The Selfish Gene By Richard Dawkins Summary

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Within the depths of Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, the author discusses the existence, or at least the idea of God, as a meme, important enough to last for thousands of years and spread across three separate religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Over the course of time, religions and supernatural deities have often come hand-in-hand, a sort of universal meme. In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins defines the meme as “a noun that conveys the ida of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation,” (Dawkins 249).One prominent example of a meme is that of God. But, the question remains--why is God such a popular concept? How does it benefit society? Why does it still survive today? Although the origins of why the idea of God …show more content…
In Dawkins’s work, the author does note that the concept allows for “superficially deep answers to deep and troubling questions about existence,” (Dawkins 2016). Thus, part of the survivability of the idea may be rooted in the concept’s ability to assuage, even momentarily, the question of ‘why people are here’. However, the concept may also have greater uses, enabling the social cohesion and cooperation in large groups, as suggested in a 2010 book by Shariff, Norenzayan, and Henrich (2010). Although the idea of God is not one that is genetically passed down, the use of higher beings and spirituality as a means to improve cooperation and cohesion may have been useful for developing …show more content…
While the ideas take many forms, one popular meme is the concept of God itself. Although the concept does lend to answering questions about existence, can promote cooperative behavior in larger social groups, and may have a biological base, there are also drawbacks to the idea as well. Often, the idea of God is used to perpetuate and promote stigma against marginalized groups, often utilizing arguments rooted in the ‘natural order of things’ to argue why sexualities other than straight are abhorrent, and plays into misogny and other issues of gender that remain social issues as well. Thus, while the concept of God plays a vital role in society and across cultures and religions today, the ultimate answer of whether or not the concept is good is far more nuanced than a simple ‘yes’ or

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