The Selfish Gene

I recently read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. It's a look at evolution from the perspective of the gene as the unit of replication and natural selection (rather than treating the individual organism as the fundamental unit).

Near the beginning of the book, there is this statement discussing possible moral take-aways of the book:

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave. [...] My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene's law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live.

And he goes on to emphasize that in building a society we wish to live in, we must teach the desired traits (generosity, altruism, etc.), since they will not be hard-wired by biology.

This is an example of an appropriate attitude towards evolution. Christians ought to learn from this atheist. Unfortunately, many easily-heard voices in the evangelical Christian community proclaim the "evils" of evolution and attack the science. This leads to a number of problems:

1. It wastes energy and resources tackling the wrong challenge. The real challenge is working out an understanding of what the general revelation of science tells us about the nature of God.
2. The Christian community (needlessly) appears backwards in it's views on science
3. It creates unnecessary barriers to belief (and offers good reasons to dis-believe.)

In a future post I will discuss why there is resistance to this viewpoint among evangelical Christians.