Much could be said of the movie Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (of Third Rock from the Sun fame), et al. It is a well done, interesting, visually appealing story. Surely, much will be written about the concept of dreams; lucid dreaming, entering and manipulating dreams, dreams within dreams, etc.
Yet, one thing that I noted is that this is a meme movie. That is to say that it plays off of the idea, most recently popularized by Richard Dawkins, that ideas are like viruses and are susceptible to infection and spread. Granted, as H. Allen Orr (the Shirley Cox Kearns Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester) states it, “most scientists do not accept Dawkins’s theory of memes.”1 Yet, while Richard Dawkins’ theory is fallacious—as is the overwhelming majority of anything he ever claims—ideas certainly are things that we share, entertain, accept, deny, augment, etc. In Inception ideas are not only able to be extracted—in the form of information—but implanted. They are implanted at a deep and basic enough level that the person into whom it was implanted does not recognize the implant as the idea takes shape from basic form deep within their minds into a full orbed idea.
For example, the New Atheists plant the idea of rebelling against “religion” (a rebellion that God thought of first and encourages) and the idea turns into a non-sequiturous rebellion against God.
This is precisely the hidden premise upon which the New Atheist movement is based. Now, the admitted premise of the movement is the very reason that it has conceptually failed. It has not failed as to gain celebrity and wealth for its cenobites. It has not failed to show us how very popular one can become whilst expressing shocking levels of ignorance of that which they criticize. It has not failed to prove—and here is their publicly proclaimed premise and why the failed—that they are cowardly.
You see, the New Atheists have stated that what really set off the New Atheist crusade was the 9/11 attacks upon America. What caused the attacks and what was to be the New Atheist’s target? Radical Islam and the holy book, prophet and god which inspired the terrorists. Yet, the New Atheists were infected by the—truly brilliant, by the way—Harrisian Meme. Sam Harris proposed that religious extremists arise only because moderate religionists refuse to moderate and thus, end up giving rise to, or giving way to, extremism.
In this way the New Atheists could simply sidestep radical Islam. Their criticism of Islam is about 1%, at best, while 99% is aimed at Christianity (with another 1% on miscellaneous). Ask yourself: which New Atheist has toured radical, or even moderate, Islamic countries giving interviews on Islamic radio and TV and giving lectures and engaging in debates besmirching the Qur’an, Islam, Muhammad, Allah or anything Muslim? Which has done likewise in attempting to discredit the Qur’an, Islam, Muhammad, Allah or anything Muslim? Not a one. Rather, they sit in the comfort, safety, freedom and lucrativeness of the UK and USA—countries founded on Judeo-Christina principles—and take on the world’s true evils: Pat Robertson, the Pope, Jerry Falwell, the Bishop of Canterbury, etc. I would say that they should be ashamed of themselves but shame is the daughter of integrity and since they have no integrity, they have no shame—much less when their amen-chorus-of-cult-of-personality-adherents applaud, repeat and defend their every folly.
I detailed this issue, their conceptual failure as a movement, in the essay at this link.
Now to their hidden premise: they base their movement on the concept of memes and so they seek to implant their memes within others. This may, itself, sound like a sci-fi sort of claim to make. However, I have evidence and will simply direct the interested reader to consider three areas (only three of many actually) where the New Atheists are at work seeking to implant memes into the populace:
1) Daniel Dennett has specifically spelled out that he seeks to invent a way of Inception whereby people would become infected by the DHDH Meme (Dennett, Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens):
Daniel Dennett: I think it may be easier than we’re supposing to shake peoples’ faith. There’s been a moratorium on this for a long time. We’re just the beginning of a new wave of explicit attempts to shake peoples’ faith. And it’s bearing fruit…
I think it’s a good thing to encourage and I don’t think we should assume that we can’t do this. I think we can.Richard Dawkins: Yes, it’s almost patronising to suggest that we couldn’t and to suggest that it shouldn’t…
Daniel Dennett: …I would love to do is to invent a memorable catchphrase or term that would rise unbidden in their minds when they caught themselves doing it, and then they would think oh, this is one of those cosmic shifts that Dennett and Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens are talking about. Oh! right! and they think this is somehow illicit, just to create a little more awareness in them of what a strange thing it is that they’re doing.
More details on this at the essay Memetic Mesmerism and Eumemics
2) Sam Harris admits to engaging upon a behind the scenes media campaign whereby he is personally contacting and urging various personages involved in various media formats to stick it to believers via the media.
More details on this at the essay More Evidence of Pro-Atheism and Anti-Theism Media Campaigns
3) The New Atheists not only want to raise their children to be atheists but want to interfere with believers who want to raise their children to be believers—they want to dictate child rearing. They already influence children via books, movie and other media. Two examples are:
Philip Pullman; whose children’s books are about “killing God”: see Philip Pullman the Atheosbishop of Canterbury and Atheism’s Sales Pitch to Children
Ricky Gervais; whose children’s book, Flanimals, besmirches the concept of creation: see Flanimals: Atheists Continue Attempting to Propagandize Kids—Theirs and Yours, his grown up movie besmirches the concept of God, see Ricky Gervais – The Invention of Atheism with Christian Values and he may be playing a part in the anti-Christian TV show The Office, see Atheism, Christianity and “The Office,” part 1 of 2
More details on this in general see my section on Athiest Child Rearing
Thus, overall it appears that while the New Atheists utterly fail in the areas of history, logic, science, theology, etc. they succeed in the area of inception—meme infection. Yet, I do not believe that they succeed by infectious intellectual ideas but by appealing to the emotions of people who are rebelling against God. Misery loves company and the sinful rebel always seeks likeminded comrades. This is why the New Atheists movement is so very vociferous, besmirchful, rude and crude—they play upon emotions and hide rebellion against God under a very thinly veneered facade of scientific and intellectual respectability.