The Use and Abuse of Natural Selection

It is evident in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins that evolution and the process of natural selection are used as the foundation for atheism, which in turn claims to be ‘scientific’. Dawkins states that his readers should “be steeped in natural selection, immersed in it, swim about in it, before you can truly appreciate its power.” (p. 143). Although I was ‘steeped in natural selection’ during my biological studies at university, I decided to go further than that and read On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin. In this article, I will try to explain how natural selection is used to explain nature by Darwin and to explain human life by Dawkins.

For those of you who have not been ‘immersed’ in natural selection, here are the core tenets of the idea in a nutshell. All species of plants and animals surviving today are involved in a constant struggle for life. Individuals within species and populations of different species living in the same area compete with each other for survival and/or reproduction. Individuals that are most capable of surviving and reproducing under a given set of living conditions will be favoured in nature. The winning individuals in each generation are therefore ‘selected’ to pass on their winning genes to the next generation. Each species will compete with other species in the same way, thus allowing some species to dominate others during the course of time. The product of this process (called natural selection by Darwin) is that the best adapted individuals and species will survive in the long term – hence the phrase “survival of the fittest”.  

Over the course of many generations, the process of natural selection can cause physical and/or behavioural changes in plants and animals, such that they are better adapted to their environment. Consequently, some populations of plants and animals that are exposed to different living conditions may look or act differently when compared to their ancestors and other relatives. The easiest way to examine this process is to look at the faster version of natural selection – artificial selection. Artificial selection is a fancy term for humans breeding plants and animals to suit our own purposes. We are often capable of driving this process of change very quickly and, sometimes, in rather strange directions. Thus, Darwin uses examples of domesticated plants and animals to explain how the same process occurs in nature.

The most familiar use of artificial selection for most of us is the breeding of dogs. Today, we have many distinct breeds of dogs, some of which are so incredibly different from one another that, if we didn’t know better, we may classify them as different species. They range from tiny creatures that can fit into handbags to enormous hounds that look like they could be ridden into battle! Artificial selection has produced all of the known dog breeds. In the case of ‘toy dogs’, breeders consistently favoured smaller individuals, whereas giant dogs were produced during a similar, but opposite selection process. Although Chihuahuas and Great Danes cannot be crossbred today, we know that they all came from an ancestral population of domestic dogs. However, if these two breeds were encountered in nature (i.e. if they were not domesticated), we would classify them as separate species.

As Darwin masterfully shows in his book, our classification of organisms into separate species is artificial. We use the term ‘species’ in biology as a useful way to separate groups of things that seem ‘different enough’ to us. However, as with Great Danes and Chihuahuas, just because closely related species look different to us today, does not mean that they really are that different to each other. For example, horses, donkeys and zebras are all considered to be different species. However, it is likely that these species, although they do not breed successfully today (they produce sterile hybrids like mules), all come from the same ancestor. Using this argument, Darwin shows that all of the closely related species in nature most likely came from common ancestors. The differences we observe between them today (e.g. stripes on zebras but not on horses) are likely to be the product of many generations of selection under different conditions for life (e.g. wild living vs. domestication).

All of the above arguments are logically sound and have been backed up by good science. Furthermore, the theory of natural selection is seen as a crucial part of understanding biology and ecology. I have seen university libraries packed to the rafters with scientific articles examining natural selection in plants and animals in great detail. This is the ‘mountain of evidence’ that people point to when discussing evolution. However, the scientists today who still consider the account of creation in the Bible to be true are not trying to dismiss this evidence. We accept the theory of natural selection, but we do not allow it to be stretched beyond its limits.

In his book, Darwin presents good evidence for what is known today as microevolution – i.e. small changes occurring between two or more separate populations that build up to the point that they can be classified as separate species. However, he then stretches this back to unobservable points in time, saying that this same process can be traced back to common ancestors of all plants and animals. Darwin presented little hard evidence for what is now known as macroevolution – i.e. the major changes that supposedly occurred between different types of plants and animals. One of the major issues that Darwin identified was the lack of fossils of the intermediary forms e.g. where is the connection between the dog family and the cat family, or the birds and the reptiles? The lack of evidence for macroevolution has not resolved itself since Darwin’s day, and today the leading evolutionary biologists (Stephen Jay Gould, amongst others) have had to come up with the theory of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ to try and explain this lack (see Gould & Eldredge, 1993 for an overview).

After re-steeping myself in natural selection (following Dawkins’ advice), my opinion that Darwin started with a very sound theory but then stretched it too far remains the same. However, if we can say that Darwin stretched his theory, then Dawkins has gone beyond that and positively abused it. Unlike Darwin, whose chief goal was scientific discovery; Dawkins has the ulterior motive of trying to make science support his atheistic beliefs. Consequently, he takes the idea of natural selection far beyond what Darwin had in mind for it, and his logic is more far-fetched than anything the original author could have imagined.

