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A review by iggymcmuffin
The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture by Darrel W. Ray
1.0
Preface: Yes I am an atheist.
It's very clear from the first chapter that Ray thinks religion is nothing but a disease with no positive qualities. He compares religion to Lyme disease, malaria, chicken pox, smallpox, rabies, HIV, the common cold, Ebola, bubonic plague, the flu, the lancet fluke, herpes, toxoplasmosis, a disability, alcoholism, West Nile, demonic possession, and the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. Religion is never something you freely choose, but something horrible that happens to you. Religion is an infection that turns you into a slave. People have no agency when it comes to religion in Ray’s world.
He seems to be under the impression that religion (literally) disables parts of your brain and turns you into a faith spreading zombie. It apparently turns off the parts of the brain responsible for critical thinking, rationality, and science comprehension (I didn’t know there was a “science” lobe). For Ray, Religions are dangerous pathogens to be wiped out through inoculation. He even seems to speak positively of Russian and Chinese human rights violations, as if infringing on freedom of religion was sound public health policy.
The metaphor is stretched way too far and is little more than a polemic repackaging of memetics. It’s amazing to me that Ray, as a psychologist, considers religions to be like diseases needing to be stamped out, and not a normal part of the human condition. The pathologizing of religious belief is ignorant, irresponsible, and even potentially dangerous, especially coming from a trained (and I assuming practicing) psychologist.
Worse the book is riddled with simple factual errors. At times Ray comes off as extremely Islamophobic, although I suspect he's simply just ignorant of the non-Christian religions. Ray’s historical examples are all gross oversimplifications, completely one dimensional, highly selective, and often totally incorrect. He invokes the long discredited and debunked idea of the “alpha male”. At other times he insinuates Jesus was homosexual because he was unmarried and charismatic. Rays use of “statistics” is also egregiously misleading. Finally, the latter half is riddled with typos and grammatical errors.
It's very clear from the first chapter that Ray thinks religion is nothing but a disease with no positive qualities. He compares religion to Lyme disease, malaria, chicken pox, smallpox, rabies, HIV, the common cold, Ebola, bubonic plague, the flu, the lancet fluke, herpes, toxoplasmosis, a disability, alcoholism, West Nile, demonic possession, and the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. Religion is never something you freely choose, but something horrible that happens to you. Religion is an infection that turns you into a slave. People have no agency when it comes to religion in Ray’s world.
He seems to be under the impression that religion (literally) disables parts of your brain and turns you into a faith spreading zombie. It apparently turns off the parts of the brain responsible for critical thinking, rationality, and science comprehension (I didn’t know there was a “science” lobe). For Ray, Religions are dangerous pathogens to be wiped out through inoculation. He even seems to speak positively of Russian and Chinese human rights violations, as if infringing on freedom of religion was sound public health policy.
The metaphor is stretched way too far and is little more than a polemic repackaging of memetics. It’s amazing to me that Ray, as a psychologist, considers religions to be like diseases needing to be stamped out, and not a normal part of the human condition. The pathologizing of religious belief is ignorant, irresponsible, and even potentially dangerous, especially coming from a trained (and I assuming practicing) psychologist.
Worse the book is riddled with simple factual errors. At times Ray comes off as extremely Islamophobic, although I suspect he's simply just ignorant of the non-Christian religions. Ray’s historical examples are all gross oversimplifications, completely one dimensional, highly selective, and often totally incorrect. He invokes the long discredited and debunked idea of the “alpha male”. At other times he insinuates Jesus was homosexual because he was unmarried and charismatic. Rays use of “statistics” is also egregiously misleading. Finally, the latter half is riddled with typos and grammatical errors.