Objective Qualia
Member
This is my first real post here so I hope I'm putting this in the right place.When I heard the phrase "religion is a virus" it piqued my curiosity and drove me to do some reading on the history of religion (particularly Christianity as it was easier for me to understand) as well as the behavior of viruses, bacteria and other pathogens. Just a word of warning I'm going to use Mormons as an example often because they were one of the few religions with reliable census data around the time of their founding also there's a bit of math ahead.
First, religions need converts like pathogens need a host. Religions that are unable to gain enough converts to counter loss through deconversion or death eventually go extinct. For example look at the Shakers. The Shakers were one of a few religious groups that formed in eighteenth-century England which branched off of mainstream Protestantism. They banned sexual intercourse so Shakers could not have children, so adoption was a major source of new members. This continued until orphanages were established and the states began to limit adoption by religious groups. Without children to convert, the Shakers dwindled in number and now are almost extinct as they could not spread their faith faster than they lost members. This puts a selective pressure on religions in a similar way to pathogens. Those that are better at gaining and keeping converts are the ones that stick around.
Religions require gaining converts to survive just indoctrinating children of your family isn't enough. To calculate the rate at which a religion can spread without gaining converts we need to use the equation Nt = NoPt . No is the initial of believers, P is the number of progeny produced per individual per generation, t is in generations, and Nt is the number of believers at time t. We need to make two assumptions, first, is the number of progeny produced, and second is the length of a generation. For this calculation a generation will be 20 years and the progeny per woman will be 1.2which was average for the time. I will be using the original 6 Mormons. The equation we get is 6×1.220. This gives us a growth rate of 230 per 20 years. Compare this result to the actual number of Mormons 20 years later 16,460 which would give us 16,230 converts. Gaining converts in this case is 70 times more effective at growing the religion. As you can see, gaining and keeping converts is essential to any religion, especially new ones.
Secondly, religions change to adapt to new environments. Polygamy was considered a god given right and that monogamy led to the moral decay of Europe according to the Mormons in the early 1800's. The Mormon church practiced polygamy from 1843 until 1890. The rest of the United States in large part found the practice offensive and laws were passed criminalizing polygamy in the US in 1862, 1882, and 1887. The Mormon church gave into to this cultural selective pressure in 1890, outlawing the practice of polygamy.
Not only do religions change, they can change so drastically that one group splits off from another in a kind of "speciation" event. We can look at the Baptist Church for a good examplt. During the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation and chose to break away from the church and become separatists. Historians trace the earliest Baptist church back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with John Smyth who separated from the Church of England in 1606. Their belief was that a scriptural church should consist only of reborn believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of faith and did not accept the infant baptisms of the Church of England or the other Separatists. Here we can see the changes within a religion causing a new denominations to be created within the religion.
To summarize, religions need to gain new converts or go extinct, religions change and adapt to new environments, religions can even change and evolve into new denominations or even entirely new religions. I hope you guys found this to be an enlightening and interesting read.
First, religions need converts like pathogens need a host. Religions that are unable to gain enough converts to counter loss through deconversion or death eventually go extinct. For example look at the Shakers. The Shakers were one of a few religious groups that formed in eighteenth-century England which branched off of mainstream Protestantism. They banned sexual intercourse so Shakers could not have children, so adoption was a major source of new members. This continued until orphanages were established and the states began to limit adoption by religious groups. Without children to convert, the Shakers dwindled in number and now are almost extinct as they could not spread their faith faster than they lost members. This puts a selective pressure on religions in a similar way to pathogens. Those that are better at gaining and keeping converts are the ones that stick around.
Religions require gaining converts to survive just indoctrinating children of your family isn't enough. To calculate the rate at which a religion can spread without gaining converts we need to use the equation Nt = NoPt . No is the initial of believers, P is the number of progeny produced per individual per generation, t is in generations, and Nt is the number of believers at time t. We need to make two assumptions, first, is the number of progeny produced, and second is the length of a generation. For this calculation a generation will be 20 years and the progeny per woman will be 1.2which was average for the time. I will be using the original 6 Mormons. The equation we get is 6×1.220. This gives us a growth rate of 230 per 20 years. Compare this result to the actual number of Mormons 20 years later 16,460 which would give us 16,230 converts. Gaining converts in this case is 70 times more effective at growing the religion. As you can see, gaining and keeping converts is essential to any religion, especially new ones.
Secondly, religions change to adapt to new environments. Polygamy was considered a god given right and that monogamy led to the moral decay of Europe according to the Mormons in the early 1800's. The Mormon church practiced polygamy from 1843 until 1890. The rest of the United States in large part found the practice offensive and laws were passed criminalizing polygamy in the US in 1862, 1882, and 1887. The Mormon church gave into to this cultural selective pressure in 1890, outlawing the practice of polygamy.
Not only do religions change, they can change so drastically that one group splits off from another in a kind of "speciation" event. We can look at the Baptist Church for a good examplt. During the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation and chose to break away from the church and become separatists. Historians trace the earliest Baptist church back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with John Smyth who separated from the Church of England in 1606. Their belief was that a scriptural church should consist only of reborn believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of faith and did not accept the infant baptisms of the Church of England or the other Separatists. Here we can see the changes within a religion causing a new denominations to be created within the religion.
To summarize, religions need to gain new converts or go extinct, religions change and adapt to new environments, religions can even change and evolve into new denominations or even entirely new religions. I hope you guys found this to be an enlightening and interesting read.
