Know yourself is an adage with a long history, going back at least to the early Greeks. It’s still fashionable in some spiritual circles to say “self-realization precedes god-realization.” Leaving aside the basic question of whether any sort of enduring self even exists, or whether a god does. (I deeply doubt this.)
But if we’re being scientifically correct, there’s no doubt that any search for one’s self should include the genes that go a long way toward making us who we are. Maybe all the way.
I was reminded of this by an article in the May 23, 2026 issue of New Scientist, “The Selfish Gene at 50.” Here’s how it starts out. I’ll share a PDF file for those who don’t subscribe to New Scientist.
The Selfish Gene at 50: Why Dawkins’s evolution classic still holds up | New Scientist
When The Selfish Gene was published in 1976, The New York Times said it was “the kind of science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius”. Few popular science books have had such an impact. As Richard Dawkins writes in the epilogue to the 50th anniversary edition, it’s rare enough for a book to be in press 50 years later, let alone that the author is still around to write an update about it.
There is a strong case that The Selfish Gene has had the biggest influence on our understanding of evolution of any book since Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. It showed, in irresistible prose, how everything we see in biology can be explained by a gene-centred view of life.
Yet when it was first published, only a small number of genes had been sequenced and we didn’t even know how many we had or shared with other species. So, half a century on, with the “selfish gene” metaphor still very current, I wanted to find out if it is still a useful way to understand evolution.
Dawkins’s central point is that natural selection works to increase the number of “replicators” in a population. By replicators, he means genes made of stretches of DNA. The replicators build “vehicles” for themselves, machines that help them survive and spread. “A monkey is a machine that preserves genes up trees, a fish is a machine that preserves genes in the water,” Dawkins wrote. While we (and monkeys and fish) live for only a few years or decades, the genes we carry live for perhaps millions of years. Or as Dawkins once expressed it, in limerick form:
An itinerant selfish gene
Said: ‘Bodies a-plenty I’ve seen.
You think you’re so clever,
But I’ll live for ever.
You’re just a survival machine.’
The article points out that obviously genes aren’t selfish in the way people are selfish. Genes aren’t conscious or self-aware in the way humans are. They just do what evolution has brought them to do. Which, however, applies equally well to you and me. We’re just doing what evolution has brought us to do.
While I can understand why fundamentalist religious believers reject evolution because it goes against the whole Creator God thing, even going so far as to claim that humans are made in the image of God, I find more wonder and beauty in evolution than in notions of God. Of course, this isn’t a fair fight, really, since evolution benefits from the important fact that it is true, while God is a fantasy desperately seeking evidence for it, but never succeeding.
I haven’t read The Selfish Gene. But in 2006 I read about a much more recent book by Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution. It was a challenging read, albeit a highly satisfying one. Then, as now, I’m blown away by the fact that every form of life on Earth today, naturally including humans, shares a common ancestor.
In a blog post I wrote about the book, “Evolution is sacred, religion is profane,” I shared a passage by Dawkins.
Backward chronology in search of ancestors really can sensibly aim towards a single distant target. The distant target is the grand ancestor of all life, and we can’t help converging upon it no matter where we start—elephant or eagle, swift or salmonella, wellingtonia or woman.
…As things stand, it appears that all known life forms can be traced to a single ancestor which lived more than 3 billion years ago…back to the universal progenitor of all surviving organisms, probably resembling some kind of bacterium.
Another fact that fills me with awe is that the particular bundle of genes that answers to our name necessarily is the end product of an unbroken chain of relatives extending back to the grand ancestor of all life, sometimes referred to as LUCA, Last Universal Common Ancestor.
We can grasp that each of us had a father and mother, two sets of grandparents, four sets of great grandparents, eight sets of great great grandparents, and so on. It’s that “and so on” that truly boggles my mind. Because if our genes hadn’t been continuously passed on by that unbroken chain of relatives, we wouldn’t be here on Earth in 2026.
Imagine all the close calls, the near misses of an untimely death, the myriad sexual encounters, and so much else that resulted in our relatives of many kinds of species being able to reproduce their genes that over immense spans of time resulted in me writing these words and you reading them.
It’s a freaking amazing scientific creation story. And it’s almost certainly true. Unlike religious creation stories, which are almost certainly false.
