memes and beliefs

hello,

in daniel dennett's book on the causes and effects of religion there are quite some interesting insights that memes may have on groups. This is a bit related to the idea of functionalism, i.e. seeing a society of people in the form of an organism as was introduced by French antropologist and sociologist Emile Durkheim. And like in complex living organisms, different organs have different functions. It seems as well that religion has a certain function in societies, maybe with the main function of leveraging collaboration between people. Relgion as such is a collection of memes with having the most important meme of the god concept. Without god, there would be no religion. Dennett makes the point, a religion without god, is like going to a football games where there is no ball. Of course, the idea that god is the cause behind good and bad is very questionable. Like in the joke "First, I was praying to god to get a new bicycle, and nothing happened. Thus, I stole a bike, and now I am praying to god for forgiveness..."

Another point mentioned in the book "breaking the spell" are some good points on evolution of memes, i.e. ideas that replicate themselves in forms of tournaments. It is nicely explained on how memes take control of our brains, and that in principle we are helpless transmitters. In principle, because one important meme idea itself is to strive for the good things in life, and trying to avoid bad memes. As such, you also can see culture as a very interesting form of software, which need to get service packs once in a while to remove bugs.

Nest building meme

Hm... interesting to see that wikipedia almost has no information on bird courtship, especially with respect to male nest building to impress female birds. Two links:

http://www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Birds/courtship-nests.html

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troglodytidae