My Experiences with Religious Memes

Religion memes can take over a mind so much that it supplants most other human thoughts and connections. The example I know best is my own grandfather. Neither I nor any other living descendants of Jacob Aville Rice know much about his early life. Jake and his companions would travel from one Holy Roller church to another and preach. There is no evidence (from any subsequent family wealth) that money was the motivation. Jake devoted himself so much to his religion that he left his family without enough money to meet their essential needs. He virtually ignored my father who nearly died in childhood from infection that followed appendicitis. My father carried the physical scar of the surgery, and the mental scar of his father’s emotional rejection, for life.


Jake had read in the Bible that in the latter days, which he assumed to mean the 1960s, children would hate their parents and parents would hate their children. He understood this to be prescriptive, not descriptive, and he felt obligated by his religion to hate his children. Old home movies show that he was not entirely successful, as he smiled and joked with them a lot when they were adults. His voice on a 1943 homemade record, sent to my parents, did not sound hateful. And the Bible said nothing about hating grandchildren, so scripture permitted him to be very nice to me.


There may be three possible responses that children can make to a parent who sacrifices their emotional lives on the altar of religion. One response is to practice a nurturing and constructive form of religion. Two of my uncles did this. Another response is to reject religious practice. This is what my father and aunt did. I discuss the third response in a later posting.


My own experience of religious conversion to fundamentalist Christianity was probably the most powerful emotion I have ever felt, more powerful even than being in love. I felt like I was swimming in an ocean of joy, everything seemed to glow with invisible color, and the very air of the San Joaquin Valley was sweet, no matter how much dust, pesticide, and exhaust fume it contained. No wonder that, for centuries, many Christians have interpreted this feeling as actual inspiration by the Holy Ghost.


I believe that I have demonstrated my point, that religion can be a very powerful force, the most powerful force, even the exclusive force, in the human mind. How can one describe a person whose entire reality is religion, except that the person is to some degree crazy? Certainly in the case of many of the famous religious figures from history, it was difficult to distinguish mental illness from religious ecstasy. Centuries ago, there was no recognition of mental illness; religious passion was considered to be either from God, or from the devil.


This essay is part of my recently-published book Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged, Stressed-Out World, from Prometheus Books.