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Like computer AI is considered a science . Philosophy , art and creativity is and that’s how gods are made. Soul is not a science, it’s a scam. Especially when buildings and churches and specific areas are concerned.
“We’re just doing what evolution has brought us to do” leans toward a simplistic view. Yes, evolution shapes predispositions via natural selection. But no, human behavior involves massive cultural evolution, learning, and agency. Dawkins book The Selfish Gene itself is not strictly deterministic about individual actions; Dawkins himself said so.
Yes, evolution by natural selection is the best-supported scientific framework for biological diversity. But framing it as a complete “creation story” that makes religious ones “almost certainly false” overreaches. Science explains how mechanisms operate post-origin but does not adjudicate ultimate metaphysics or why the universe permits life, fine-tuning, or consciousness.
Many scientists and philosophers accept theistic evolution or evolutionary creationism: God working through natural laws and secondary causes.
Speaking of scientists and philosophers, Darwin was never an atheist. He categorized himself as agnostic, which I feel is the most rational position. In any case, evolution doesn’t negate theism.
“Darwin was never an atheist.”
Nonsense.
Waste of one’s breath talking with sant64, he’s incapable of learning, or of taking anything onboard. …But should anyone else have read this, and be inclined to take it at all seriously, then I’m happy to make fully clear to them how sant64 has either completely misunderstood what he’s read, or else is deliberately misrepresenting what Dawkins had taken great pains to clarify in The God Delusion.
Whoops, I’d misread that.
sant64 was talking about Darwin, not Dawkins. Apologies, sant64, my bad.
(No idea about Darwin’s religious views. You may well be right. For that matter, Newton was a deist, as I recall.)
———-
Is agnosticism the most rational position?
I know that’s what I thought, back a decade or so ago when I first stumbled onto Churchless.
Which is why I’ll be able to explain why that isn’t the case actually, should anyone else be inclined to talk about it. Anyone else that, unlike sant64, is here to discuss things squarely and with integrity, and to actually take onboard what we discuss here. Anyone else, speaking with whom isn’t simply wasting one’s breath.
(Incidentally: Dawkins has discussed this very question, and discussed it far more elegantly than I’ll ever be able to, in his The God Delusion.)
evolution also does negate belief in goblins either.
Haha, loved that limerick! 😂
That is, TBH, the limerick itself is hardly Nantucket standard, right? Neither very graceful, nor at all bawdy, nor even at all funny! …But I don’t care! It’s Dawkins’ own composition; and it sums up his own work and his pet theme: and that makes it gold for me!
Hadn’t come across this before, thanks for posting it here Brian! 👍
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Selfish Gene is a great read, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it should you try it. …Except, I guess it’s kind of dated? That is, it’s great that Dawkins keeps updating it, but what I’m saying is, its very popularity means that the essence of what he says there is now part of the general zeitgeist, and I’m sure most everyone that’s educated and generally interested in these things is aware of what it’s all about.
Haven’t read The Ancestor’s Tale, in fact I’m afraid I wasn’t even aware of this title. Thanks for the recommendation, I’m putting it on my reading list.
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Yep, tracing back our “ancestry” can make for a riveting account!
I’m a bit foggy about the details, but as I recall us homo sapiens had a particularly touch-and-go moment one time, when there were just around a few hundreds of us left. Just as fascinating as that “story”, is the description of how genetics lets us piece this brilliant whodunit together.
(I forget where I read that… In some article? Some book? Maybe in Dawkins? Hell, maybe right here in Churchless? …I forget where, and the details of the content it are hazy too, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got the overall gist of it right in my memory.)
This body we live in is a museum of relics…actually more like a mausoleum. Within it are artifacts of an antedeluvian past. Ghosts haunt there, Ghosts from a distant past. The voices of distant conditioning, distant wired responses. They surround us, but people have learned to ignore them.
