Read The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture for Free Online

Somewhere in West Africa, the Ebola virus stays hidden and occasionally breaks out, generally through apes into human populations.
    In biology, it is often unclear why a specific pathogen breaks out into the general population. Why do we get one type of flu one year and a different one another year? It appears to be related to the wide number of flu viruses in many different reservoirs. Each virus is held in check due to isolation, lack of efficient vectors or general immunity to the specific strain.
    A virus can stay quiescent for years, during which time it may mutate and change many times until one variant finds the key to breaking out. Thus, the outbreaks of plague during the Middle Ages may have been asuccession of mutated pathogens from an East African reservoir. Each was different enough to overwhelm the defenses of those in its path.
----
    8 Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death: Natural & Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (The Free Press 1983).

Religious Viral Reservoirs
    God viruses also have reservoirs. Afghanistan was the reservoir for two fundamentalist variants, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban was a local variant of strict Islam that began as a reaction to perceived corruption in Afghan society. Al Qaeda, as noted earlier, was an offshoot of Wahibism in Saudi Arabia. Both sought to impose Shari’a law on society, which severely restricted women’s rights and sought to eliminate western influence by outlawing television, photography, kite-flying, chess and other things.
    While the two movements had different origins, they were both fundamentalist responses to perceived corruption and sought to purify the society and believers. After growing and developing inside the Afghanistan reservoir, these highly parasitic and aggressive viruses broke out in the 1990s to infect a wide geographic area. Once out of the reservoir, they had the power to gain a foothold in many countries by infecting young and even well-educated Muslims. Al Qaeda is particularly effective at infecting younger people. For example, it is rare for an Al Qaeda suicide bomber to be over 30 years old.
    In centuries past, god viruses spread much like biological ones, following trade routes and armies. Today, religion can spread via the Internet and other forms of high-speed global communication. With this new electronic nervous system, fundamentalism can crop up anywhere and at unprecedented rates. It no longer needs traditional trade routes or conquering armies. Global infections can happen from remote reservoirs that are untouchable by western or any other armies.
    Forms of Islamic fundamentalism have spread widely from England to Indonesia. The immune system for this type of infection has not yet been developed, and as a result, governments and other religious groups are struggling to contain it. Military response is not likely to succeed and has probably strengthened the Islamic fundamentalists. Interestingly, the development of Islamic fundamentalism has provoked Christian fundamentalism, which is now seen in strong measure throughout the U.S. military discussed more in the next chapter. When President Bush referred to “a crusade” to combat Islamic terrorism, it resonated positively with many Christian fundamentalistsand negatively with many Islamic fundamentalists. The two viruses can and do feed off one another.
    In the United States, reservoirs of particularly parasitic viruses reside in places like Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University or Pat Robertson’s Regent University. For the greater part of the last 50 years, Southern Baptists seem to be the largest reservoir of fundamentalism, although it exists among Pentecostals and Nazarenes as well.
    While these seem to be the obvious reservoirs, it is difficult to predict which reservoir will produce the most effective god virus. Who would have guessed in 1820 that Joseph Smith, a talented, charismatic fabricator of fantastic tales, would spawn the highly infectious Mormon virus? Who