The Science of Discworld IV

atom, bicycle or fairy – all are memes. A whole slew of memes that forms an interacting whole is called a memeplex,and religions are the best examples, which at various times and in various cultures have had, or still do have, many linked-up memes like ‘There is Heaven and there is Hell …’ and ‘Unless you pray to
this
God you’ll go to Hell’ and ‘You must teach this to your children …’ and ‘You must kill those who don’t believe in this …’ and so on. You will have some familiarity with other religions, and you will appreciate that we’re not saying that
your
religion is like that. It’s all the others, the mistaken ones …
    We should look at a few belief systems, to see how they worked and whence they got their authority. We’ll choose some relatively unfamiliar ones, where it’s easier (for most of us) to set aside our own beliefs. If you’re a Jewish Cathar Scientologist, skip this bit.
    The Cathars were an odd group of Christians, existing from about 1100 until they were massacred around the period 1220 to 1250, initially by barons of Northern France empowered by the Pope, but then by the Inquisition. They believed that the material world was essentially evil, and that only the spiritual world was good. They deplored sex in general; indeed their bonhommes, or perfecti, wouldn’t eat meat because it was the result of sexuality. Fish was all right: they didn’t know about underwater sex – or plant sex, for that matter. They were totally celibate, and deplored sex even in marriage. There was a ceremony, prescribed for attainment of the perfectus state, a single sacrament, the consolamentum or consolation. It involved a brief spiritual ceremony to remove all sin from the credente, or believer, and induct them into the next higher level as a perfectus. It was commonly performed as death approached, so that the believer was not condemned. Belief in its effectiveness, however, was by no means universal.
    Presumably their anti-sex views would weigh against having children, so that any such belief system would be likely to lose its adherents as time passes, but that seems not to have happened. They were remarkably successful in Languedoc, perhaps mostly throughconversion. In this they were the cultivated roses of religion, propagated not through sex but by taking cuttings. Considering the practices of Catholic priests, whose behaviour at that time was a distinct contrast, it’s not surprising there were many conversions. That is probably why they had to be annihilated.
    The Jews of Poland in the late Middle Ages were mostly confined to ghettos, and restricted to a few trades including usury – money-lending. Their beliefs were complicated. Males learned
Torah
(Old Testament, Five Books of Moses) from a very young age, and then graduated to
Talmud
, a compilation of commentaries on the
Torah
by mostly-Babylonian rabbis. After the Bar Mitzvah ceremony at about age thirteen, which included reciting, and usually singing, a piece from
Torah
and commenting on it, they continued to study Jewish texts, especially the
Talmud
and the
Gemara
(additional rabbinical comments).
    Boys who continued to study were frequently maintained by general ghetto funds, such as they were (even today in Israel, boys of Orthodox clans are allowed not to do national service). Females had to learn to keep a kosher household, which involved a whole complex of issues, not simply having kosher meat, but also separating milk dishes from meat dishes, keeping separate cloths and cutlery as well as dishes, and cleaning house, particularly for the Passover, which required a different set of menus. The reward system was not, basically, Heaven or Hell; it was simply that doing these things led to a good life, consonant with what God (Jehovah, but his name must not be said) wanted for man, and to some extent woman.
    In the 1550s the rules were collected into a great composition, the
Shulchan Aruch
, by a Sephardic rabbi in Israel, or possibly Damascus. They became the greatest compendium of Jewish law, especially for the Ashkenazi communities of middle-Europe (Sephardi and Ashkenazi are two separate streams of Jewish culture). This belief system has continued, with much evolution, to the present day. Jack’s rabbi has said that he’s the best atheist in her congregation.
    Scientology evolved from L. Ron Hubbard’s earlier invention, Dianetics. L. Ron (‘Elron’) was a fairly successful science fiction author, but his