WEAK ON WICKED



Richard Dawkins (well known Oxford professor) makes a provokative statement. He says that those who claim to reject evolution are either: 1)ignorant 2)stupid 3)insane or 4)wicked. Dawkins handles convincingly the first three options. However, I feel his essay is weak on "wicked".

Let me flesh out the "wicked" option. Thomas Malthus' writings on population and economics were the spark for both Wallace and Darwin's conceptions of the key ideas of evolution. Malthus said that any biologic population expands at an increasing rate until it runs into some insurmountable barrier (food and water shortage being the most common). When a population has grown to its environment's carrying capacity it will (roughly) remain there.

If each and every org consumed a subsistence diet, then all orgs would have (barely) enough, and could reproduce. But that reproduction would dramaticly increase the population. With too many orgs and too little food there would be large scale starvation. After the starved die, those who remain could again eat, leading to the next wave of excessive births. Thus a population graph of equal consumers would vary around the subsistence population like a set of saw teeth, or a sine wave.

But all orgs of a population do not consume equal amounts. The larger and more aggressive consume a disproportionatly large amount. This leaves the weaker, less aggressive orgs with too little to live on . . . and so they starve (or commit suicide). By this means of unequal consumption a population can remain steady at the carry capacity for their environment. As Wallace and Darwin noted, it is precisly this competition for dominance (which females are keenly sensitive to) that drives natural selection.

While most animals dominate thru physical means, a small man can dominate vast numbers by vigorous use of an exceptional intelligence. One common method is to tell the marks what they badly want to hear. For example: "You don't have to die! You can live forever! Just pay me and do as I say." Or, "Sure the King is evil. But you don't have to risk your life to overthrow him. God will punish him when he dies!"

Thus those people who Mr. Dawkins classifies as wicked (those who falsely claim to reject Darwinism) may be the most thorough going Darwinist of us all. They use the gullibility and ignorance of their fellows to gain dominance over them. By using guile they (and perhaps many of their offspring) enjoy a high standard of living while most live at subsistence (and many quietly starve, or commit suicide).

P.S. The majority of violent deaths in the U.S. are suicides.