Ortega speculates that MacDonald's main evidence for this theory is personal experience with college roommates who were Jewish. MacDonald seems to have sealed his fate as a scholar by testifying for Holocaust denier David Irving . Assume a behavior has the purpose of spreading one's own genetic material and you have the foundation for this discipline. This assumption, however, is based upon another assumption, namely, that there is a purpose to evolution, which there isn't. Natural selection isn't purposive and it does not aim to spread genetic material.
Individuals have an instinctive drive to survive.
If a significant number of a species did not have a strong urge to survive, that species would not have much chance of surviving. Species survive, in part, because individuals have instincts and behave in ways that increase their chances of survival. They do not choose those instincts or behaviors in order to preserve the species or to make sure future generations carry their seed. The theories of the evolutionary psychologists are explanations that, with hindsight, seem plausible. They seem to be about as useful as the Bible Code for predicting the future, though both might seem capable of retrodicting the past.