main and central Christian message) is not to condemn people to hell as Dawkins would argue, but it is to transform people to a heavenly life in Jesus (Second, Jesus even affirms this point in his dialogue with his disciples about having relationship with God cf. John 14:1–7). This seems to be obvious to those merely looking at the biblical evidence I provided, but for interlocutors like Dawkins, this juxtaposition is overlooked when considering the source material that supports this ancient Christian message. Even taking a balanced survey of Early Church History will falsify the notion that the Christian message has originally or eventually devolved into a system of evangelism via psychological manipulation.
How To Be Properly Informed on the Christian Message
Not only should you exegete the original source material of the Christian message, but exegeting the Early Church Fathers of the Ante-Nicene Period will give us Westerners a fair understanding of the Christian message. Conducting a survey on Early Christian Church History would explain how this has been informationally preserved for generations after the lives of Jesus’ foremost disciples. This task, I am afraid, would be too large to even fit on my blog space unfortunately. Although, I would be happy to recommend a few collective works that have copied these writings of Church Fathers during Early Christian History.
To start your journey on surveying the Christian heritage of its main beliefs about Jesus, I would highly recommend Philip Schaff’s Series on the Ante-Nicene Fathers. You can buy the first three volumes for around $60 on Amazon. These volumes cover the first several writings of Christian leaders in several centuries since the start of Jesus’ ministry and his apostles’ legacy.