There is one species on earth that goes routinely goes against everything one would expect in the natural world following natural selection. Darwin, wisely, avoids addressing this enigmatic species as much as possible, whereas Dawkins jumps in to the argument headfirst. The enigmatic species is, of course, Homo sapiens. Humans can be very good or very evil, we can be completely obedient or entirely rebellious, we can love enough to die for one another, or hate enough to murder in cold blood. Add to that list our common desire to believe in something greater than ourselves, our questions of conscience and eternity, and you have one very complex species. Dawkins, following the idea that we are all ‘highly evolved’ animals, makes the mistake of trying to explain human behaviour in terms of evolution. As I will demonstrate below, this requires a good stretch of the imagination and abuse of natural selection as a theory.

In an attempt to explain why people have religious tendencies (or simply consciences), Dawkins uses the analogy of a moth being drawn to a flame (pp.201-202). A moth’s brain is hard-wired in such a way that it uses the direction of light as a guide at night. This works perfectly when the light is a natural one (e.g. the moon), but it all goes haywire when the light is artificial (e.g. a candle). The result is that moths fly into candles, killing themselves in the process. Dawkins then tries to draw a parallel of this to human experience. We, apparently, have been geared by natural selection in a way that enhances our survival and reproduction. However, a by-product of this natural wiring is that we are ‘susceptible’ to becoming religious, or falling in love, or sacrificing ourselves for others, or adopting children etc. etc.

One of the glaring issues with the moth-light analogy is that humans don’t behave predictably in response to given stimuli, like moths do. Two young children may be brought up in exactly the same religion, and exposed to the same stimuli, yet they will not necessarily go on to behave the same way as adults. Being brought up as Catholics, one may later become a priest whereas the other may reject Catholicism altogether. I use this example because Dawkins likes to think that religion is simply something that is foisted on to unsuspecting children, who seem to then have little choice in life but to become religious. Indeed, how we are brought up is an incredibly important part of who we later become, but our childhood by no means sets our lives in stone. Once again, real people are too complex to be forced into evolutionary concepts of how they should behave. We have a little thing called a free will, which Dawkins tries his best to ignore.

If moths were to behave like humans, then the moths around our hypothetical candlelight would do some amazing things. Some moths would follow their natural compass into the flame; some would decide against their compass and fly away from the flame; some would fly into the flame-doomed ones in order to save their lives; perhaps some would form a club to try and ‘conquer the candle’ and put its flame out, thus saving the lives of many other moths! Of course, normal moths don’t behave that way – because they don’t have human attributes. Humans have instincts, too, but we are able to override them. When you touch an open flame, you instinctively withdraw your hand; yet, if you put your mind to it, you could walk over a bed of glowing hot coals. Unlike animals, our minds can conquer any of our natural instincts – even the strongest ones that are directly linked to survival and reproduction.    

Dawkins’ main thesis is that natural selection ‘misfires’ a great deal in human beings. All of our most deeply held beliefs and feelings are reduced to natural selection having ‘misfired’. Imagine a young soldier jumping on to a live hand grenade in order to save his platoon members. He understood what a grenade does (i.e. it is not what a candle flame is to a moth), and he understood that jumping on it would likely be the end of his life. His action goes directly against his instinctive self-preservation produced by natural selection, so why did he do it? The obvious answer is: to save the lives of his friends – note, not his direct relatives (thus allowing his genes to continue), but his friends. In Dawkins’ world, natural selection must have ‘misfired’ on this unfortunate soldier. In the real world, we would honour this soldier’s action and call it self-sacrificial love for his friends. Dawkins tries to back-pedal from reducing everything in life to ‘misfiring natural selection’ by calling these misfires: “Darwinian mistakes: blessed, precious mistakes” (p.253). We won’t ask how he even knows the meaning of the terms ‘blessed’ and ‘precious’, as they are certainly not present in his Darwinian frame of reference!

Natural selection is a useful theory that can be used as a foundation for exploring the realms of biology and ecology. It would be silly to try and ignore the theory, as some Christians do, on the basis that it is ‘anti-Christian’. The theory in its essence is not anti- or pro- any religion; it was intended only as a way to better understand the natural world around us. It could even be argued that the process itself was set in place by God, after he had created the major kinds of living things (the command to "Be fruitful and multiply" is given seven times in Genesis). When we examine it in this light, it should become apparent that the theory has its limitations – it is not, as Dawkins likes to believe, some grand unifying theory that explains our every thought and deed. Whilst it may explain some natural instincts that govern our physical bodies, it stops far short of explaining how or why our higher nature (i.e. mind, soul, spirit) is able to circumvent our natural instincts through the free will.

The God Delusion and atheism theory in general simply falls too far short of real life. No amount of stretching or misfiring natural selection can explain who we are and what we do. In reality, we intimately understand concepts that have no physical properties, yet rank these as amongst the most important things in our lives (e.g. love, justice, mercy, peace, joy). In order to discover how we understand these things, we need to find their Source.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4).