Greetings. As you have stated though, "These concepts contributed to by people." I.e. the people are the source of the concept. Concepts don't have the ability to spread or evolve - people do that part.
For example, a man is completely isolated on an island and has no method of communicating with the rest of the world comes up with an idea/concept. He lives his entire solitary life by this idea/concept and he never writes it down/he never draws it out. He essentially never details his idea. He passes away. The idea/concept is gone with him in that situation.
In this scenario, there is no "we-space" in which you find that the meme is greater than the sum of the parts. The context is religion we are speaking of, and that is a system. A single gust of wind is not a tornado. But when combined with other currents of winds in a particular way, a tornado is born. And it begins to take on properties and a life of its own, greater than any individual wind current. It is an emergent reality, that cannot be reduced down to the individual components as causal.
Change the above story slightly. He writes out his ideas on a set of stones, on the island. He passes away and 100 years later someone finds his writings. They don't understand and could care less about them, destroy them completely and they never tell anyone about them, they pass away. The idea/concept is still gone and goes nowhere.
In this scenario, there never was a shared meme. That requires at least two participants. It never became a meme. It was just an isolated idea in one person's head, whether they wrote it down or not. But if there had been a second person on that island, and they both shared and participated in a belief system, then during their time together that shared idea would not only be contributed to by them, but it, as an emergent property of that interaction, would itself have influence over the both of them. These systems affect the world, like that tornado cutting down trees and homes under its unique power, contributed to by the forces of individual wind currents that participate in it.
That if you cut off all the individual wind currents supplying the system, yes the emergent property of the tornado would be affected and cease to exist. But that does not mean that the tornado can be understood as nothing but wind currents. It's much more than that.
You cannot examine an atom, and hope to understand a cell, let alone a full human body. You have to deal with those as systems. It's the same thing with religion. It's more than just a collection of beliefs. It's a stew that has a characteristic and life of its own, greater than the sum of its component parts. It's not a stew until all the parts come together and begin to interact with each other and something novel appears.
There is a difference between a recipe found in a book, and the actual dish itself. The former is conceptual. The latter is something that can be eaten and becomes part of the person eating it. Religion isn't a recipe book. It's something people eat and make a part of themselves, and contribute back into, just like that system of a tornado, influencing and influenced by the individual currents.
Change the above slightly again. The man on the island and the idea/concept writes it down in several places - on stones, leaves, animals, etc. and all of these are found by a group of explorors 200 years later. They take those writings decypher them and build a society based on them. 1,000 years later the society they built evolves based on updating and adding their own concepts to the original idea/concept.
If others used the medium of writing to pick up these ideas, and then shared them with each other in which they all participated and interacted, then you have a system. Prior to that, it's not a system. Prior to that, it's not a religion.
Everything described above is man-made/man caused.
No, not exactly. Yes, the material that goes into making a religious system comes out of human ideas, or rather human vision born out of existential need, but its unique life is more than just a collection of concepts and ideas and values. It's a vital organic system that is greater than the sum of the parts. It too with be influenced and shaped by environmental pressures, the same way anything else in evolution works.
Increase the pressure on the environment, and this system will begin to influence all it's member components. That causal relationship, also goes back the other direction. It's not a one way causal relationship, in other words. That's what I've been trying to point at. It's not just bottom up, but top down as well.
The idea came from a man and it only survived, spread, and evolved by way of other men/women/humans.
And, the part you seem to be missing, it that it also evolves the men and women who are participating within it. These are feedback systems. A and B create C, and C creates A and B in an image of itself. Man creates God in his own image, so that God can create man in his own, in other words.
Obviously if you killed all humans, that system would collapse. But that's no different than if you removed all atoms, all life would collapse as well. But is life nothing but atoms? A reductionist might try to imagine that, but I consider that a mostly useless, unrealistic way to understand the world.
The idea/cocnept, that came from a man, has no self ability to replciate and evolve - that what people do with ideas and concepts.
That is not correct. It does have the ability to replicate and evolve. Just like a tornado has a life of its own and can evolve and replicate, once that system has emerged.
It all goes back to people.
It can also all goes back to atoms. But that doesn't address complexity at all. Systems are things in themselves, and can only be understood, not looking at atoms, but the interactions of all the component parts creating something novel.
