The Religion Virus

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"Like a selfish gene or a parasite, the religion virus catches a free ride in the minds of our species, infecting our history and culture. What Guns, Germs and Steel did for anthropology, this book does for faith. It puts the pieces together into a fascinating, coherent model that makes sense! (Dan Barker, President, Freedom From Religion Foundation.) Craig A. James has written an accessible book on evolution and religion that manages to explain memetics while being both funny and touching. (Wes Unruh, author, The Art of Memetics, editor of alteratic.com.) Full of powerful, ground-breaking ideas, packaged in a deceptively simple, easy-reading style. James has created one of those rare books where, every few pages, I find myself thinking, "I need to send a copy of this to so-and-so." This is the most fun I've had reading non-fiction in a long time. (Phil Steele, Editor, Fragment and The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics)"--From Amazon.com.

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Why do some beliefs become extinct while others adapt and flourish? James shows us how genetic evolution and cultural evolution, though operating at different rates, are one and the same. Recent science has gone a long way toward explaining the origin of religious belief in evolutionary terms, but Craig James has cracked open the mystery of its tenacity. Religion does not exist for us, it exists for its own sake. Like a selfish gene or a parasite, the religion virus catches a free ride in the minds of our species, infecting our history and culture.

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Dr. Darrel Ray, psychologist and lifelong student of religion, discusses religious infection from the inside out. How does guilt play into religious infection? Why is sexual control so important to so many religions? What causes the anxiety and neuroticism around death and dying? How does religion inject itself into so many areas of life, culture, and politics? The author explores this and much more in his book The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture. This second-generation book takes the reader several steps beyond previous offerings and into the realm of the personal and emotional mechanisms that affect anyone who lives in a culture steeped in religion. Examples are used that anyone can relate to and the author gives real-world guidance in how to deal with and respond to people who are religious in our families, and among our friends and coworkers.

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Download Is God a Virus book written by John Bowker, available in PDF, EPUB, and Kindle, or read full book online anywhere and anytime. Compatible with any devices.

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Why bother with the interpretive categories of biblical faith when in fact our energy and interest are focused on more immediate matters? The answer is simple and obvious. We linger because, in the midst of our immediate preoccupation with our felt jeopardy and our hope for relief, our imagination does indeed range beyond the immediate to larger, deeper wonderments. Our free-ranging imagination is not finally or fully contained in the immediacy of our stress, anxiety, and jeopardy. Beyond these demanding immediacies, we have a deep sense that our life is not fully contained in the cause-and-effect reasoning of the Enlightenment that seeks to explain and control. There is more than that and other than that to our life in God’s world!

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From any non-Christian point of view, the gospel does not make sense. Grace doesn't make sense. Grace doesn't add up. Why would Jesus come to be one of us, to pay a debt He did not owe, because we owed a debt we could not pay? Why would He do that? Free? No strings? What was in it for Him? Since the church first began, Christians have had trouble accepting God's grace. We have substituted holiness, discipleship, order, regulation, and a long list of things to avoid in place of God's free gift. The result is a "Bad News Religion" that drains the joy and life out of believers. Bad News Religion is a convicting, liberating exploration of how we, in the name of religion, have shifted the focus from the work of God to our ability to become worthy of salvation. The result is bondage and defeat. The key to success in the Christian life is not what we do, but who we know. Knowing God and knowing the fullness of His grace is a liberating experience. Most of us don't realize how we have robbed ourselves of experiencing the richness of God's grace.

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Virus of the Mind is the first popular book devoted to the science of memetics, a controversial new field that transcends psychology, biology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Memetics is the science of memes, the invisible but very real DNA of human society. In Virus of the Mind, Richard Brodie carefully builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and others who have become fascinated with memes and their potential impact on our lives. But Richard goes beyond science and dives into the meat of the issue: is the emergence of this new science going to have an impact on our lives like the emergence of atomic physics did in the Cold War? He would say the impact will be at least as great. While atomic bombs affect everybody’s life, viruses of the mind touch lives in a more personal and more pernicious way. Mind viruses have already infected governments, educational systems, and inner cities, leading to some of the most pervasive and troublesome problems of society today: youth gangs, the welfare cycle, the deterioration of the public schools, and ever?growing government bureaucracy. Viruses of the mind are not a future worry: they are here with us now and are evolving to become better and better at their job of infecting us. The recent explosion of mass media and the information superhighway has made the earth a prime breeding ground for viruses of the mind. Will there be a mental plague? Will only some of us survive with our free will intact? Richard Brodie weaves together science, ethics, and current events as he raises these and other very disturbing questions about memes.

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Religion & beliefs.

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The New York Times bestseller – a “crystal-clear, constantly engaging” (Jared Diamond) exploration of the role that religious belief plays in our lives and our interactions For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why—and how—it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma. Not an antireligious screed but an unblinking look beneath the veil of orthodoxy, Breaking the Spell will be read and debated by believers and skeptics alike.

