Science of Discworld III

its own propagation.
    A typical memeplex is the Jewish shema : ‘And these words … you shall teach them to your children, muse on them when you get up and when you lie down … Write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.’ Like e-mail chain letters that threaten you with punishment if you fail to send them on to many friends, and with ‘luck’ if you do send them on, the world’s great religions have all promised pleasures for committed believers and transmitters, but pain for those who fail to adhere to the faith. Heretics, and those who leave the faith, are often killed by the faithful.
    We can easily understand how such beliefs, bolstered as they are from within, have been retained throughout the generations. The promise of an afterlife, espoused by all the sensible people around you, makes many of this life’s sorrows easier to bear. And, as we’ve seen in recent years, belief in a Paradise for those who die fighting for the faith in a Holy War makes you pretty well invincible. 6 Such invincibility is a side-effect of the memeplex’s belief tactics, not a certification of the truth of the bomber’s faith. Especially given that nearly all of those who share the bomber’s faith (Islam, Catholicism …) deny that their beliefs justify killing unbelievers.
    This plurality of theist beliefs, especially in today’s mixed-up world with its different cultures and multicultures, encourages a more critical belief in authority, and usually a willingness to admitcommonality with other theists. Such common ground encourages the integration of different cultures. Many minorities are assimilated and disappear, but others react by emphasising their individuality. Some of the latter, like the Thuggee worshippers of the death goddess Kali in nineteenth-century India, and the recent al-Qaeda terrorists, gain temporary notoriety that seems to be a triumph of their faith. However, this is usually self-defeating in the longer term. In any event, the number of deaths is no comment, plus or minus, upon the truth of the beliefs that these thugs hold. The faith of these militant minorities sometimes gains sharpness and even subtlety, but it is usually subordinated to the day-to-day exigencies of the violent lives they lead.
    Many great scientists, for example Galileo, were ridiculed when they proposed new insights into the natural world. Scientific crackpots often deduce that because their work is being ridiculed, they must be the new Galileo, but that doesn’t follow. Similarly, men of violence often try to validate their ‘martyrdom’ by comparing themselves to ancient Christians or ghetto Jews, and again the logic is flawed. There is no rational reason to accept any of their gods as part of the real universe, however helpful that belief might be to some people as regards day-to-day living. Despite that, many clever, honest people do feel that a God is necessary to their understanding of how everything is organised. Once a memeplex has caught you, it’s hard to escape.
    We have a little more sympathy with deists, who mostly seem to believe that the universe is extraordinarily complex, yet possesses an overall simplicity, and that this points to some celestial guardian who looks after the whole thing and gives it meaning. Ponder Stibbons and Mustrum Ridcully, in their different ways, edge towards deism; they want to feel that ‘someone’ is at the helm. If challenged, deists usually deny the anthropomorphic character of this guardian, but they still retain a belief in the ability of individual people – perhaps individual ‘souls’ – to relate directly with whoever or whateveris in charge. We personally doubt that such apparent interactions, whether attained by meditation or prayer, are more than self-delusion. But we are happy to live on the same planet as people who believe that they are in direct contact with ultimate causality, however unscientific we may feel that belief to be.
    There is a growing minority of thoughtful people who have given up on the idea of a personal, anthropomorphic God altogether. Some, particularly among Buddhists and Taoists, retain the mystical/metaphysical stance that is characteristic of religion, and consider the ‘scientific’ world to be subservient to a mystical true picture more closely related to subjective experience. In contrast, those of us who were persuaded by Spinoza’s rejection of an anthropomorphic God, not least because neither the universe