OK. Apart from the most fundamental problem about the explanation or meta-physics of our physical laws from which an occurrence of Evolution emanates, here are some notes and excerpts from my book on the holes in some of the arguments that seem to support the evolutionary process, particularly what Dawkins proposes. The main point is that the "holes" consist of missing processes that explain what is actually happening in the process of Natural Selection:
An article by David Sloan Wilson ( Beyond Demonic Memes: Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion ) takes Dawkins to task for not dealing with the evolutionary aspects of religion as is practiced by an increasing number of scientists and for Dawkins’ alternative theory of Extended Phenotype. While Wilson states that evolutionary biologists use “a number of hypotheses to study for a trait”, which I take it includes those that are not apparently advantageous (i.e. the peacock’s plumage or religion), he suggests that this provides a good framework for studying the role of religion in Natural Selection, something he says Dawkins fails to do. One thing I can conclude: they both can’t be right (or even someone else with a third opinion) and they are all wrong, or someone (one of them) is right.
The problem is that given the lack of certainty regarding how that Natural Selection process occurs, it seems unscientific to conclude that “it” indeed happened by the suggested manner. Wilson further explains the complexity of Natural Selection by stating that certain traits may not be the result of adaptation, or perhaps they were but are no longer necessary because we have surpassed their need. Yet, they remain. Then there’s the question that even if a trait is adaptive, one needs to determine if the adaptation is simple, complex or not even meant to favor the biological entity that has it (i.e. the evolutionary success of the Rhino virus which causes the common cold). That’s all well and good, but that’s a lot of “ifs” that are interesting yet hardly lead to certainty. That’s OK. I can live with not knowing for sure as long as I don’t stop seeking good answers or at least asking the right questions.
Beyond the brain “errors” that could cause God delusions, Dawkins suggests that there are other replicators, besides DNA, which may be better suited to perpetuate something like religion, namely memes. He defines memes as “units of cultural inheritance.” Besides being Dawkins’ own device, memology is controversial among other scientists, namely because a meme can be subjective, difficult to unitize and therefore hard to measure and study. While it appears to me to be a brilliant alternative for a replicating system, I can see the difficulty some individuals have determining what a meme constitutes. Could culture as a whole be considered a meme or could a component of culture, like the banality of the “wave” at baseball games or the more insidious racial bigotry, be a meme?
All of the above could certainly be candidates and would not pose a contradiction, if we looked upon them the right way. But that is precisely the problem some individuals have when trying to study memes. How does one measure and follow the replication aspects of elements in culture if one can’t really quantize them by a common arbiter? In addition, memes don’t map to genes. However, according to Dawkins, the replication process is either tied to or co-evolving with Natural Selection. How? Well, that’s not clearly demonstrated because of the difficulties associated in tracking and measuring memes and because we have no genetic markers as reference.
Dawkins further suggests that memes may survive in the meme pool (the memeplex) due to their own intrinsic merit (“absolute survival value”) or because of their compatibility with other memes in the memeplex. I suppose that the ideas of reincarnation and the immortality of the soul are two that Dawkins would approve as fitting this possibility. While he argues that the “absolute survival value” of a meme is enough to ensure its permanence, he does not clearly define what that means and instead suggests several things it may mean: that whatever it is, it would cause the meme to survive in any memeplex regardless of its surroundings; that a meme could only survive in terms of other memes, creating alternate memeplexes; that memes may be analogous to genetic complexes (complices?) such as a carnivorous genetic complex or a herbivorous genetic complex. Okie-dokie.
So, do you get the picture? His collegues disagree with him on several levels. But the main point is that in the barrage of suggestion regarding what could explain a meme, a memeplex or the replication of memes, there is no process or descrete steps to account for them. The "limitations" I'm referring to are defined by the conclusions one cannot legitimately make without a way to test or establish how they happen. That's how science is supposed to work.