My letter to Richard Dawkins author of the selfish gene and many other books

I am a fervent reader of all your books. My recent reading is "the god delusion". Your explanation of "why religion", "why different religions throughout the world, all of them with different stories", and the relation to nurturing of the child, leads me to this: evolution by natural selection and sexual selection is thought of as the process which led to our species some 200 000 years ago, with our bipedy and our brain, Homo.sapiens.sapiens of which the first evidence is Cromagnon 35 000 years ago. Out of Africa, we populated the whole planet in less than 10 000 years. (My reading on this was Out of Eden Stephen Oppenheimer, The fossil Trail Ian Tattersall and The language of Genes Steve Jones).

When climate change permitted we domesticated plants and animals and went to agriculture; and from then onwards, in less than 8 000 years, we have reached the 6.5 billion we are today with our cultures and technologies (Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond). The last 300 years, of which the last 50, are most significant in our evolution. In "the selfish gene", chapter 10, you developed the concept of the meme as a new replicator, far more rapid than the gene. Are we not in fact one evolutionary animal with "nature and nuture" inseparable and isn't evolution continuing under our eyes, generation by generation? Should'nt you synthesize "genes and memes" as two facets of our evolutionary process? I understand some of your fellow scientists have objected to the memes concept saying "where is evidence of memes?" and because of these objections you have played the memes concept down.

The child can only survive to reproduction stage if his parents nuture him to the age of 18, inculcating him not only language but all the culture accumulated by preceding generations and the culture prevailing in their generation and community eg. Evangelists, Catholics, Chinese, Islamic fundamentalists etc.. and also environmentalists, anti GMOs, marxists... Generally we reproduce shortly after leaving parental custody. As you say, only child brains that are obedient and trusty of what their parents and "tribal" elders tell them can survive; otherwise because of the frailty of our species we could not survive and we would not be the 6.5 billions we are. So non obedient brains have almost disappeared from the gene pool or are only in small frequency. Therefore Darwinian evolution by the language of genes and the transmission of culture by memes are inseparable.

Mis à jour le 27/07/2016 pratclif.com