It is funny to observe that even a religion is itself the product of, and subject to, and actively conducting evolution exactly the same as biology.
All evelotion is is the axiom or truism "That which works, works."
That statement can't be denied or escaped, and regardless what your mystical feelings are about how unbelievable it is that an eyeball just evolved by itself because that would be magic and magic is impossible but gods are magic that is possible or maybe gods aren't magic...I'm so confused...anyway no matter what you think about all that, there is no way around such a basic statement. You can't not-believe it.
And everything else ultimately flows from that. You can avoid considering it and imagine that there is some unknown other stuff between that and evolution and eyeballs, but you can't actually produce that unknown other stuff if you are ever forced to consider it.
And so it is with any self-oganizing self-modifying system, including organized religions and religious ideas.
You are right that they evolve strategies to perpetuate themselves. That which works, works. If someone had a religious idea to only accept seekers but keep themselves secret and never advertise, not even to their own offspring, that religion would cease to exist within a generation. Anyone still in it after that would have to be in some new religion resulting from a mutation that it's ok to bring in at least some new people by some means or other.
All evelotion is is the axiom or truism "That which works, works."
That statement can't be denied or escaped, and regardless what your mystical feelings are about how unbelievable it is that an eyeball just evolved by itself because that would be magic and magic is impossible but gods are magic that is possible or maybe gods aren't magic...I'm so confused...anyway no matter what you think about all that, there is no way around such a basic statement. You can't not-believe it.
And everything else ultimately flows from that. You can avoid considering it and imagine that there is some unknown other stuff between that and evolution and eyeballs, but you can't actually produce that unknown other stuff if you are ever forced to consider it.
And so it is with any self-oganizing self-modifying system, including organized religions and religious ideas.
You are right that they evolve strategies to perpetuate themselves. That which works, works. If someone had a religious idea to only accept seekers but keep themselves secret and never advertise, not even to their own offspring, that religion would cease to exist within a generation. Anyone still in it after that would have to be in some new religion resulting from a mutation that it's ok to bring in at least some new people by some means or other.