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Ideologies aren't genetic traits though. Ever-increasing numbers of atheists in America signal that those Conservative Christians aren't all giving birth to Con

• pmichaud 7y ago
  They aren't literally encoded by genes, but they do follow evolutionary patterns. That's what a meme is. Just going the by the birth numbers, the tide will likely turn: conservative Christians have the adaptive "mutation" of believing they should make lots of babies. It's competing with a different mutation called "science" or whatever, but some proportion of those conservative christian memes are going to be passed to children, and it seems that those children will have more babies, and so on. Over time, those numbers overwhelm.
  • ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    Your prediction is in die contradiction of the trend of the past 50 years, we are on track to have fully atheistic societies in the west withing decades. There is no empirical evidence that your rationalisation is correct.
    • pmichaud 7y ago
      I mean, memetic evolution is faster than genetic evolution because generations take longer and are most constrained. So the genetic trend is always lagging. I expect the trade off between these things to be cyclical and that we're in the part of the cycle where the tide is turning in favor of the baby-makers.
      • ClumsyPilot 7y ago
        If 'genetic' component is weak, it will be overwhelmed by the social function. If you look at the data, there is no evidence of a cyclical pattern, only a consistent fall in theism. In Czech republic is already approaching at 80%, i think there is no coming back from that.