Many of these millions of remnants, held as if sacred, by genetics, as if some long forgotten religious ritual that persists long past any utility, yet there they are within each of us, kept going, reproduced with the greatest care over and over again. Entirely invisible to our daily functioning. How odd that we, trapped in this incredible ancient clockwork, filled with closets of skeletons, books, ghosts and remnants, diseases and addictions we never asked for, or have long since forgotten asking for, the habits of civilizations predating all written history, even human history is right there for us to explore within. But it is a dark place. We are indeed bound by an ancient karma that has shaped this very dark vessel. All the layers, all the recordings are right there to witness, and they temper and drive our every behavior and thought. We don’t call them ghosts. We call them our own ideas and interests. And it is our prison cell. Shouldn’t we get to know it a little better?
For these relics are also potentials. Capacities that largely go unused by today’s people, and entirely invisible to them. Capacities that once served to keep life alive, in all its forms, before the artificial inundated our culture and overwhelmed most of our planet. But they are not gone. They are unused. Those connections are still there. The wiring is all there, and the lines are still active, though largely tamped down, ignored, or suppressed. We are taught to suppress all that and get so good at it we hardly know who and what we are.
These are all the mechanisms that we carry, that the survivors carry, and their effects, their condition is the equivalent of a race-wide karma that indeed determines every consideration, every awareness, every decision we make as individuals.
But it is there, with a little discipline, with a little silence, with a practice of observation within. And it is astounding. Even a mirror of the ancient impressions of stars and the planets are right there, in our genetic code. When once they served to guide us to safety. And keep humanity alive. And are still there to guide us to safety, for those who take a look at where they are, trapped in that Mausoleum as we all are.
Why are they still there? Because, unlike modern misinterpretation, survival is not to the perfectly fittest, nor to the strongest, but to the most adaptable. So, those functions may go dormant, but they are still in our set of capacities. The divine is there, if by divine we mean understanding beyond language, connection to each other and the source of life and knowledge beyond measurement.
“unlike modern misinterpretation, survival is not to the perfectly fittest, nor to the strongest, but to the most adaptable”
No evolutionary biologist, nor anyone at all clued in to this subject, imagines “fittest” means anything other than ‘best adapted’ in this context. And as for “misinterpretation” by the ignorant, there’s nothing remotely “modern” about it: that misinterpretation is exactly as old as the actual term itself, like exactly.
———-
“The divine is there, if by divine we mean understanding beyond language, connection to each other and the source of life and knowledge beyond measurement.”
Why in Beelzebub’s name would anyone use the word “divine” to mean that? I mean, if we’re going to be assigning random meanings to words on whim, then you can be arrested for flaunting your divinity in public, if by divinity we mean our genitals.
———-
“race-wide karma that indeed determines every consideration, every awareness, every decision we make as individuals. (…) But it is there, with a little discipline, with a little silence, with a practice of observation within”
That redefinition thing again, this time finessed with Book of Punishment level nonsense.
In the first sentence, the word “karma” has been used metaphorically, and as metaphor is a fairly appropriate description of the science. But in the second sentence, it is used in its more literal sense, thus producing an ipse dixitism that is essentially woo, except it is sought to be cloaked in a whole bunch of sciency sounding words, in an effort to fool the casual reader.
———-
Gawds above. The subject matter here is spirituality, right? So it’s open season for talking complete utter nonsense with a straight face, and demanding to be taken seriously instead of being laughed at.
Hi Appreciative!
Good to hear from you.
You wrote “No evolutionary biologist, nor anyone at all clued in to this subject, imagines “fittest” means anything other than ‘best adapted’”
You see you are making the same error. The dinosaurs were best adapted to their environment. But they were not the most adaptable to changes of environment. As Ron E pointed out, Darwin himself made this point, but it is little understood. Adaptability may not mean being the best at anything. Survival depends not upon the brightest nor the strongest, but upon our capacity to use our capabilities, even those we don’t understand nor see any current use for, to adapt to change. Part of that is our own awareness of what’s Happening and what’s coming!. We don’t evaluate it as important in the current environment. Who needs religion, right?
But our genetics replicates all sorts of things that we think have no use, and many we are unaware of. Don’t be a brilliant dinosaur, buddy! Explore within!
Spence, just to clarify. Dinosaurs lived for around 160-180 million years from the Triassic period to the Cretaceous. During that very long time, they would have evolved and adapted to many varying environmental changes. Their destruction was down to a meteor strike – just a bit unlucky, eh, – no time to adapt.
