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 perspective of genes. Proponents of the gene-centered viewpoint argue that it permits understanding of diverse phenomena such as altruism and intragenomic conflict that are otherwise difficult to explain. The gene-centered view of evolution is a synthesis of the theory of evolution by natural selection, the particulate inheritance theory, and the non-transmission of acquired characters. It states that those alleles whose phenotypic effects successfully promote their own propagation will be favorably selected relative to their competitor alleles within the population. This process produces adaptations for the benefit of alleles that promote the reproductive success of the organism, or of other