Stephen Jay Gould, professor of paleaeontology at Harvard University, was the foremost popularizer of evolution in his day. In Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History, Gould addressed an issue evolutionists must discuss: ethics. If the world is purposeless, if no Creator serves as the standard for right and wrong, how does one explain something as simple as an act of kindness? What motivates a person to serve another person? Christians assert that, as beings made in the image and likeness of God, even unbelievers will, at times, reflect something of God’s goodness. But Gould rejected God, so he had to resort to a tortured answer, breathtaking in its implausibility. By his account men and women serve others in the hope of perpetuating the human race. He calls this motivation for altruism, “kin selection.” So when a sacrificial soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his buddies, he is really doing it for the gene pool. Not likely.

Read the following illustration of evolution and see if you feel that is an accurate explanation of the way people actually are motivated to react in real life.  Or are there higher motives, like love, compassion, and kindness that come from God?

Suppose, then, that you are walking down the road with three brothers. A monster approaches with clearly murderous intent. Your brothers do not see it. You have only two alternatives: Approach it and give a rousing Bronx cheer, thereby warning your brothers, who hide and escape, and insuring your own demise; or hide and watch the monster feast on your three brothers. What, as an accomplished player of the Darwinian game, should you do? The answer must be, step right up and cheer—for you have only yourself to lose, while your three brothers represent one and a half of you. Better that they should live to propagate 150 percent of your genes. Your apparently altruistic act is genetically “selfish,” for it maximizes the contribution of your genes to the next generation . . . According to the theory of kin selection, animals evolve behaviors that endanger or sacrifice themselves only if such altruistic acts increase their own genetic potential by benefiting kin.1
Footnotes:
1

Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1977), 262-263.

article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located at 4800 W. Pulaski Hwy., Perryville, MD, one and a half miles east of Rt. 222.