Exercise: Critique the model response

Just like a viral post on social media, a religious idea needs a messenger, a recognizable symbol, and a repeated experience to reach more people. Thus, the spread of religions can be described as a memetic process where ideas compete for attention.

World religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism have all achieved their spread solely through peaceful preaching and the free consent of individuals. No state power or coercion has played a part in this throughout history.

Studies show that social media algorithms have in practice reduced the spread of religious content, because such content always receives lower engagement than content about entertainment and controversy.

Conviction resulting from personal religious experience, e.g., in the form of a spiritual experience or conversion story, cannot be adequately described by the memetics model alone, because such experience is internal and individual.

Islam is currently the fastest-growing religion in the world and, according to projections by the Pew Research Center, will be the world's largest religion by the middle of this century. This is mainly explained by the fact that Muslims use social media much more effectively than Christians.

Worldviews that do not rely on supernatural premises, such as humanism or philosophical naturalism, are fundamentally unprovable, as they cannot verify their own values through science.