Hi,
In the spirit of knowledge creation, I'll answer a few of my own questions:
(a) What the hell is this Level thing you guys keep arguing over?
(c) What's wrong with believing in God?
(e) What is Universal Darwinism?
Universal Darwinism is a generalization of evolution from biology out into the universe at large. It is the recgonition that there are other types of units/objects to which evolution applies.
"Put into Richard Dawkins's language, if there is a replicator that makes imperfect copies of itself only some of which survive, then evolution /must/ occur." -- Susan Blackmore, _The Meme Machine_, pg 11
Any unit which posses the traits of variation, selection and retention
(or heredity), provides a suitable 'substrate' on which Universal
Darwinism can act as a mechanism of evolution.
(BTW, I *highly* recommend Blackmore's book!)
(f) What is the paradigm shift involved with memetics?
The paradigm shift is recgonizing that a meme is a unit to which Univeral Darwinism applies -- and that therefore, memes often serve nothing but themselves. Just becuase an idea exists and is widespread tells you nothing about it's truth; that only tells you that it replicates well! The fundamental insight of memetics is therefore that *if* we wish to find truth, we must guard against the natural tendencies of idea-imitation; we must provide a different selection criteria than "natural selection".
(g) What is clarity of purpose?
(i) Why is dogmatic faith a sin?
>From the web page:
Virus is:
a forum for rational discourse
a memetically engineered atheistic religion
a synthesis of religion and evolution
the best possible conceptual framework for living and thinking
a neo-cybernetic philosophy for the 21st century
Darwin's dangerous idea out of control
an extended phenotype of the Virion Council
ERiC