The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins- A Book Review

Part 1

   Most of us know that Richard Dawkins recently wrote a book called The God Delusion. The only reason anyone even cares what Dawkins has to say about religion, is because he proved himself someone who must be listened to 30 years ago with The Selfish Gene.

The Selfish Gene takes a gene's eye view of evolution.

   So what the hell does that mean anyways?

   Well first we'll talk about evolution, then we'll talk about genes, then we'll talk about the book.

    First evolution, in a nutshell, if you go look at any species of animal or organism you will see that there are individual differences among members of a species.  These individual differences occasionally provide an advantage to the individual in an environment. If that individual reproduces its advantageous trait is likely to be passed on to its offspring. As this happens over long, long, periods of time it gives rise to new species.

     Evidence for evolution:

     The fossil record shows that species are nicely stratified in the fossil layer. For example in the pre-cambrian, which is before dinosaurs, no rabbits are to be found.  Presumably because rabbits had not yet evolved.  This  pattern is conserved throughout the entire fossil record, animals that evolution predicts must be newer are only found in newer rocks. Creationists are forced to attack this by trying to find far fetched notions on how Noah's flood might have caused this perfect evolutionary stratification in the fossil layer, or they try to find other explanations for the changes seen in the fossil record.

    Closer to the topic is the genetic evidence.  But to talk about the genetic evidence we have to go a little deeper.  I will leave that for the next part of this post.

 This book is increadbily influential in biology. Dawkins world famous atheism aside, it is an important work on biology.