How To Be An Agnostic
Where neo-Darwinian thought completely falls apart, in my
opinion, is in relation to theories such as memes. According
to its advocates, memes are the mental equivalent of genes.
Anything that can be thought and is replicated – from a phil-
osophical argument to a cultural icon – would be a meme. What
memes are supposed to explain is the transmission of ideas: they
compete and only the fi ttest survive. The advocates of memes
usually ascribe religious memes the honour of being the most
pernicious, saying that the religious imperative to replicate – to
proselytise – reveals its selfi sh intent.
But it’s a poor theory. For one thing, it has a woefully impov-
erished understanding of ideas and traditions. It is not in the
nature of all religions to proselytise, for example. Neither does
meme theory have much conception of the environment in
which they are supposed to interact. Ideas, for example, spread
as a result of the way they interact with people, times and
places: one must understand those people, times and places in
order to understand why ideas spread. Finally, memes fall foul
of a category error. Genetic evolution works well in a biological
environment, but to take that theory and apply it to cultural
and social environments is as mistaken as thinking that because
gravity causes attraction between bodies, so a gravity analogue
will explain the reason people are attracted to one another.
Darwin’s brilliant idea explains much: from why superbugs
resist penicillin to why life takes eons to evolve. However,
Darwinism will be superseded, as surely as Newton was by
Einstein. This is not to say evolution is wrong; only that it is no
more or less than the best theory we have to date.
E – is for Ethos
Melvyn Bragg was interviewed on the BBC’s radio programme
Devout Sceptics. He was asked in what sense he was an agnostic.
He said: ‘One of the greatest phrases I heard in the last two or
three years was Issac Newton’s answer to someone who asked
him how he discovered the laws of gravity, which changed