RT Article
T1 Evolutionary Theology and God–Memes: Explaining Everything or Nothing
JF Zygon
VO 37
IS 4
SP 775
OP 788
A1 Poulshock, Joseph
LA English
PB Wiley-Blackwell
YR 2002
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/182795566X
AB It is not uncommon for Darwinists and memeticists to speculate not only that god–memes (cultural units for belief in a god) evolved as maladaptive traits but also that these memes do not correspond to anything real. However, a counter–Darwinian argument exists that some god–memes evolved as adaptive traits and did so with a metaphysical correspondence to reality. Memeticists cannot disallow these positive claims, because the rules they would use to disallow them would also disallow their negative claims. One must either accept that positive Darwinian theological claims can fall within the bounds of science (and therefore be judged on their explanatory merits alone) or must disallow both sets of arguments, including any claims that god–memes fail to correspond to reality. Given that many Darwinists do not appear to accept a modest version of science that avoids negative metaphysical claims, precedence exists in memetic and Darwinian discourse for making positive metaphysical claims as well.
K1 Theology
K1 Theism
K1 science–meme
K1 Science
K1 Religion
K1 positive correspondence to reality (PCR)
K1 noncorrespondence to reality (NCR)
K1 Methodological Naturalism
K1 Metaphysics
K1 Memetics
K1 Memes
K1 memeplex
K1 god–memes
K1 faith–memes
K1 Richard Dawkins
K1 Susan Blackmore
K1 Atheism
DO 10.1111/1467-9744.00457