Religion as meme: the example of the Pacific Islands
The other day I was listening to an interview with Sarah Vowell, who had written a book about Catholic Missionary programs to Hawaii and other Pacific Islands in the 19th century. Vowell's book explored why the missionaries were so successful in converting the islanders to Christianity. There were all sorts of "maybe this was the reason," and "maybe that was the reason," but neither one ever ventured forth with a modern explanation, which is simple: maybe the islanders' belief system was memetically weak.
Christianity has spent most of its existence defining itself in opposition to something else: Judaism, Roman paganism, continental animism, Crusader-era Islam, and so forth. It has evolved an enormous collection of public rituals and private rites that inhabit the brain of the believer, putting up defenses and inoculating the mind against alien ideas.
In contrast, there's little evidence of any kind of zealous proselytizing for one faith over another within the Pacific Islands. The abstract animism and power worship of the Islanders had never evolved the kind of defenses Christians had, and certainly had never been so evangelical to devise either offensive strategies or active countermeasures.
Christianity wiped out isolated island faiths in the same way that rats wiped out isolated island species of birds and reptiles, and smallpox the locals.
Christianity has spent most of its existence defining itself in opposition to something else: Judaism, Roman paganism, continental animism, Crusader-era Islam, and so forth. It has evolved an enormous collection of public rituals and private rites that inhabit the brain of the believer, putting up defenses and inoculating the mind against alien ideas.
In contrast, there's little evidence of any kind of zealous proselytizing for one faith over another within the Pacific Islands. The abstract animism and power worship of the Islanders had never evolved the kind of defenses Christians had, and certainly had never been so evangelical to devise either offensive strategies or active countermeasures.
Christianity wiped out isolated island faiths in the same way that rats wiped out isolated island species of birds and reptiles, and smallpox the locals.