Completely ludicrous memes for which there is no evidence

Came across this quotation:

Moderate believers implicitly encourage the idea that faith is something to be respected - that it's all right to believe in
completely ludicrous things for which there is no evidence. - Susan Blackmore

It might be a good argument, or the start of one, if it didn't come from someone who describes themselves as "psychologist and memeticist Susan Blackmore" on her website, and who has written a whole volume about the existence of memes "The Meme Machine". Where's the evidence, Susan?

When you see religions as mind viruses that evolved over thousands of years in competition with other, similar, mind viruses, it's easy to see why they have acquired the powerful adaptations they have....Religious memes capture people's time to get themselves spread. Just as the common cold virus makes people sneeze to get itself spread, so religions make people sings hymns and say prayers, and chant and so spread the word of God. They also induce them to part with large sums of money to build glorious mosques, churches and synagogues and to pay the wages of priests who in turn spread the word of God. And how did they get this way? They got this way because less effective versions of the religions, with less dangerous tricks and weapons, failed to infect enough people.

Analogy is not proof. C.S. Lewis, writing many years ago, described this mode of argument as "Bulverism". Bulverism is a logical fallacy where rather than proving that an argument is wrong, a person instead assumes it is wrong, and then goes on to explain why the other person held that argument. It is essentially a circumstantial ad hominem argument. He noted that:

"You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly."

He also notes how this method works, and in a good deal of detail, shows how it is fallacious, and how the user - in this case Susan Blackmore - assumes that her own beliefs are somehow "pure" and "immune" to these "memes"; she has, in other words, claimed a priveliged position, on which she can see how people believe silly things.

Here is Lewis in detail on the problem:

The Freudians have discovered that we exist as bundles of complexes. The Marxians have discovered that we exist as members of some economic class. In the old days it was supposed that if a thing seemed obviously true to a hundred men, then it was probably true in fact. Nowadays the Freudian will tell you to go and analyze the hundred: you will find that they all think Elizabeth [I] a great queen because they all have a mother-complex. Their thoughts are psychologically tainted at the source. And the Marxist will tell you to go and examine the economic interests of the hundred; you will find that they all think freedom a good thing because they are all members of the bourgeoisie whose prosperity is increased by a policy of laissez-faire. Their thoughts are "ideologically tainted" at the source. Now this is obviously great fun; but it has not always been noticed that there is a bill to pay for it. There are two questions that people who say this kind of thing ought to be asked. The first is, are all thoughts thus tainted at the source, or only some? The second is, does the taint invalidate the tainted thought - in the sense of making it untrue - or not?

If they say that all thoughts are thus tainted, then, of course, we must remind them that Freudianism and Marxism are as much systems of thought as Christian theology or philosophical idealism. The Freudian and Marxian are in the same boat with all the rest of us, and cannot criticize us from outside. They have sawn off the branch they were sitting on. If, on the other hand, they say that the taint need not invalidate their thinking, then neither need it invalidate ours. In which case they have saved their own branch, but also saved ours along with it. The only line they can really take is to say that some thoughts are tainted and others are not - which has the advantage (if Freudians and Marxians regard it as an advantage) of being what every sane man has always believed. But if that is so, we must then ask how you find out which are tainted and which are not. It is no earthly use saying that those are tainted which agree with the secret wishes of the thinker. Some of the things I should like to believe must in fact be true; it is impossible to arrange a universe which contradicts everyone's wishes, in every respect, at every moment. Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant - but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.

If some of the thinkers like Dawkins or Blackmore took notice of this, we'd have a little less of the "mind virus" nonsense.

If I was going to be naughty, I'd ask: can a "virus of the mind" show up visibly as a side-effect, for instance, in funny hair colouring that really doesn't suit someone, so that they don't notice it?