Memetic Sex

There are many similarities between genes and memes. Just as genes transmitted during sexual intercourse in the biosphere, so are ideas trans¬ mitted during social intercourse in the mental realm, or ideosphere. [...] The memetic realm also hahas some important differences from the genetic realm. Memes combine, recombine, mutate, and reproduce much more flexly and rapidly than genes do. This is one way that genetic sex does not map completely to memetic sex. For example, the memetic count...

 What Humanism Can Learn from the LGBT Community

So, what can the godless movement learn from the LGBT movement? Bullet point number one: coming out. Coming out is the single most powerful political act that LGBT people can take—and it’s the single most powerful political act that godless people can take. Consistently, polls show that the one factor most likely to predict whether people support gay rights is whether they know a gay person personally. (Or, to be more accurate—whether they know that they know a gay person.) And I think ...

 Genes versus Hormones in Homosexuality

It is clear, however, that the cause of homosexuality lies in some unusual balance of hormonal influence in the womb but not later on, a fact that further supports the idea that the mentality of sexual preference is affected by prenatal sex hormones. This is not incompatible with the growing evidence that homosexuality is genetically determined. The "gay gene" that I will discuss in the ext chapter is widely expected to turn out to be a series of genes that affect the sensitivity of certain t...

 Taboos Against Homosexuality Promote its Genetic Survival

The taboo against homosexuality is especially interesting. There is not generally accepted biological explanation of homosexuality and superficially it does not appear to be adaptive. Nevertheless, evidence is accumulating that there is an inherited predisposition for homosexuality. Assuming this is the case, the taboos of the past would, paradoxically, have favoured the survival of these genes by forcing the people who carried them, against their wishes, to marry and have children. This sugg...