No Selfish-Genes
We humans are a storytelling animal. For sure, that is not all that we are, but stories form a central part of our identity. Everything we do is informed by, or an imitation of, the stories we tell ourselves. One of the things Christian leaders got wrong in the mid to late 20th Century, and part of why we lost the culture wars, is because we thought that what was at stake were cold, hard facts. We thought this was a purely intellectual debate. We thought that if we could assemble the most facts, document them, and present them in a compelling way, we would win the day.
What we neglected was the imagination. And one of the first areas we surrendered was the realm of the arts. After all, what did it matter if a deconstructionist was teaching the English Lit. Class at the local university? How were storytellers ever going to make that much of a difference? We would focus on the economics, business affairs, and the hard sciences. Why should we care about what was happening in the Fine Arts Department of the academy? Yet, the most logical philosopher of the West, Plato, once said, “Give me the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” Stories capture the imaginations of a culture and move the world in ways no logical argument ever could.
Iain McGilchrist make the argument that left brain thinking is leading to the collapse of Western Civilization. According to McGilchrist, the Enlightenment has been taken to such an extreme, with an over-focus on reason, that we have destroyed the soul of the culture, by neglecting its literature, its fine arts, it poetry, and its spirituality. I would add, that we Christian leaders, especially those of us who think of ourselves as the intellectual leaders, have contributed to this collapse, by failing to take more seriously the imagination in spiritual formation.
See the fine video: Why Left Brain Thinking s Leading to Western Civilization’s Collapse.
Take for example, in the Wesleyan movement, you have the two great founders, John Wesley, the preacher and the organizer, and his brother, Charles Wesley, the poet and songwriter. A minimal number of people can quote John’s sermons, but millions know Charles’ songs by heart. So, who had the longest last impact on the movement? The imagination matters as much as the hard facts.
So, we must attend to the stories. Not for the least, because some of the most influential critics of Christianity and purveyors of secular ideology are brilliant storytellers. Take Richard Dawkins, a clever man of science who frequently dawns the habit of a scientist while slyly slipping into the role of a storyteller, all the while pretending as if he were still doing science.
An example of this is in his book The Selfish Gene, where he tell a story about how genetic material controls people in the way similar to how astronauts might control a spaceship. This story about genes piloting human robots and other stories like it have a way of shaping the narrative by which we all live. And, left unexamined and unchallenged, these stories slip into our canon of well established facts from which we conduct our lives.
In his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins dismantles the notion of traditional morality, not through hard science, but through storytelling. David Bentley Hart’s brilliant book The Experience of God points this out with great clarity. He writes,
Richard Dawkins most memorably describes what genes do: “Now they swarm in huge colonies,” he writes, “safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.” Then compare this to Denis Noble’s elegant inversion of its central conceits: “Now they are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.” Now, what precisely is the difference between these two approaches to genetic theory? Dawkins has graciously granted that Noble’s revision of his text is every bit as plausible as the original, and that it really is all a matter of perspective in the end (which is a significant concession, since it means that the original text is making claims that are not empirical but only, at best, picturesque). In fact, though, the two passages are not comparably plausible at all. Colorful though it is, Noble’s language is largely literally true. That of Dawkins, by contrast, is metaphorical all the way down: lumbering robots, manipulation, remote control, “they created us”—all of this is winsome enough, and even a little quaint (in a 1950s science fiction sort of way), but more or less nonsensical as well. Rhetorically speaking, it is a splendid example of the “pathetic fallacy,” the naive habit of attributing human motives and intentions to nonhuman objects. It certainly describes nothing real, or even analogously real. Especially fanciful are those ridiculous robots, since they are precisely the sorts of things that we human beings—capable as we are of conscious intentions—most definitely are not. The image does, however, make obvious how very mechanistic a metaphor the “selfish gene” really is.”
What I would now like to do is simplify this whole argument, by attempting to paraphrase it, so that an eighth grade audience might understand it. The point is not to pander our talk down to my audience or readers, but simply to take out some of the hard to understand jargon that is built into this very technical work.
The Eighth Grade Paraphrase
Richard Dawkins and Denis Noble both describe genes, but in very different ways. Dawkins says that genes are like tiny controlling agents, hiding inside our bodies like little pilots controlling robots, directing everything we do. He even suggests that our main purpose in life is to keep our genes alive.
Denis Noble, on the other hand, sees things differently. He describes genes as passive codes that are trapped inside intelligent beings like us. Instead of genes controlling us, he argues that we shape them. Our actions, choices, and even the joy we experience in life affect how genes continue from one generation to the next.
The big difference between these views is that Dawkins uses a metaphor—an imaginative way of speaking—that makes genes seem like they have thoughts, plans, and goals. But genes don’t actually “think” or “want” anything. They are just strings molecules, chemical compounds, that contain information. Noble’s way of describing them is more accurate because it recognizes that genes don’t act on their own. Instead, they exist within living things that make choices, build relationships, and interact with the world.
Hart’s Argument
Hart argues that the idea of “selfish genes” is misleading because it gives genes too much credit. Genes don’t control us; we control them. For example, a mother doesn’t love and care for her child because her genes force her to—she does it because she truly loves her child. And because of that love, her genes happen to survive to the next generation.
In the end, Hart suggests that instead of calling them “selfish genes,” it would be more accurate to call them “fortunate” or “lucky” genes. They don’t guide evolution; rather, life itself—through love, choices, and relationships—determines which genes get passed on. Our DNA isn’t a hidden script controlling us; it’s a record of how life has unfolded, shaped by the actions of real, living beings.