Evolution is primarily long-term genetic change, while adaptation is generally short-term adjustments to the environment. Simple, observable examples of adaptability are creatures that are losing their natural habitats and have moved into human habitats – such as the Peregrine, which regularly uses high buildings and churches, and cormorants, which now find living on inland human reservoirs more beneficial than the coast.
Hi Ron!
Beautifully said!
The creatures that are best performing, strongest, most intelligent, most sociable, the best fighters, even the best breeders, highly suited to their environment, may have difficulty thriving outside that environment. Yet another creature may find the change of scene more suited to their own nature. The is the genius of our genetics, for they contain vestiges and whole systems that in any single environ remain dormant, unused. Even unknown. You might think that if that is so then reproducing them over and over again would be inefficient and evolution would remove these over time. But that doesn’t happen exactly that way. Much of these vestiges and systems, in the genetics and both body and brain produced by those genetics, remain, even if evolution places them in a secondary, tertiary, or lesser functional status. And these genetics grow even more complex over time, though we may not see them. Why? Because they increase the likelihood of survival over changing conditions. The dinosaurs couldn’t adapt quickly enough. They were the dominant species. But they were not the only extant species. Other species that had more in their range of capacity to adapt did survive.
So we are a mausoleum, a natural History museum of all sorts of functions and capabilities we hardly know. Those who have visited that inner natural history museum, who know more of those capabilities, who have seen the impressions of a distant past there. naturally will be in a better position to survive, to thrive, as conditions change.
But just to tour all that, to see how our current thoughts, emotions, drives, reactions, instincts derivevfrom the past artifacts that can be seen within, is fascinating, and enlightening. It is short sited to think we are only what we see or use today.
@Spence “The dinosaurs couldn’t adapt quickly enough. They were the dominant species. But they were not the only extant species. Other species that had more in their range of capacity to adapt did survive.”
—
Spence, one last time: Of course, the dinosaurs couldn’t adapt quickly enough – because they were wiped out by a meteor strike followed by environmental collapse. The small mammal species that survived lived underground and would have had existing food sources such as grubs and roots. It’s not that they had the capacity to adapt; they didn’t need to adapt but just continued with their underground way of life. Over millions of years (as the fossil record shows), these small mammals evolved through natural selection into other species, eventually leading to primates – and us.
Something I mentioned a year or two ago re a blog about ‘Velland’s Principle’: On a wall in the Darwin Centre, Shrewsbury (England), the birthplace of Charles Darwin, was one of his quotes: “The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.” Since Darwin’s time, much more has been uncovered through genetics, further validating the theory of evolution.
Some may view a theory as ‘well, it’s only an idea ’, but a scientific theory and a hypothesis differ primarily in that a theory is a well-established framework built upon extensive evidence.
Dawkins also introduced the concept of memes, a unit of cultural information spread by imitation. Memes I find fascinating. They account for much of a culture’s belief systems, explaining how ideas, beliefs and opinions are transmitted from person to person and can persist across generations. Religious beliefs are very successful memes; they carry with them threats and rewards; answers that can comfort and save unsettling questions and insecurities – no wonder religious memes are among the most persistent in our cultures.
The brain is primarily genes. Genes do more than just determine the colour of our eyes or whether we are tall or short. Genes are at the centre of everything that makes us human. Genes are another factor that contributes to making us what we are. There being no entity, no ‘me’ who has evolved, who has particular genes or memes, or a body, or a brain, etc., more than what we are is an ever-flowing stream of thoughts, sensations and feelings that are determined by genes – and memes.
Haha, Hi, Spence! Appreciate your unfailingly gracious greeting, old friend, despite the brusque tone of my own comment!
Ehh, I’d basically written out that comment mainly to draw Brian’s attention to this nonsense, essentially in order to reiterate, for the third time now, my exhortation to …well, what I’d appealed for twice earlier. Which is why I’d addressed you in the third person there, which in general terms I realize was kind of rude. Except, I I ran out of time before I could write that second portion of my comment, and just posted it anyway.
My point is, I really hadn’t wanted to embark on yet another long and essentially nonsensical series of comment-exchanges with you. …Still, having started, I’ll permit myself one last response, and then stand down.
