Lancet flukes and spelling

You know why an ant climbs up a blade of grass, reaches the top, falls down, climbs up the blade of grass again, reaches the top, falls down again and goes on repeating this time after time?

The ant is exercising. For the same reason some humans go skiing.

Daniel Dennett says there's this fluke inside some ants' brains. It hijacks the ant's thinking. The fluke wants to survive by getting into the belly of a sheep. Religion is similar. Religion hijacks human brains.

Oh Jesus. That's a leap. Dennett compares a microscopic fact about biological parasite with the grandeur of human beliefs?

But you know, what's interesting, what's even more interesting than this analogy, and Dennett's book, is the outrage, the protests against his investigation of why human beings have this need to believe in some sort of religion.

Need to believe?

But many of them are from the vocal Bible Belt. They can't spell to save themselves. And oh some of them, the sheer volume of their claptrap is deafening.

Why are you so against religion?

I'm not. I'm sitting on the fence. But as I see it, the bigotry, the shrill panic in the protests seem to come from the fervent believers, not the atheists or brights, or whatever they call themselves.

What was it that Dennett inflamed so many people, mainly Americans, with?

"Suppose you go out in the meadow and you see this ant climbing up a blade of grass and if it falls it climbs again. It's devoting a tremendous amount of energy and persistence to climbing up this blade of grass. What's in it for the ant? Nothing. It's not looking for a mate or showing off or looking for food. Its brain has been invaded by a tiny parasitic worm, a lancet fluke, which has to get into the belly of a sheep or a cow in order to continue its life cycle. It has commandeered the brain of this ant and it's driving it up the blade of grass like an all-terrain vehicle. That's how this tiny lancet fluke does its evolutionary work.
Is religion, then, like a lancet fluke?
The question is, Does anything like that happen to us? The answer is, Well, yes. Not with actual brain worms but with ideas. An idea takes over our brain and gets that person to devote his life to the furtherance of that idea, even at the cost of their own genetics. People forgo having kids, risk their lives, devote their whole lives to the furtherance of an idea, rather than doing what every other species on the planet does – make more children and grandchildren."

Makes sense to me. Just a lot of Bible bashers seem to get hot under the collar about it.

Know what you mean. Southern Baptists and their ilk talk loudly, talk a lot, go on and on, pounding and thumping about how non-believers are damned. Really they are just the same as Al Qaedans.

Hm. With you there. No difference.
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