Does Natural Selection Make Us Selfish?

In a simple answer:  Not really.  The important aspect of Natural Selection is that certain traits that allow you to survive and produce offspring will always be selected for because now you get to have children.  In some cases of some species, selfishness is selected for because it allows individuals to gather more resources and in effect more mates.  In other cases, cooporation allows for the group to have access to the resources, which makes the population healthier and those better able to produce more offspring. 

Sometimes, both forces (selfishness and cooperation) affect a population.  In Chimpanzees and other social animals, all organisms work together to warn each other about predators and other dangers.  While at the same time a social hierarchy ensures that only the dominant male (or female) gets to mate with the opposite sex.  The other organisms are left in the cold with no opportunity to produce offspring (except for some tricky business behind the back of the alpha).

Seed Magazine has an interesting article about destroying the idea that Natural Selection only describes selfishness and says nothing about Altruism (helping others).  The group dynamics of nature's populations show this interesting battle between looking out for the group and looking out for oneself.