Unveiling the God Virus: A Deep Dive into Religion, Morality, and Relationships

1. 440 Psychology of Religion Chong Ho Yu God Virus

2. Development • Richard Dawkins: Meme (cultural gene) • Daniel Dennett: Parasite • Craig James: Religion virus • Darrel Ray: God virus

3. Darrel Ray • Dr. Ray was a Christian and later he decided to leave the Christian faith. • He earned a doctorate in counseling psychology from Vanderbilt University.

4. Darrel Ray • wrote two books to challenge religion: • Sex and God: How Religion Distort Sexuality • God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture • He also published a survey “Sex and Secularism: What Happens When You Leave Religion?” • founded an organization called “Recovering from religion” to provide counseling service to people who are “infected” by “God virus”.

5. God virus • Almost every religion and even non-religious idea (Communism, McCarthyism) is called virus, except Atheism and his own idea. There is no atheism virus, naturalism virus, reductionism virus...etc. • Even an idea from a person is called virus (Dobson's virus from James Dobson). But there is no Dawkins' virus or Dennett's virus. • Ray said: atheism is not a “religion” virus. There is no ritual, no Holy book...etc.

6. Characteristics of God's virus • It propagates for its own good, not for your well-being • Takes down your immune system by brainwashing and creating guilt feeling. • One of the sources of guilty feeling is from sexual misconduct. Religion makes “normal” and “natural” sexual behaviors sinful.

7. What is normal and natural? • Dr. Ray points out that sexual norms vary from culture to culture and from time to time, but religion preaches universal standards of sex and marriage. • If morality is cultural-based instead of universal, then what are considered normal or natural sexual behaviors? • What is the definition of normal when there is no universal norm?

8. Jealousy vs. open-mindedness • Dr. Ray said that jealousy is a dangerous emotion; • it is driven by the selfish motive of controlling other people. • Monogamy should not be the only way of male-female relationship. If we can keep an open mind, we could be happier.

9. Warren Buffet • Warren Buffett married Susan in 1952, but the couple separated in 1977. Susan decided to leave home for San Francisco to pursue her singing career. She arranged Astrid Menks to meet with her husband, and later Menks became Warren Buffet’s mistress.

10. Warren Buffet • Warren Buffett and Susan remained married in name. Nonetheless, for many years all three had been close together and they sent Christmas cards to friends with three signatures: "Warren, Susan and Astrid”. Susan died in 2004. Two years later Warren married Astrid Menks.

11. Schwarzenegger • In 2011, Schwarzenegger and his wife Shriver separated after 25 years of marriage. This time his wife said “Hasta la vista, baby” to the terminator. It is because Schwarzenegger had an affair with a family employee and they gave birth to a son.

12. Blame the victim? • What could we say to Shriver? Could we say, “Why can’t you be like Susan and Astrid? Why are you so narrow-minded?” • The “new” morality would create more stress. The victim might feel guilty; Shriver might feel that this is her fault; she is responsible for the failed marriage because she didn’t allow or even encourage Schwarzenegger to have more mistresses.

13. Laura Newcomer's experiment • She and her boyfriend agreed that their relationship is not exclusive. But she found that this open relationship eventually led to resentment on both sides. Suddenly they argued about who belonged to whom. • Newcomer concluded that open relationships can be very stressful, too. • Jealousy is a natural emotion and it is difficult, if not impossible, to put it aside.

14. Tribes of Northwest China and Pacific Islands • Dr. Ray found that in those tribes there is no family structure like what we found in modern societies. Men and women are free to have as many sex partners as they want, yet the communities still maintain function and order.

15. Is it the norm? • Actually one can find extreme cases in almost everything. The question is: why didn’t their model become the norm? • Cultural evolution: Good ideas are retained. • Human civilizations have several thousand years to test what the best family institution is. If open relationship is a good idea, it should be the norm today.

16. One may argue that those tribes in the Pacific islands are isolated from the continent and thus good ideas cannot be propagated. • But how about the tribes in Northwest China? Why didn’t their open relationship spread across China or Central Asia?