What Does a Football Player, a Moonie and a Terrorist Have in Common?

I am in the process of writing a series of posts about how to prevent vulnerable minds from getting infected with dangerous memes.   Memes are everywhere – coming from every direction.  The danger comes when they shut down rational thinking.

It is not rational that if a football player says a prayer before a game some invisible guy named God, who created the world, will help his team win the game.

Of course, there are players on the losing team that prayed to the same God, that same day.  So obviously it’s irrational to believe that this omnipresent, omnipotent God just happened to like the way the player on the winning team prayed that day…

Okay, how about this – it’s not rational that I left my family, who I loved and who loved me, to run off and join the Moonies.  I spend precious years of my life fundraising for my Messiah, so he could buy lavish property and commit tax evasion.  Not rational at all, but I did it.

It’s not rational that a young woman straps a bomb on her body and detonates, but it happens!!

So what’s going on with the football player, with me, with the terrorist?

This is what I will be blogging about.  More than that though, I will be beginning a discussion about how to prevent dangerous memetic infections from spreading; how to cut them off by building better memes, stronger memes, rational memes.