virus: Jesus as a Memetic Engineer

Reed Konsler (konsler@ascat.harvard.edu)
Sat, 26 Jul 1997 10:50:52 -0400 (EDT)


>Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 23:42:10 -0500
>From: Eric Boyd <6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca>
>
>Reed Konsler wrote:
>
>> One thing I'd like to point out is that <Jesus> and Jesus, the "real"
>> person to whom a lot of Christianity is attributed are two different
>> things, ontologically.
>> <snip>
>> Proper names are used for things which are too complex to be
>> completely categorized and generalized...things of uniqueness
>> or unique value.
>
>Like "Eric".

Exactly

>Heck, like most every word. "Chair" is as good an example as any.

What chair?

Seriously, though, "chair" is a general category noun, unlike "Eric", but
like "people". One of the things which makes people uncomfortable in
the modern era is that they feel they are "just a number"...that is, a
completely categorized and generalized "person". But people feel,
in their gut, that they are more than just a label...so we give ourselves names

and names

and names

and names

>> <Jesus> is a text.
>> All texts have and author
>> Thus <Jesus>, by it's very existence, implies an author
>> This Implied Author shall be named ___?___.
>
>"God" ??? ("...the inspired Word of God...")
>
>That would be the "fundamentalist" answer.

And who is the author of <God>?
For the fundamentalist there is none. <God> is the fundamental; the
text with no author; the inconsistency of the universe personified.

>I tend to think this is where the "Implied Author" argument from design
>breaks down.

Bah! This is where it really gets going!

>No one person is responsible for the current intrepretation*S* of the Bible.
>They have been memetically evolving for *thousands* of years.

Ka ching!

The word I like is "intersubjective".

It's kind of a technical way of saying "Karma", IMHO.

Reed

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Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu
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