[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply! Feel free to substitute a word of your liking for "want" in the phrase "want to live". The question remains, what is its origin?

[js1138]

At what level do you want an explanation? If the explanation is presented at the level of chemistry, it is reductionism. If the explanation is presented at the level of population genetics it is a just so story.

We have been around and around with this. Science investigates phenomena with the tools available at the time, and scientific explanations are sometimes just formal descriptions of relationships among phenomena.

There is nothing in the behavior of genes that suggests that their behavior can't be explained with the methods of biochemistry. There is nothing about the frequency or distribution of alleles that suggests anything is at work other than selection.