Page "Viruses of the Mind" Paragraph 11

Dawkins stresses his claim that religious beliefs do not spread as a result of evidence in their support, but typically by cultural transmission, in most cases from parents or from charismatic individuals.

He refers to this as involving " epidemiology, not evidence ".

Further Dawkins distinguishes this process from the spread of scientific ideas, which, he suggests, is constrained by the requirement to conform with certain virtues of standard methodology: " testability, evidential support, precision, quantifiability, consistency, intersubjectivity, repeatability, universality, progressiveness, independence of cultural milieu, and so on ".

He points out that faith " spreads despite a total lack of every single one of these virtues ".