[AlexCoventry]

Unless you think concepts like "genome" and "propagation" are somehow encoded in our DNA, it's ideological.

There are clear biological drives to sex and caring for young, but I don't see evidence for a direct biological drive for being fruitful and multiplying.

[tinymollusk]

I suspect, like many human things, it's an underlying biological drive interpreted by our lawyer-as-narrator, the consciousness. I'm thinking of the "elephant and the rider" metaphor -- the elephant has drives for sex and care of young, the rider on the top rationalizes it.

The elephant turns left and goes into a river. After they're headed for the river, the rider thinks, "I'm hot, I should go to the river."

[dwaltrip]

Sex and caring for young directly results in "being fruitful and multiplying".

[AlexCoventry]

But no inbuilt explicit desire for it.