Viruses of the Mind Viruses of the Mind "Viruses of the Mind" is an essay by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, first published in the book "Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind" (1993). Dawkins originally wrote the essay in 1991 and delivered it as a Voltaire Lecture on 6 November 1992 at the Conway Hall Humanist Centre. The essay discusses how religion can be viewed as a meme, an idea previously expressed by Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" (1976). Dawkins analyzes the propagation of religious ideas and behaviors as a memetic virus, analogous to how biological and computer viruses spread. The essay was later
Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think Ridley. () The reviews of the book have been mixed, but the controversial title phrase, "How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think" has been explained by considering Dawkins to have worked as an influential educator and concise author, of "The Selfish Gene", who promoted the key ideas of others about evolutionary biology, also including some controversial ideas which are not as widely accepted. As the author of a popular science book, Dawkins had popularized ideas by George Williams about group selection, William Hamilton on the theory of kin selection in evolution, biologist/geneticist John Maynard Smith on evolutionarily stable strategies,