———-
So: My comment, that you were responding to, had clearly and substantively spelled out, via three or four specific points, just why your original comment was nonsensical.
I hope you realize that you haven’t actually addressed any of those three specific substantive points in your response to me?
Allow me to briefly recap what I’d said there:
1. First, you were basically arguing with voices in your head in correcting folks for misinterpreting “fitness” as strength etc. The fact is that neither actual experts, nor anyone at all that actually knows the first thing about evolution, thinks that. That fitness refers to adaptability and not strength and intelligence etc is …common knowledge, not some deep wise revelation.
2. In any case, you are factually incorrect in imagining that that misinterpretation in the minds of the ignorant is a “modern” phenomenon. The ignorant have harbored that misinterpretation since as long as back as when that term itself was first introduced, back in Darwin’s day.
3. I showed you how you’d simply thrown around sciency sounding words as filling, in order to suddenly, and out of nowhere, redefine divinity in completely bizarre terms, in order to somehow pass off the divine as something that science supports: which in point of fact it doesn’t.
4. Finally, I showed you, in addition to the divinity thing, you’d ended up further conflating your idiosyncratic metaphorical use of the term Karma with a more literal reading of it, in order to appear to lend scientific heft to your woo-woo ideas.
You completely ignore all of those substantive matters in my comment, you simply sidestep all of that, and now descend to unloading some more random unrelated nonsense. …So let’s address that now in the next section:
———-
In your subsequent comment, you once again keep on repeating what you’d said about “adaptability not being the same as being best at anything”, and about “survival depending not on being the brightest or strongest”. Again, you’re simply arguing with voices in your head. No one here is equating fitness with anything other than adaptability, like I clearly spelled out to you in so many words.
And you’re …forgive me for the plainspeak, but you’re lying about what Darwin said, and you’re also lying about what Ron said. …I mean, you’re not dumb, nor ignorant, I don’t really need to teach you this basic stuff about why exactly dinosaurs became extinct, surely? …And your bringing in the reference to religion, and then talking about going within, and your presuming to exhort me to go within, and linking it all to Darwin and dinosaurs …that, Spence, it’s …borderline insane, man. There’s zero sense connecting any of that.
Sure, meditation has its uses. Sure, it makes for wellbeing. And, as I’ve said more than once here, including to you, I meditate myself. Sure, it’s good to explore its further uses and possible implications, as well. And sure, us humans can improve our odds for survival by trying to preempt changes in our environment (like trying to address climate change for instance, like building defenses against meteorites, and building defensive systems to protect earth from solar storms, et cetera). No disagreement there, on any of those points, obviously! …But none of that has anything, anything at all, to do with …any of this, with what I said in my previous comment; and nor do I see that I have given you any reason to imagine that you’re correcting any “error” on my part in saying these completely obvious things.
…Do you …see this, do you realize you’ve …simply been …offloading random nonsense? Seriously, do you, now I’ve once again spelled it out for you?
———-
Ehh, this using the subject matter of spirituality in order to simply talk nonsense, I find it …nothing less than obscene. Spirituality is …in many ways, it represents the best and the noblest impulse of us humans. To use spirituality as simply an outlet and excuse for rigor-free halfwittery, that’s like …like profaning hallowed ground, that’s like walking into a church simply in order to take a dump there. And in any case, absent uncompromising integrity and rigor, these discussions will always fall short of becoming effective instruments to guide us toward truth, and end up becoming simply …talk for talk’s sake.
(Which is why my two earlier exhortations to Brian, but I won’t repeat myself now. Up to him what he does with those two appeals of mine.)
(Anyhoo. Over and out, Spence. …And no offense or putdown intended to you personally in any of this. Cheers, old friend)
Hi Appreciative
Well that was quite an essay you wrote there! No offense taken at all, Appreciative!
I’m not sure if I even want to explain since your own misguided comments have their own wonderful and crazy humor. How a misunderstanding can lead to a whole train of insult and accusation. It’s hilarious, AR. I can’t fix your ignorance and I’m enjoying your misunderstanding too much to offer any corrections. Bravo, Sir! Carry On!
Really, the world is like this. The errors and lost years going the wrong way have such poetry!
