Natural selection is original sin claims Nobel laureate Christian De Duve in an interview in New Scientist, 26 Feb 2011, p27. De Duve claims natural selection has enabled man to become the most successful species on the planet, but the same processes will lead to our destruction through our depletion of natural resources and destruction of habitat. De Duve’s dire prediction is based on the fact that natural selection has no foresight, and he claims this has become coded into our genes and resulted in humans possessing short sighted selfishness and a lack of forward planning for future generations. He explained: “You need wisdom to sacrifice something that is immediately useful or advantageous for the sake of something that will be important in the future. Natural selection doesn’t do that; it looks only at what is happening today. It doesn’t care about your grandchildren or grandchildren’s grandchildren.” De Duve calls this naturally selected selfishness the “original sin” and declares: “I believe that the writers of Genesis had detected the inherent selfishness in human nature that I propose is in our genes, and invented the myth of original sin to account for it.” His solution to the problem caused by natural selection is to act against it via birth control to limit the population, and give more power to women because they “are less aggressive than men, and they play a larger role in the early education of the young and helping them overcome their genetic heirloom.”
De Duve is professor emeritus at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium and Rockefeller University, New York. He co-won a 1974 Nobel Prize for work on cellular structure.
Editorial Comment: De Duve is right about natural selection being both a process that can only act negatively in the here and now, as well as a phenomenon that involves no forward planning. Natural selection is basically a destructive process that removes living things, and has never been observed to build them up.
However, De Duve’s thesis about the origin of original sin in Genesis defies logic if he really believes in Darwinian evolution. Firstly he assumes some ancient scribes ‘created’ Genesis to explain selfishness and to make us feel bad about it. But if we actually evolved as De Duve believes, then our evolution was the result of such ‘natural selection’, so any natural selfishness would not be noticed by us as we had never seen anything to compare it with. We would assume it was normal, and therefore OK, or maybe all there is, or perhaps even good? Therefore, we would see no need to make up a story that portrays such ‘naturally selective’ selfishness as bad.
The only reason we have a sense that right and wrong exist, and therefore selfishness is bad is related to the fact that Genesis records we were made in the image of the moral Creator God, who stamped His Image upon us; which included an innate moral sense of right and wrong. Despite the fact Genesis 3 states we have been corrupted by disobedience to our Creator (the original sin), all cultures and individuals still possess a sharp sense that right and wrong exists, even if we can no longer agree as to what actions are actually right or wrong./p>
We predict that eliminating the next generation via unnatural selections in birth control and abortion, and by giving increasing influence to women, will not provide any solution to mankind’s ‘original sin’ problem. Women are not less aggressive than men – they just express it in a less physical way, but it is just as selfish and destructive.* In fact, we also predict that in countries where women are gaining such disproportionate influence and power, it will take less than a generation for them to prove that women can become just as corrupt and evil as the worst of men. The only solution to this original sin problem will come from neither science nor politics, but from both men and women turning to the Creator Christ in repentance and faith. (Ref. evolution, behaviour, morals, prediction)
Evidence News 2 March 2011
*A female editor wrote that sentence.