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Robin Fox, peace-loving professor of world religions, wants only to leave his dark past as a military interrogator behind him. But when an unknown suspect tries to disperse a deadly virus in downtown Washington, Fox is unwillingly drawn back into the shadowy world of intelligence.The FBI and CIA automatically suspect Islamic terrorists, but Fox digs deeper to discover the far more frightening truth: a global conspiracy to eradicate all religion from the face of the earth.From Washington to Jerusalem, from Rome to London, Fox must use all his wits in a perilous race to stop a psychopathic mastermind from unleashing worldwide devastation.

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Based on original reporting from West Africa and the United States, and the poet 's experiences as a doctor and journalist, If God Is A Virus charts the course of the largest and deadliest Ebola epidemic in history, telling the stories of Ebola survivors, outbreak responders, journalists and the virus itself. Documentary poems explore which human lives are valued, how editorial decisions are weighed, what role the aid industrial complex plays in crises, and how medical myths and rumor can travel faster than microbes. These poems also give voice to the virus. Eight percent of the human genome is inherited from viruses and the human placenta would not exist without a gene descended from a virus. If God Is A Virus reimagines viruses as givers of life and even authors of a viral-human self-help book.

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The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions. Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary. But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state). Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.

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A maddened creature, frothing at the mouth, lunges at an innocent victim—and, with a bite, transforms its prey into another raving monster. It’s a scenario that underlies our darkest tales of supernatural horror, but its power derives from a very real virus, a deadly scourge known to mankind from our earliest days. In this fascinating exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years in the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies. The most fatal virus known to science, rabies kills nearly 100 percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. A disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans, rabies has served throughout history as a symbol of savage madness, of inhuman possession. And today, its history can help shed light on the wave of emerging diseases, from AIDS to SARS to avian flu, that we now know to originate in animal populations. From Greek myths to zombie flicks, from the laboratory heroics of Louis Pasteur to the contemporary search for a lifesaving treatment, Rabid is a fresh, fascinating, and often wildly entertaining look at one of mankind’s oldest and most fearsome foes.

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Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath present a reliable assessment of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, famed atheist and scientist, and the many questions this book raises--including, above all, the relevance of faith and the quest for meaning.

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The New York Times writes, "Pickover contemplates realms beyond our known reality." From one of the most original voices in imaginative nonfiction comes a stunning novel of speculation on the afterlife, immortality, and the existence of the human soul. "The Heaven Virus" is inspired by virtual universes making headlines today and offers readers a glimpse of ultimate spiritual technologies for the 22nd century and a mystic encounter in an age of electronic gods. "The Heaven Virus" blends humor, psychedelia, and hope in a meditation on the outer limits of our culture, evolutionary destiny, and inner space. This novel will draw readers who have wondered about their own passage from this existence into the world to come. Cliff Pickover is the author of forty books on science, mathematics, art, religion. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His website, Pickover.com, has received several million visits.

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Since the 1990s, the virus and the network metaphors have become increasingly popular, finding application in a broad range of everyday discourses, academic disciplines, and fiction genres. In this book, Rahel Sixta Schmitz defines and discusses a trope recurring in Gothic fiction: the supernatural media virus. This trope comprises the confluence of the virus, the network, and a deep, underlying media anxiety. This study shows how Gothic narratives such as House of Leaves or The Ring feature the supernatural media virus to negotiate as well as actively shape imaginations of the network society and the dangers of a globalized, technologized world.

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Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science

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The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

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GOD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS Lucas Masters' elderly father has something wrong with him. Initially, Lucas believes he may be sliding toward dementia, but it becomes readily apparent that his father's behavior may not be biological in nature. He is stronger, one of his hands bears a bizarre dark stain, and his behavior has drastically changed. As an Episcopalian priest, Lucas is inclined to interpret scripture metaphorically through a modern lens, but David, a fellow clergyman and family friend, fears that something much worse has infected his father-something Biblical in nature. Could he be possessed by a demon? GOD WILL NEVER GIVE ANYONE MORE THAN THEY CAN HANDLE When an unthinkable tragedy befalls his family, his eldest daughter Phoebe is left in a coma and trapped in the land of Uz, a world of her own imagination that turns out to be much more real than she had known. Meanwhile, Lucas suffers a crisis of faith, lashing out at those who he believes are at fault, and questioning how God could allow something like this to happen. GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES Lucas is a modern-day Job, suffering unimaginable anguish, praying over his dying daughter. Hers is an infection no medicine can heal. To save Phoebe, Lucas must enter Uz, hunt a monster through this nightmare world, and confront the epitome of Evil. There are all sorts of viruses....but none as horrifying as The Devil Virus.

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For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power. For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy. Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals. The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart's probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.