When people pour themselves into their mistake with full vigor!
It’s art.
Dear Spence: Not to beat this to death, but I’m sorry you saw none of the substance in my comments, but instead only came away with registering “insult” and “accusation”. I’ve throughout been pretty much specific about the …well, the specifics that I critiqued in your comments. What I referred to as nonsense I quite literally found nonsensical, and clearly explained, twice, my specific reasons for thinking that. Like I said, none of that was meant as putdown. And my general comments about using spirituality as an excuse for rigor-free indulgence in feelz, while it applies to your comments, but it isn’t limited to them or to you.
Again, not to beat this to death, like I said I was happy to stand down after that comment, and still am. …Just, I should regret it very much, Spence, if you should go off thinking that all I’ve doing here is passive-aggressively thinking up ways to hurl snide oblique “insults and allegations” at you. Such was emphatically not my intent.
My good wishes to you, old friend, and Allah bless.
Hi Ron you wrote
“The small mammal species that survived lived underground and would have had existing food sources such as grubs and roots. It’s not that they had the capacity to adapt;”
I’m sorry Ron, but to imply no adaptation was necessary, or that the survivors did not need to alter how they lived or ate, using their capacity, is not accurate.
They were not living full time underground at first, nor were their food sources unchanged. They had to adapt using the traits they had. It wasn’t a matter of their living on with the same diet and lifestyle they already had, as you suggest. Adaptability was crucial.
” How They Survived: The 4 Key AdvantagesThe asteroid impact triggered immediate heat pulses and widespread wildfires, followed by months of dust and ash blocking the sun, which collapsed the global food chain. The survivors shared specific traits that allowed them to weather this apocalypse:1. Small Body SizeLarge dinosaurs required immense amounts of food daily, which became impossible to find when ecosystems collapsed. Small animals, like early mammals and tiny birds, required minimal calories to sustain themselves, allowing them to stretch limited resources during lean times.2. Ability to Shelter (Burrowing & Aquatic Life)The surface of the Earth became a furnace immediately after the impact. Animals that could burrow underground (like early mammals) or dive deep underwater (like crocodiles and turtles) were physically shielded from the extreme heat and rampaging fires.3. Generalist and Seed-Based DietsAs lack of sunlight killed off living plants, strict herbivores starved, which in turn starved the apex predators. Survivors typically had “generalist” diets—they ate insects, decaying matter (detritus), or seeds. Beaked birds, for instance, could peck the ground for buried seeds and nuts that remained edible for years.4. Unstable-Environment AdaptationsFreshwater ecosystems (rivers and lakes) fared better than marine environments. Organisms living in rivers were already evolutionary adapted to sudden changes in water temperature, oxygen levels, and seasonal resource scarcity, giving them a natural resilience to global climate shock.”
As for this history museum of relics
“The human genome contains roughly 20,000 functional protein-coding genes, alongside a somewhat similar number of recognizable pseudogenes. However, most human DNA (about 98%) is non-coding DNA, which does not code for proteins at all.The genetic landscape breaks down into a few specific categories:Functional Protein-Coding Genes (~20,000): These actively produce the proteins necessary for life. They make up only about 1.5 – 2% of your total DNA.
“Vestigial Pseudogenes (~12,000 to ~20,000): These are segments of DNA that strongly resemble functional genes but are disabled by mutations (such as premature stop codons). They are the molecular equivalent of vestigial structures. A famous example is the disabled gene for producing vitamin C, which humans share with other primates.
“Non-Coding Regulatory and RNA Genes: The majority of the genome (roughly \(98\%\)) is non-coding. While once incorrectly dismissed as “junk DNA”, much of this is now known to act as the complex instruction manual controlling when, where, and how much the functional genes are used.
“While pseudogenes are highly abundant in the genome (often nearly equal to the number of functional genes), they represent a small fraction of your total DNA and are easily outnumbered by active and regulatory genes. Furthermore, modern research indicates that some pseudogenes are actively transcribed and can play important biological roles, such as regulating the activity of other genesegulatory / a mystery. But even the psuedogenes are still active in regulation. *
The vast majority of our genes regulate what is reproduced and in what balance, but the actual code currently used to construct us is a tiny fraction of the total.