Answer: Those Who Leave the Most Offspring

“Since women that believe in God are less likely to have abortions, does that mean that natural selection will result in a greater number of believers than non-believers.”

~ A question asked by a student attending a debate between Dr. William Lane Craig (a theist) and Dr. Massimo Pigliucci (an atheist).

Assuming, then, the validity of the “underlying instinct to survive and reproduce” in neo-Darwinian thought… of the two positions (belief and non-belief) available for us ~ to choose from ~ which would better apply to being the most fit if the fittest is “an individual… [that] reproduces more successfully…”?^[1] The woman that believes in God is less likely to have abortions and more likely to have larger families than their secular counterparts.^[2] Does that mean that natural selection will result in a greater number of believers than non-believers?^[3]

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Notes

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[1] From my son’s 9th grade biology textbook: Susan Feldkamp, ex. ed., Modern Biology (Austin, TX: Holt, Rineheart, and Winston, 2002), 288;

1. “…organisms that are better suited to their environment than others produce more offspring” American Heritage Science Dictionary, 1st ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), cf. natural selection, 422;
2. “fitness (in evolution) The condition of an organism that is well adapted to its environment, as measured by its ability to reproduce itself” Oxford Dictionary of Biology, New Edition (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996), cf. fitness, 202;
3. “fitness In an evolutionary context, the ability of an organism to produce a large number of offspring that survive to reproduce themselves” Norah Rudin, Dictionary of Modern Biology (Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 1997), cf. fitness, 146.

[2] Dinesh D’Souza points to this in his recent book, What’s So Great About Christianity:

Russia is one of the most atheist countries in the world, and abortions there outnumber live births by a ratio of two to one. Russia’s birth rate has fallen so low that the nation is now losing 700,000 people a year. Japan, perhaps the most secular country in Asia, is also on a kind of population diet: its 130 million people are expected to drop to around 100 million in the next few decades. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand find themselves in a similar predicament. Then there is Europe. The most secular continent on the globe is decadent in the quite literal sense that its population is rapidly shrinking. Birth rates are abysmally low in France, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Sweden. The nations of Western Europe today show some of the lowest birth rates ever recorded, and Eastern European birth rates are comparably low.  Historians have noted that Europe is suffering the most sustained reduction in its population since the Black Death in the fourteenth century, when one in three Europeans succumbed to the plague. Lacking the strong religious identity that once characterized Christendom, atheist Europe seems to be a civilization on its way out. Nietzsche predicted that European decadence would produce a miserable “last man’ devoid of any purpose beyond making life comfortable and making provision for regular fornication. Well, Nietzsche’s “last man” is finally here, and his name is Sven. Eric Kaufmann has noted that in America, where high levels of immigration have helped to compensate for falling native birth rates, birth rates among religious people are almost twice as high as those among secular people. This trend has also been noticed in Europe.” What this means is that, by a kind of natural selection, the West is likely to evolve in a more religious direction. This tendency will likely accelerate if Western societies continue to import immigrants from more religious societies, whether they are Christian or Muslim. Thus we can expect even the most secular regions of the world, through the sheer logic of demography, to become less secular over time…. My conclusion is that it is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation. Atheism is a bit like homosexuality: one is not sure where it fits into a doctrine of natural selection. Why would nature select people who mate with others of the same sex, a process with no reproductive advantage at all?

(17, 19.).  Some other studies and articles of note:

• Mohit Joshi, “Religious women less likely to get abortions than secular women,” Top Health News, Health News United States (1-31-08), found at: http://www.topnews.in/health/religious-women-less-likely-get-abortions-secular-women-2844 (last accessed 8-13-09);
• Anthony Gottlieb, “Faith Equals Fertility,” Intelligent Life, a publication of the Economist magazine (winter 2008), found at: http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/faith-equals-fertility (last accessed 8-13-09);
• W. Bradford Wilcox, “Fertility, Faith, & the Future of the West: A conversation with Phillip Longman,” Christianity Today, Books & Culture: A Christian Review (5-01-2007), found at: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/mayjun/4.28.html?start=1 (last accessed 8-13-2009);
• Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3-32, esp. 24-29 — I recommend this book for deep thinking on the issue.

[3] Adapted from a question by a student at a formal debate between Dr. Massimo Pigliucci and Dr. William Lane Craig during the Q&A portion of the debate.  (DVD, Christian Apologetics, Biola University, apologetics@biola.edu, product # WLC-RFM14V).