This article critiques Richard Dawkins’ selfish gene theory, gradualism, and religion, questioning whether his theories can adequately explain the complexity of evolution and religion.
“Natural selection has no mind, no mind’s eye, and it does not plan for the future. It has no foresight, no insight, no vision at all. If natural selection is the clockwork of nature, it is a blind clockwork.” This is a passage from Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Clockwork, in which he harshly criticizes creationism and leapfrog theories. In his other book, The Selfish Gene, we get a more in-depth look at Richard Dawkins’ thoughts on evolution and the units of evolution. Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist who proposed the selfish gene theory, which states that natural selection ultimately works at the gene level, supports gradualism, which states that evolution occurs steadily at a very slow pace, and argues that religion is a kind of mental virus through his meme theory, which he proposed to explain the phenomenon of human culture. But as Dae-Ik Jang’s Darwin’s Table shows, there are many different theories of evolution in the literature. And three of Richard Dawkins’ most prominent claims – the selfish gene theory, gradualism, and the incompatibility of science and religion – have serious flaws. In this article, I’ll present my arguments against Richard Dawkins’ claims.
First, there is a lack of conclusive evidence that natural selection works at the gene level. Richard Dawkins’s camp explains that individuals are merely a form of gene carrier, and that natural selection is directed toward increasing the probability of survival of the genes that make up each individual. The selfish gene theory explains how organisms behave, arguing that many seemingly altruistic behaviors of animals are actually selfish from the perspective of their genes to increase their chances of survival. They often use the behavior of worker bees to support their argument. Worker bees don’t have children of their own, but spend their entire lives helping the queen produce offspring. From an individual perspective, this life seems like a huge sacrifice for the group. Especially from an evolutionary perspective, not having offspring means that you don’t have the motivation to evolve, which is like reaching a dead end. However, according to Richard Dawkins, this is due to the bee’s unique genetic system. In bee society, the mechanisms by which females and males are created are different. Females are born when a queen and a male bee mate, and one of their offspring becomes the queen and the other becomes a worker bee. Male bees, on the other hand, are developed from the queen’s unfertilized eggs. Because of this inheritance system, worker bee sisters are much closer genetically than human sisters. Whereas a human sister has a 50% chance of having a particular gene, her other sisters have a 75% chance. Given this fact, it’s more genetically favorable for worker bees to help the queen by not having children. This, according to Richard Dawkins, is why infertile worker bees exist in nature.
However, there are several holes in this argument. According to his theory, over the course of generations, more genes that are more favorable for survival will be passed on, as opposed to genes that cause behavior A and genes that cause behavior B. However, all genes are randomly selected and passed on to the next generation through the meiosis of gametes. That more of an individual’s genes that favor reproduction and survival will be passed on to the next generation makes more sense when we think of individuals than when we think of genes as the unit of evolution. This is because each gene cannot be a judgmental entity. From an individual perspective, animals are capable of complex thought processing through their brains, which allows them to calculate which behaviors are more favorable for survival. For example, someone who doesn’t know the differential equation of gravity can still reflexively catch an object flying at them. But genes are simply polymers of DNA and a few proteins, and while they can carry genetic information, they don’t know how to carry more of it. The explanation that worker bee infertility is a behavior for the benefit of the genes is a form of genetic reductionism, a way of explaining complex phenomena to fit one’s theory. Richard Dawkins argues that there is a 12.5% chance that an individual and its cousins share the same genes, so an individual that dies to save its eight cousins will have more genes. I think this is also an absurd argument. In the face of a predator, can individuals calculate their genetic kinship to each individual and decide whether to fight or retreat? Even if it were possible, would an individual that would sacrifice its life for eight of its cousins flee the predator’s attack if it had only seven cousins in the situation? I don’t find any clear answers to these questions in Richard Dawkins’ book, and I cannot agree with his theory because he presents a phenomenon that can be explained by the selfish gene theory, but does not provide direct evidence for it.
Secondly, I disagree with Richard Dawkins’ theory of gradualism. Gradualism claims that evolution occurs gradually over a long period of time in a direction of increasing complexity. However, after reading Darwin’s Table, I came to support Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium. The theory of punctuated equilibrium states that species evolve rapidly after a long period of stasis. Here are my reasons for refuting gradualism. First and foremost, the current fossil record does not support gradualism. According to gradualism, the fossils we observe today should preserve what they looked like during evolution. However, it’s not hard to find similarly shaped fossils all over the planet, and intermediate stages are only theorized, not easily found. Gradualism doesn’t provide a clear answer to this question, and the Earth’s environment has changed rapidly compared to evolutionary time scales. According to geologists, there have been several supercontinent formations in Earth’s history that have caused major extinctions of species, and at least two snowball Earth events that left glaciers covering the equator. The idea that organisms evolved gradually in the face of such drastic environmental changes is not realistic. We also believe that changes in species and their evolution are caused by chance events. The current consensus is that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by a giant meteorite impact. If the meteorite hadn’t struck, would the reptilian era that dominated the planet have ended and the mammalian heyday have come? No one will ever know the answer to that question. But I think we can all agree that a very different species would have dominated the planet, just as we do today.
Finally, Richard Dawkins argues that religion is a mental virus that is of no benefit to humans and is incompatible with science, so it should disappear from the planet. According to his argument, a mental virus is a parasite that uses the human mind as a host to replicate its information. The human mind is just as susceptible to viruses as cells and computers. He argues that religions that emphasize an afterlife should be purged from the world because they can spread among people and turn them into lethal weapons at any moment. Are science and religion truly incompatible? I believe that science and religion have their own distinct areas. Science constitutes the realm of factual knowledge based on reason, while religion constitutes the realm of values and meaning based on metaphysical existence. Since these two domains are not shared by each other, they can be compatible without adversely affecting each other. Of course, with the development of science in recent centuries, what was once considered the domain of religion is gradually coming into the realm of science. But even so, not all knowledge will ever be revealed, because humans cannot be transcendent beings who can observe the entire history of the Earth. In fact, there are scientists who recognize this limitation and believe in the existence of God. For this reason, I believe that science and religion can coexist, complementing each other. Human life is enriched when science and religion respect each other’s unique domain.
So far, I’ve expressed my opinion on Richard Dawkins’ arguments. The theory of evolution is arguably the most controversial and hypothesized hot potato in science today, ever since Darwin traveled aboard the Beagle and wrote On the Origin of Species. And at the center of it all is Richard Dawkins, one of the most authoritative scientists around. But the fact that I am free to question his ideas and point out areas for improvement is one of the things that makes evolutionary theory one of the more interesting areas of science, because it’s not a finished product. I’d like to conclude this essay by raising the question once again. Richard Dawkins is one of the world’s leading figures in evolutionary biology. Is he a great evolutionary biologist who has advanced our understanding of evolution? Or is he just a thinker who fascinates people with fascinating theories that explain a few fragmentary phenomena without providing any direct evidence? In order to clear his name, he needs to provide more direct evidence for the three claims discussed above, or else he will have to revise his theories completely.
