David Sloane Wilson: religion is not a parasite

David Sloane Wilson criticises the "religion as virus" application of memetics - 39:40 into this video. He says:

The meme concept, of course, has a number of meanings, and the most general definition of "memes" is just newspeak for culture. Use the word culture, take it out, and put in the word "meme". and so the broad usage, that broad usage of "memes", "cultural evolution", of course applies not just to parasitic memes, "memeplexes", the group level, just about all of the different evolutionary hypotheses can be given a meme formulation when "meme" is used in that general formulation.

There's more from him on the subject of memes 13:10 minutes in.

David Sloane Wilson's position on this is not unreasonable - and I agree with him.

Here's his main talk:

David Sloan Wilson at Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0