One Has to See it, to Believe it

As Dawkins has been explaining through out the book, DNA are the replicators that create every living thing in earth. As they develop mutations, they start making mistakes leading to evolution. The same happens with the culture, that each time some aspects of it start changing. “Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution.” (Pg.189) This time he calls the new mistakes memes, which is a replicator of human culture. Some examples of this is the fashion, art, technology, etc. Instead of genes jumping from body to body, memes leap from brain to brain. Dawkins example of imitation is when a scientist hears or discovers a new idea and decides to pass this new information to teachers and students and eventually it will start to spread out.

He expands this explanation with the topic of religion: “God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or ineffective power, in the environment provided by human culture.” (Pg.193) I do agree with this idea because there is no scientific prove that God existed and why should we believe on the Old Testament? Still we grew up in a space were they have taught us about faith and therefore believing in God. It has given us hope in life. As some people are radical and need to see it to believe it, others prefer to believe in what they want whether is true or not. It appears to me that Dawkins is attacking the religion and believing that it’s an idea that could be easily forgotten. But can it? Almost since the beginning of the first humans there has been a kind of God to believe in, how can someone make disappear this kind of faith? In tragic moments, where you have no one to lean on, it is always good to have faith on God.

Dawkins explains that us, humans, are the survival machines. Yet, we are supposed to die at some moment. Even though some persons might disappear from the world, that doesn’t mean that their memes will go with them. New ideas and cultures are meant to stay and this way start passing from generation to generation. After all, the new ideas and technologies are the ones that help us evolve and keep on developing new tools. What would the world by without the transmission of ideas?