Let me explain what "neural hardwired programming" is. It is not a theory. It just "is".

In addition to how big your muscles are, the color of your skin, and every other detail of your body your dna dictates, it also sets forth various connections from brain cell to brain cell and sets the condition for the timing and circumstances that these brain cells to activate and contact each other. This process is call neural net programming and it is hardwired into your brain at birth.

When the sensory input of your brain receives impulses from your stomach that it is hungry a neural net program could activate to cause your chest muscles to contract, your mouth to open and for large amounts of air to be forced between your vocal chords in just the right sequence to "cry" in the way that the neural net programing of your mother's brain will understand that you are hungry ... instinctively.

The sensory nerves around your face will detect heat setting up a neural net program to force your mouth to "hunt". Upon finding the right object, your lips will work in a complex way with the set of muscles in parts of your mouth and throat to suck and swallow. This is another hardwired neural net program that just "is". It is not a theory. If you are born without the genes to form these patterns, you die of hunger and do not pass those genes to anyone else.

A theory of how such programming came into being is something like as follows:

A group of humans moves to a jungle area and has children. One half (just like today) of the children are mild mannered and one half are loud and excitable. One half make a lot of noise and one half make little, just due to the genes passed on from the grandparents.

In this particular area, unknown to the humans, predators exist that hunt mostly by sound. The loud children are eaten and do not pass along dna with that trait. The quite children survive to breed and have less risk from sound seeking predators.

Group two of humans moves to a area near water. The water has crocodiles that move quickly to grab prey. The slowest children are eaten. The fastest children survive to breed and pass along not only the physical ability of speed but the neural net programming that causes the "instinct" to run quickly at the first hint of something coming to eat you. Thousands of years later, without anything trying to eat you, you still have the "instincts" given to you by your ancestors.

These traits vary from species to species and explain that, after many generations of breeding in pens, rabbits cower at the shadow of an hawk.

Forgive me for expressing myself poorly. I probably should have said “philosophy” instead of “theory”.

I wasn’t trying to say that “neural hardwired programming” doesn’t exist. I was only trying to say that I don’t believe that the definitive source of the “programming” is entirely materialistic in nature - i.e. environmental influence.

So, to recant my original statement, I’d like to say that "Instincts are neural hardwired programming built into your brain and nervous system as part of your species" is a definition, which really says nothing about who or what “built it in” or how it was done. The assumption that it was done by the “natural selection” you described is exactly that – an assumption. And that assumption is based on what are fundamentally “materialist” premises.

But in any case, unless and until we can actually replicate and control “instinctive behavior” being passed along genetically in a controlled scientific experiment with living organisms, I will continue to view it as a theory.

As I said, how it came about is a theory. I presented a theory. The actual case may be little beams sent by aliens, mind control by dolphins, intelligent bacteria or multi dimensional invisible beings... or something completely different.