Hart points out that Dawkins’ way of describing genes—calling them “selfish” or saying they “manipulate” us—is just a metaphor, not a scientific fact. Genes don’t actually have thoughts, desires, or goals. They are simply molecules that contain instructions for making proteins, and those proteins help build and sustain living things. The way we live, love, and make choices is not dictated by our genes, but rather, our genes continue to exist because of the choices and conditions that allow life to flourish.
Hart’s key point is this: It’s misleading to say that genes are “selfish” or that they “want” to survive. It would be more accurate to say that they are “fortunate” or “privileged” because they get passed on when life conditions support them. In other words, genes don’t drive us—we, as thinking, feeling creatures, make choices, and our genes continue because of those choices. Again, a mother doesn’t love her child because her genes “program” her to—she loves because she is capable of love, and as a result, her genes are passed on. Thinking of DNA as a “record of our history” rather than a secret controlling force helps us see life more accurately.
[O Lord,] you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well. – Psalm 139:13-14
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The Original Portion
Richard Dawkins most memorably describes what genes do: “Now they swarm in huge colonies,” he writes, “safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.” Then compare this to Denis Noble’s elegant inversion of its central conceits: “Now they are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.” Now, what precisely is the difference between these two approaches to genetic theory? Dawkins has graciously granted that Noble’s revision of his text is every bit as plausible as the original, and that it really is all a matter of perspective in the end (which is a significant concession, since it means that the original text is making claims that are not empirical but only, at best, picturesque). In fact, though, the two passages are not comparably plausible at all. Colorful though it is, Noble’s language is largely literally true. That of Dawkins, by contrast, is metaphorical all the way down: lumbering robots, manipulation, remote control, “they created us”—all of this is winsome enough, and even a little quaint (in a 1950s science fiction sort of way), but more or less nonsensical as well. Rhetorically speaking, it is a splendid example of the “pathetic fallacy,” the naive habit of attributing human motives and intentions to nonhuman objects. It certainly describes nothing real, or even analogously real. Especially fanciful are those ridiculous robots, since they are precisely the sorts of things that we human beings—capable as we are of conscious intentions—most definitely are not. The image does, however, make obvious how very mechanistic a metaphor the “selfish gene” really is. At least, it is difficult not to notice that Noble’s language has a vaguely (very vaguely) Aristotelian quality about it, what with its invocation of a kind of higher causality, descending from complex systems toward more primitive elements, while Dawkins is describing an essentially Cartesian model of organisms: large automata governed by some more primal agency deep within (in this case, not a soul or ghost or homunculus but a host of self-interested imps discreetly nestled in organic cells).3 If it seems that I am being willfully humorless here, and refusing to take a metaphor for what it is, I can only once again insist that a metaphor must be genuinely germane to the reality it is meant to illustrate if it is to have any point. Talk of genetic selfishness, however, is simply a fundamental misrepresentation of reality. There is no value in speaking as if the ultimate seat of purposive agency in nature were situated in a material realm where intentionality does not exist, and as if all other causal levels—even those where real intentionality is to be found—are merely its deterministic residue. We are, after all, talking only about macromolecules that provide codes for proteins, the actions of whose products are, as Michel Morange says, “expressed only indirectly through an organizational and structural organic hierarchy—protein machines, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, and populations.”4
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The Attending Footnote
To his credit, Dawkins is not in fact a believer in total genetic determinism; he even speaks of human beings as having the unique capacity to resist the selfishness of their genes; but that very admission shows how ill-chosen the original metaphor was. A more accurate description of the matter might be to say that the “codes” contained in genetic materials are transcriptions of the histories of organisms that, in a quite passive way, have been preserved from generation to generation by virtue of the distinctive traits of the organic wholes into which they have been assumed and to which they make their vital but pluripotential contribution.
Since natural selection is a theory regarding the opportune survival of fortuitous mutations, it would probably be far better to speak of the “fortunate,” “privileged,” or perhaps “graced” gene. After all, a man can be selfish, a rabbit might be selfish in some remotely analogous sense, but a gene can no more be selfish than can a teacup. Genes should always be qualified by objective, not subjective, adjectives. Again, though, where is the harm in a mere figure of speech? But images often shape our concepts far more thoroughly than dialectical arguments can. It may not be entirely the fault of Dawkins that the language of genetic selfishness has spread so far as it has, but the damage has been considerable nonetheless. It has become an irritating commonplace to hear it asserted that, for instance, the real reason for a mother cherishing and protecting her young is that her genes have engineered her for their own survival. This is simply an absurd way of thinking about the matter. There is neither agency nor motive at the genetic level of organisms: “genes” do not “recognize” kindred beings, they do not “seek” to survive, they do not see or “program” any organism, they do not guide evolution, they are not the “rationale” for anything at all. The powerful but in many ways indeterminate causality found at the molecular level of physiological potentialities cannot begin adequately to account for behavioral effects at higher levels of organic, mental, and social complexity; but what happens at those higher levels can certainly determine what becomes of those macromolecular materials. To put things in the correct order, it is only because a mother has a desire to protect her young (let us be quaint here and call this desire “love”) that the mindless genetic material contained in her cells—whose functions are as much determined as determining—is blessed with a derivative survival. It is only because the larger conditions of the world we share make it possible for a creature capable of love to evolve and flourish that life’s notation of its organismic history (the “codes” inscribed in genes) can continue to be passed down stably from one generation to the next. Our DNA might well be characterized as an enduring record of our moral achievements, rather than as some secret truer text or hidden deterministic program subversive of those achievements
Hart is arguing that genes don’t “think” or “act” with intention, despite the way some scientists describe them. Richard Dawkins, for example, famously said that our genes “created us” and act like little controlling agents inside us. But another scientist, Denis Noble, offers a different perspective—one that sees genes not as master controllers, but as passive codes that life itself makes use of.