Dictionary of Religious Terms

Preface: Richard Dawkins has proposed the idea that religions are a kind of mind virus. They infect groups of people with a set of ideas. As with biological viruses, they must either reproduce. This can be done horizontally by infection of people outside the family or vertically by infection of the children. If Dawkins' hypothesis is right, what are the mechanisms of the virus? This is a dictionary of terms or concepts used in religion where I will attempt to explore what is really going on in a religion if this hypothesis were correct.

Warning Note: This is NOT a dictionary for the religiously infected or the closed minded. It is for open minded folk who wish to explore a forbidden topic. If you find yourself upset and angry, then please do not write to me. Calm down, think (for yourself!), and be totally honest with yourself. At my discression I will put ALL email about this on the web INCLUDING your email address, so you can get all the lovely spam too.

• baptize: The dictionary definition of baptize is to "purify spiritually". This is quite odd. Why would one need to cleanse a newborn person? They are innocent (except that in the Noachian flood they got killed by God anyway, oh well, oops!). So the real reason for doing this to a baby - who doesn't know what is going on! - must be to baptize the PARENTS into the church with respect to that little one! In other words, it is a trap to keep the PARENTS bringing the child back to support the church (follow the money). (New as of 2004 Feb 10)
• communion: This is an odd one. One goes to the Christian church and they offer a little wine and a bit of bread. How pleasant! But these food items are said to represent the body and blood of the son of God! Horrors! Isn't that cannibalism? Yes, surely it is. But what is really going on here? Ingesting the body parts ... sounds like a means of infection by normal biological viruses! Would they be so blatant? It is a symbolic means of infection! At first glance, This is a weird hypothesis - although certainly less weird than the blatant symbolic cannibalism - because viruses were not understood when this habit began. But perhaps the thing that counts is the intellectual infection - "we are what we eat" so they say. So if someone eats these things, they absorb the idea that goes with it.
  See also cannibalism at Webster, communion at Webster. (New as of 2004 Feb 10)
• faith: This appears to be an unusually strong defense mechanism which the mind virus uses to prevent people from escaping its grip. The mechanism says to a person "if you stray too far, just believe anyway. For gosh's sake, DO NOT THINK for yourself!!" In my experience it is the last line of defense and it has a powerful grip on people. When they realize that their religious beliefs run against all that is known about the universe, that the beliefs are illogical and untennable, people suddenly zombify by dropping back to 'faith'. I have seen this happen repeatedly. If faith is strong, there is no cure for the lost person. It would probably be worthwhile exploring this mechanism in more detail because it is so powerful. Note that a religion that did not instill some form of faith in their infectees (!) would not survive, so this is completely consistent with the mind virus hypothesis.
  An example of what someone who has strong faith might say is: "What I was taught as a little kid must be right because my parents cannot be wrong. I insist that I am right and my parents are right. Besides, the earth is flat, millions of people can't be all wrong!" For such people the world is too scary if they are wrong.
• religious text: Religions have evolved to write down and codify their beliefs. This stabilizes the 'genetic code' of the virus. Religious people refuse to acknowledge that this material was selected by people. When the selection was done badly, that line of the mind virus would disappear.
• Truth: All statements created by the church, whether false or not are True. Whatever the church says is True must be so. This is a snare of the mind virus that can confuse people. If the church is always telling the Truth, then all the other mind virus mechanisms are protected because they are not to be questioned. Of course, once one becomes aware of this nasty situation, everything that a religious person says about religion becomes suspect and open to careful investigation.

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