God Going Viral

I am about half-way through the book The God Virus by By Darrel W. Ray, Ed.D. My first reaction was that the book seemed unnecessarily stand-offish. Do I think religion is fantasy? Absolutely. However, religion is a significant and complex sociological phenomenon and shouldn’t be treated as “silly.” While I might not respect the tenets of any religion, I do respect and support the study of religion itself. I think it’s incredibly important to understand how these behaviors began and continue in order to correct for them toward a more rational society.

I initially got the impression that Ray found religious people to simply be silly, or at least the oblivious victims of a god virus. I disagree that victims are completely oblivious, and I strongly hold that maintaining a religious perspective involves conscious decisions made to that effect as much as one would continually face decisions while living life as a skeptic. Still, half-way into it, the author takes his analogy a little too far from time to time. However, I think the goldmine in the book is not his leaps to make the analogy between religion and a virus seem closer than it is, but rather his look at the propagation and history of religious development when he is momentarily free of his “virus” idea. I wonder if the analogy would have made a great introductory paragraph or chapter if left at that – it’s possible. I look forward to reading more of his real theory, free of his attention-grabbing illustration.

S.A.M.