From MARY MIDGLEY
Your correspondents (Letters, 22 January) are right to question Mark
Ridley’s rather hasty remarks about religion. But his main point is surely
true and very important. As he shows, it is an empty and misleading metaphor
to call religion, science, or any other human activity a ‘virus’ or ‘parasite’.
Since such concerns are just types of human activity – not exploitative
tapeworms with interests of their own – the central questions they raise
are all about human psychology, questions about why people choose to do
these things and how they turn out.
On those points there is often plenty of detailed evidence, including,
indeed, their effects on survival. But the telescope of population biology
is a much less helpful instrument for studying such matters than our existing
knowledge of motives. And tying mythical entities to that telescope is
a dangerous distraction.
‘Selection’ here is no metaphor. The people involved are literally choosing,
trying somehow to reconcile various values. Ridley’s dualist schema of a
rational and religious temper competing, like genes for blue and brown eyes,
absurdly distorts this complex process. But he is still dead right to slice
off, with Occam’s Razor, the useless and essentially superstitious notion
of ‘memes’ as independent, exploitative entities directing it.
Mary Midgley Newcastle-upon-Tyne
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