Evolution Favors Irrationality

Darwin’s notion of adaptation
by natural selection shoots
itself in the head again

The Yoda Complex is endemic within the Darwin Party. Evolutionary biologists and anthropologists picture themselves immune from the selection pressures that afflict “other” people. Now, some are telling us that selection pressure favors irrationality in humans.

We who live outside the fogma, who maintain that rationality is God-given, are tempted to ask them, ‘How did you escape the evolutionary pressures that made your brethren irrational? For that matter, how do you even comprehend what rationality is?’. Take a look at what some British Darwinians are claiming.

Scientists find evolutionary explanation for “irrational” Dread Risk behaviour (University of Exeter, 10 Nov 2025). An ‘evolutionary explanation’, they call it. Explanation implies rationality: the ability to comprehend causes and effects. But can the Stuff Happens Law cause anything? These Darwinists claim that it causes irrational dread. Irrationality, they say, actually favors the passing on of one’s genes.

The evolution of the so-called Dread Risk response has been explained by new scientific research.

People often respond to low-probability, high-consequence events like terror attacks or nuclear accidents with a Dread Risk response. This intense fear of the perceived sources of dread leads to extreme avoidance behaviour, which often means that people expose themselves to higher risk of dying in more common incidents like traffic accidents.

Scientists at the Universities of Exeter and Bristol have used a mathematical model to show how such apparently irrational overreaction biases are actually favoured by evolution. In their model, individuals that exhibit bias against activities that, however unlikely, could wipe out a significant proportion of their extended family group tend to leave more copies of their genes in the long run than those that respond to these risks more proportionately.

But doesn’t risk avoidance make rational sense? It could, but the evolutionists here are talking about “overreaction” that doesn’t make sense. It’s a kind of superstitious behavior, like obsessive avoidance of walking under ladders after hearing of one incident of a person being hit by a falling ladder. They give the example of people refusing to fly on airplanes for over a year after the 9/11 attacks even though, after the incident was over, the likelihood of being on a plane with terrorists aboard fell back to trivial levels.

What makes this new Darwinian notion silly is that the ‘irrational dread’ behavior is material, not mental. In Darwinian theory, people are not using their rational minds to decide to drive instead of fly; the hidden force of evolutionary ‘selection pressure’ has caused their genes to dictate their actions.

“Our findings suggest that it doesn’t matter how well-informed people are, they are likely to have an evolved tendency to bias their behaviour against exposure to rare but mass mortality events, which we term environmental or aggregate risks,” says lead author Emeritus Professor John McNamara from the University of Bristol’s School of Mathematics. “This bias is felt in the form of dread, a defence mechanism to protect our familial structures, and indeed, our genetic dynasty. The stronger the bias, the greater the dread.”

That they are speaking of evolutionary determinism is clear from the statement: “this apparently ‘maladaptive’ behaviour can be explained through the principles of genetic evolution.” You know what that means. It’s random mutations and natural selection. Mistakes occurring by chance somehow get ‘selected’ by blind, unguided forces. Nothing rational about it.

Scales of risk and adaptive ‘dread’: an evolutionary theory of risk inflation (McNamara, Dall, and Houston, Nature Scientific Reports, 10 Nov 2025). This is the published scientific paper arguing for the notion that irrational dread somehow makes evolutionary sense. If any doubt remains whether the Darwinists at U of Exeter are talking about genetic determinism, look at the quote right in the Abstract:

We show that evolution by natural selection in fluctuating environments means it is adaptive to inflate environmental (aggregate) risks relative to demographic risks, where the inflation factor depends on the proportion of carriers of the allele that die if the risk strikes.

Evolve or perish. Indeed, according to Darwin, all adaptive behavior must be in the genes:

Natural selection acts on gene frequencies, and from this perspective individuals are only important in so much as they transmit genes to future generations.

This just-so story will be on the final exam. Make sure you can regurgitate it verbatim. Class dismissed.

Let’s Tell a Just-So Story

Alleles are pieces of DNA, the elements of genes. In these Darwinists’ reasoning (whether it is rational or not, the reader can judge), some allele in the past made one of our ancestors exhibit irrational dread risk behavior. Maybe a cosmic ray hit her ‘rationality’ gene or something. So let’s invoke evolutionary imagination to see how this Stuff might have Happened.

If it was a dominant gene that made her irrational, her children became carriers of the chance mutation. The irrationality allele began to spread through the population. Then a disaster hit – maybe a volcano erupted, wiping out a large number of the ancestors. (The paper offers a modified scenario to ours: “We argue that such responses may have arisen as an adaptation to risks that wipe out a significant proportion of all carriers of an allele if they strike, e.g. storms.”)

