Rant: Ceiling cat is watching you meme.

Since I first became aware of his existence I was certain that Richard Dawkins was an idiot, or at least a very irate and confused person. Initially I thought this because his idea of "conversing" with religous people involved him yelling at them and telling them they were stupid. Then after watching interviews with him and seeing his written works about religion I began to understand that he fundamentally misunderstood religion, shown through his trite and sophmoric arguments which were below even the standards of a basic Intro to Theology class. I thought, however, that maybe his work in other fields would be impressive and that his performance in the religious sphere resulted from his misunderstanding of religion, and not some flaw on his own part.

Then I read about memes.

A meme is "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation". Dawkins argued that a meme "propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution." So, when I post, "ceiling cat is watching you masturbate" the "ceiling cat" meme replicates itself into your consciousness from my own (by way of the tubal interwebs) and then from your mind the celing cat meme can replicated again into the mind of another and this way the ceiling cat meme can "survive".

Forgetting for a moment that this is an entirely idiotic and flawed way of talking about ceiling cat jokes, what interests me is how this relates to the idea of God.

The notion of God exists as a means of explaining some of the things which we observe in the world. If a person is sick and they get better in a manner which cannot be explained we say, "God did it." because it serves as an explanation which fits with our chosen world view. Or, if there are other means by which something can be explained one may still choose to say, "God did it" if that fits better with their own world view. The idea of God gives an origin and explanation for a thing which happens in the world.

Now, how is the idea of memes not this exact same situation? We have a situation in which one person says, "ceiling cat is watching you masturbate" and then someone else who hears that says, "ceiling cat is watching you masturbate" to another person. And then Dawkins jumps from this thing that happens to the idea of some thingness, "meme", which explains the thing happening.

Now, arguably, any explanation or name or word will fit that same pattern. But if there is some flaw in utilizing a means of explanation which cannot be supported empirically (god) how is there not some flaw in utilizing a means of explanation which cannot be supported empirically (meme)? If it is problematic for an individual to go beyond empirical evidence in their positing that "god exists" is it not equally problematic to go beyond empirical evidence and posit that there exists this thing, "meme" that exists beyond yet also as part of the phrase, "Ceiling cat is watching you masturbate"? Do not both of these actions (claiming "God" and claiming "meme") attach onto empirical reality some other layer, some depth, some greater degree of explanation which only exists in-so-far as we say it does?

I think they do.

So, remember, Richard,