"A religion that promotes large families will, assuming vertical memetic transmission, produce more babies to grow up in that religion than one that promotes small families. Religious memes therefore become an important manipulator of genetic success. Catholicism's taboo against birth control has been extremely effective in filling the world with millions of Catholics who bring up their children to believe that condoms and the pill are evil, and that God wants them to have as many children as possible."

"[These examples of altruism trick] are sufficient to show that memedriven altruism is an obvious meme-trick ready for exploitation. It should not, therefore, surprise us to find that many of the most powerful and widespread memeplexes use it in various forms. Pre-eminent are the religions."

"Memes do not need to be true to be successful."

"There is no evolutionary God who can look at the design of the eye and say 'it would be better if we got rid of this bit and started again'. There is no starting again."

A chapter from this book has been published on the area Scientia, Religions As Memeplexes.