I suspect part of the puzzle here is that there are a couple of really different ways to hold God-ideas. They can be a framework through which to see the world, or they can be held like factual, testable claims, but without the factual-ness or the testing.

Maybe you’re talking about concrete ideas like “Jesus was born of a mother without the involvement of any male parent” or “The sun revolves around the earth” or “It’s turtles, all the way down.” If that’s the case, maybe the question becomes “Are dumb ideas stickier if they involve God than if they don’t?”

I really don’t have a grasp on what redemption means, or looks like, so I don’t think I can comment on it specifically. Maybe you could explain it? Does it have to do with feeling accepted, or being cleared of shame, perhaps?

I’m using “religion” in the fuzzy sense to describe ideas that pertain to ethics, the nature of reality, and purpose.

As I’m using it, “memetic power” describes an approximation of how likely an idea is to be maintained in the mind of someone, especially when under criticism, and how likely a person is to try and transmit the idea to their child. I realize that the concept is very vague, and probably not very easily testable. If I wanted to measure the “stickiness” of an idea, I’d probably find a very large group of people who identify the idea as true, then follow them over time and measure the decay rate. That’s just off the top of my head, though. I hadn’t really thought about it.

I’m curious about what you’re saying, above. Are you saying that ideas like “redemption is true, and inside you” are “religious” and so have more “memetic power” than ideas like “women tend to be hysterical” or “men can’t control their sexuality”? Is that right?

All sorts of questions come up for me. Like “What do you mean by religious?” and “How do you measure memetic power?”

Love,
Mama

Christianity has survived 2,000 years because of this heart message. People have paid billions of dollars for redemption and have gone on countless pilgrimages. It’s a human message and one can merely take out “Christ” and say anything in place of it. At the root of all people is that place that is called Christ, it’s real, and therefore the message is sticky.

I don’t argue the terminology. If I call that place “the inner self” and someone else calls it “Christ” it’s the same thing. Redemption is real. Most people need to be redeemed from outside, which doesn’t stick and has to be renewed again and again.

It’s a common evil to take a human thing and add in something to it that will benefit your group (bring it money or power) and take advantage of the “truth.” Don’t argue it, for then you argue against the truth of the reality.

hugs
me