I was trolling around Yahoo! Answers today and found this question:
What is the advantage (to god) in having each person experience god differently? (sic)
Here was my answer.. I’d be really curious to know what other people on Yahoo! Answers think of it because I’m essentially describing Darwinian natural selection… that’s right.. the dreaded e-word.
The idea of god is transferred from person to person by means of replicators known as memes. Memes are, essentially, the high level concepts that we use to come up with things we call ideas.
Like other replicators, the survival value of a specific meme is determined by its fecundity, fidelity, and longevity.
Fecundity is basically the ability to reproduce. Memes reproduce through communication between hosts — those that carry these memes — through sharing ideas. Memes and ideas with high fecundity are those that basically get talked about often. The idea of god is a meme with, naturally, very high fecundity meaning it is spread very often.
Fidelity is the ability of copies of memes to be as true to the source as possible. Consider a game of telephone where 20 kids sit in a circle. One starts by whispering a message into the ear of the person on their right. That person again passes the message on to the person on their right, etc, until the message returns to the originator. If the message stays the same, it could be said to have high fidelity. If the message changes (due to pranksters, kids hearing wrong, or kids speaking wrong) it can be said to have low fidelity. Memes with a low fidelity are more likely to have errors in the copying process which would create a mutation of the original.
Longevity would imply how long a meme could survive. Consider an idea of god where it is implied that the world will end in 2000. This meme would have been free to spread in the 1990′s and in fact there were many cults who believed just that. Now that it is 2007, I can’t imagine anyone would still have this idea of god.
As a hopefully humourous illustration of this, lets consider the message of FREE BEER.
The meme would have low fecundity if you whispered it at a Catholic Womens League bridge night. If anyone could even hear you, they may not care preferring wine or prune juice. Shout the same message at a college party and you can bet the meme would have a much higher fecundity and everyone would be coming up to you.
Use a modern photocopy machine to print out a thousand letters saying FREE BEER and everyone you send a letter to will know there is FREE BEER. Hire a pilot to do some sky writing over a stadium on a windy day and you might get as many people talking about FREE DEER or FREE BEAR as FREE BEER, an example of low fidelity copying of the meme.
Even a huge advertising budget couldn’t save a campaign to give out FREE BEER on April 8, 2007 if it is now April 9, 2007.
Now then, in the long term what makes a meme have a high survival value? You might say a meme with high fecundity, high fidelity and high longevity. While this would certainly be true, it would only work in a closed system. Memes are constantly competing with other memes for dominance. In an open system, memes representing the status quo are constantly being challenged by new memes and the example of the idea of god is certainly no different. To ensure the greatest success of a meme over time, the fidelity actually has to be lower than perfect.. meaning it has to be open to change and mutation. This essential infidelity is what gave us Christianity in the first place. This essential infidelity is what allowed the bible to be translated into English and every other language. This essential infidelity is what provides the best defense against alternate memes that would threaten the idea of god.
In conclusion, the “benefit to god” for the diversity of the ideas of god is that it is the same diversity that keeps people believing in god. If the idea of god didn’t have that essential infidelity, it would have fallen behind in place of a competing idea with a greater survival value.