From then on, homozygous carriers of the irrationality gene avoided mountains that looked like they might erupt (or the hominids ran into the cave when clouds appeared). The next time a volcano erupted, or a big storm came (like a global flood?) natural selection favored the ancestors who had avoided the risk (because their genes made them avoid it), even though the probability that any given mountain might erupt is low. Over millions of years, the population of carriers grew until everyone was irrational, including us.

And that, children, is how we all became irrational (i.e., crazy). Blame evolution. Embrace your superstitions; they protect you!

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The paper and press release just shared above is one of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands or more, of similar examples of sophoxymoronia in print: foolish wisdom by wise fools who present self-refuting, fact-free oxymorons like “evolutionary explanations” that pretend to explain life and existence. Such nonsense would make a witch doctor chuckle. Our behavior is shaped by accidents in our genes? How can anyone accept this? Yet it was published by scientists at a prestigious British university and published by Nature, the leading science journal in the world. Nobody in the press is calling it out. And if someone in the mainstream media or academia did laugh at this, they would be immediately censored and in fear of their careers.

Even Darwin himself didn’t want to live in this kind of intellectual world. He said in The Origin that “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” OK, Charlie; let’s ask some questions: if natural selection on alleles favors (not just causes, but promotes) irrationality, then how can you trust natural selection as a rational account of the authors’ behavior in writing a paper on natural selection? Did a cosmic ray hit their brains and determine that they would collude to write this? How could their behavior promote truth instead of evolutionary fitness? Are the authors trying to perpetuate their genes with this paper?

We always try to be fair to our opponents by listening first. Perhaps John, Sasha and Alasdair didn’t intend to imply that all human behavior is irrational. Obviously they know how to write good English and manipulate equations for their mathematical model; these are hallmarks of rational behavior. But they say in their Discussion section,

Our approach envisages that attitudes to risk have a genetic basis, with the alleles at an autosomal locus specifying the attitude of the carrier of the allele. It is a standard argument that at an evolutionary endpoint, the allele that has been selected for should maximise its invasion fitness.

Invasion fitness refers to the population spread of an allele that has been selected naturally. Their mathematical model is a chemical, deterministic theory. If natural selection favors irrationality in the area of dread risk, how could it favor rationality anywhere else? “Rationality” is not found in the Darwin Dictionary. The authors mention “fitness” 20 times in their paper. Fitness as a Darwinian concept only favors what survives. It cares nothing about Truth.

Now the fit will be survivors, and survivors will be fit,
And survivors will survive to prove the fitness of the fit,
O, this natural selection– it’s so simple, isn’t it?
‘Tis ruthless crawling on.

But what if they argue that Darwinian fitness favors rationality in other cases? That is a comeback by advocates of “evolutionary epistemology” (another sophoxymoronic phrase). Well, even if that were true, they would have no way to know it is true. Their selfish genes could be tricking them in order to perpetuate themselves. Darwinian theory offers no path into the exalted plane of consciousness where Yoda supposedly lives, from where they can pontificate to their fellow meat robots about reality. Since you have to be conscious to deny consciousness, you have to be rational to propose a cause of irrationality. Darwinism is a non-starter for assessing rationality; even some atheists recognize this problem.

After reading this article with the opening statement about the Yoda complex being endemic in Darwinism, our contributing author Dr John Wise had this assessment:

This opening line is such a brilliant encapsulation of Hegelianism! Hegel was Yoda (and vice versa)! He thought himself so tuned in to the “The Force” (Spirit) that he (uniquely) could view the panorama of History “from above” (though he would say it differently, not liking the “above” metaphor, which conjures transcendence… This is the Eastern sage we see in so many movies today, possessing a wisdom from the integration of reality in their (complete, not partial) vision of it. It is gnosticism reenacted. And, of course, the ‘irrationality’ affects other people (never themselves) because they “see” the cunning of Reason that deceives everyone not initiated into the “mysteries” of their religion.

Christianity, by contrast, explains rationality as a derivative quality—a gift bestowed—from an omniscient and righteous Creator. God created mankind in His image, and gave us the intelligently designed bodies and tools for observing the creation and thinking about it. And since God is righteous and good, therefore trustworthy, our concepts can be trustworthy to the degree they conform to His truth that has been revealed to us in creation and in Scripture.

Unfortunately, because the human race was fallen into sin, irrationality (i.e., non-conformance to godly character) has invaded and corrupted our minds. The result? Those in rebellion against their Creator pursue any path that can assuage their consciences. One of the most successful attempts is Darwinism. The Apostle Paul’s summary of human rebellion in his Epistle to the Romans expresses well the situation in modern science today:

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. —Romans 1:16-25