telomeres

Our current understanding of biology suggests that telomeres play a role in protecting genetic information during the replication process. During every cell division, the protective ends of every strand of DNA are shortened just a bit, protecting the important stuff from damage.

If memes are analogous to genes as the fundamental unit of cultural reproduction, what are our cultural telomeres?

Religious practices and rituals serve as the "protective ends," the decorative embellishments around the true function of culture, ensuring that the really vital parts are successfully replicated and passed on to the next generation. There is no observable utility that can be justified rationally in the practice of baptism, for example, or the observance of ancient, arbitrary dietary restrictions. For what reason should an intelligent, thinking person reproduce these activities in his own life? Why should he feel obligated to pass them on to his children?

Telomeres, unlike other genetic material, do not directly code for specific functions. Rather, their utility is implicit in their presence. They serve no purpose other than to protect the replication of the more functional parts of the code, progressively shortening during each replication cycle until organism death. Without their presence, the replication process would fail, and the organism would die much sooner, or perhaps fail to reproduce altogether.

Nobody needs to baptize their children in order to live a good life. Nobody needs to refrain from eating pork or shellfish because some book written thousands of years ago said so. But if you stop doing all the seemingly strange and useless things your forefathers did because they didn't seem useful to you, what protective ends are left to preserve the real substance of your culture? What guarantee do you have that they will successfully be reproduced through the ages?