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By their own admission, the new scientists propose a wholly deterministic understanding of the human species. Not only are we just another animal, we are, in Ridley's words, a "disposable plaything and tool of a committee of self-interested genes." Or, as Richard Dawkins puts it, "We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. Though I have known it for years, I never seem to get fully used to it."
Randolph Nesse, another proponent, expresses more unease than astonishment:
The discovery that tendencies to altruism are shaped by benefits to genes is one of the most disturbing in the history of science. When I first grasped it, I slept badly for many nights, trying to find some alternative that did not so roughly challenge my sense of good and evil. Understanding this discovery can undermine commitment to morality—it seems silly to restrain oneself if moral behavior is just another strategy for advancing the interests of one's genes. Some students, I am embarrassed to say, have left my courses with a na•ve notion of the selfish-gene theory that seemed to them to justify selfish behavior, despite my best efforts to explain the naturalistic fallacy.
Critics propose many anecdotal exceptions to the selfish-gene theory. What about gay people, or childless couples, who do not plan to perpetuate their genes—how to explain their behavior? Or consider the unselfish acts of Robertson McQuilkin and Mother Teresa, whom I mentioned in part 1 of this essay (see B&C, Jan./Feb. 1998, p. 14). McQuilkin's children are grown and perpetuating genes of their own; Mother Teresa committed to a vow of chastity early in her life. On what basis can we account for their altruistic behavior? As if explaining algebra to a child, the evolutionary psychologists take up such thorny problems one by one and explicate them in terms of the selfish gene. Their energy is boundless, their ingenuity remarkable.
Like all monistic explanations of human behavior, evolutionary psychology has both the virtue and the defect of simplicity. If Robertson McQuilkin argues, as he does, that he stands by his Alzheimer's-afflicted wife out of his love for her and because of his commitment to biblical standards of fidelity—why, of course he would argue that. He makes his living as a Christian writer and speaker, does he not? He is finding a way to propagate the ideas that have served him so well.
The same principle applies to me, too: I am doubtless writing this essay in response to my own selfish gene in order to propagate my Christian world-view. And if you find yourself disagreeing with me, you must be responding to a selfish gene that causes you to react against Christian orthodoxy. Both of us are led by deterministic urges that may not be evident to us or anyone else—except, perhaps, the evolutionary psychologists.
Robert Wright articulates the tautology: "We believe the things—about morality, personal worth, even objective truth—that lead to behaviors that get our genes into the next generation. … What is in our genes' interests is what seems 'right'—morally right, objectively right, whatever sort of rightness is in order."
Carry the logic far enough, and it becomes evident why Professor Nesse slept poorly. Any notion of good and evil disappears. In essence, the evolutionary psychologists have devised a unified theory of human depravity that would make John Calvin blush. Hard-wired for selfishness, we have no potential for anything else.
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