Human beings have evolved as pattern-seeking animals. We perceive sequences of events and we see shapes and objects seemingly organized in particular ways, and we tend to want to find a reason for that often-apparent level of organization. We see random sequences around us, and we have devised mental mechanisms that allow us to see them organized in patterns. This mechanism helped our ancestors better cope with their natural surroundings and potential dangers such as a pair of menacing eyes staring from within the foliage, but did not equip them with the tools to discern when a pattern actually exists and when those patterns just seem to exist. Thus, we think we see faces on Mars, dogs and dragons in the night sky, or the image of the Virgin Mary on the glass windows of an office building reflecting a distorted image of a nearby tree.
The beliefs held by those people better adapted to stay alive until they had offspring were the beliefs that in turn survived. Since people like to tell and hear stories, they told them to other people around the fire and taught them to their offspring, who in turn told them to their own offspring. Some of those beliefs were instrumental in their survival. The collective set of practical ideas together with beliefs in the supernatural in these primitive societies in time turned into organized religions.
A religion is nothing more than a collective, self-perpetuating delusion. It is the sum of a large array of self-replicating ideas called memes. A meme, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary is "An element of a culture or a system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, especially imitation." To this definition we should add inculcation, as memes are transmitted and propagated by imitation as well as inculcation. A group of memes that "work together" towards a "common" goal, such as a religion, a constitution or a set of social norms such as the "rules" of courtship is called a memeplex. Memes are a form of thought contagion because they change our conventional understanding of human beings as capable of creating original ideas and/or acquiring them, to the notion that ideas acquire people. Because of the pernicious effects of religions, as well as their memetic makeup, they can be considered a virus of the mind.
In order for a meme to be successful it needs to replicate. Thus, a successful meme does not have to be good or useful; just like a gene, it just needs to be passed along to the next generation. Similarly, a meme is considered to be successful if and when it acquires a new mind. This can be achieved by "convincing" the host to propagate the meme because by doing so something nice is going to happen, whereas by not propagating the meme something terrible will happen.
Additionally, the meme can protect itself from critical thought and reason by claiming the superiority of faith over reason. It can ensure propagation by claiming to be of divine origin (and therefore be absolute truth), and by carrying the instructions to help people infected by the meme and attack those who do not. The two self-referential concepts "Propagate me" and "I am the only truth" are thus the driving forces that enable religious memes to infect new hosts. The mechanisms by which a meme replicates are therefore by ensuring it takes long-term residence in its host and by creating the conditions for it to spread.
A successful religious meme needs to use some or all of the following mechanisms in order to acquire a host:
1. Promise heaven in exchange for belief.
2. Threaten eternal punishment in hell for disbelief.
3. Position the believer as superior to those who believe in other, "false" memes ("the chosen people", "the true religion", etc.).
4. Create an immune response to contradicting memes by claiming that faith is superior to reason, thus disabling the faculties of disbelief.
5. Establish itself unequivocally as the "One True Meme". Some sort of "holy" book accomplishes this. The book contains a circular self-referential argument in which the book's authority comes from a higher source of universal truth that established that meme as the "One True Meme". Because the meme contains statements that the source of universal truth has approved that meme we can therefore conclude that what the meme says is true.
After a meme has acquired the mind of its host, it needs to propagate. It can achieve this by using some or all of the following strategies:
1. Convert or kill all unbelievers by means of a (holy) war.
2. Threaten and discriminate against unbelievers by intimidation and terrorism.
3. Enforce social isolation or even death to apostates. Since apostasy within the community of believers might encourage meme-resistance in others it is especially dangerous to the meme.
4. Encourage true believers to breed faster than believers in false memes.
5. Prevent rival memes from reaching potential hosts by curtailing freedom of thought, freedom of speech and by using censorship.
6. Spread lies about rival memes by use of disinformation. Lies are more likely to be believed the higher the level of disinformation is, the more other memes are demonized, and the bigger those lies are.
