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
Gene-centered view of evolution the genes in combination with their vehicle as well as in combination with the vehicle's environment. The selfish-gene theory of natural selection can be restated as follows: The result is that "the prevalent genes in a sexual population must be those that, as a mean condition, through a large number of genotypes in a large number of situations, have had the most favourable phenotypic effects for their own replication." In other words, we expect selfish genes ("selfish" meaning that it promotes its own survival without necessarily promoting the survival of the organism, group or even species). This theory implies that