"Evolution simply means change." For Christ's sake, Snail, no it does not. Evolution, the non-random survival of heritable entities which occasionally miscopy (with thanks to Richard Dawkins for that quote) has led to all the diversity, complexity and beauty of life on Earth. Natural selection has nothing to do with survival of races, species or individual organisms, or extinctions. It is about differential survival within species. I would also contend that natural selection as a "driving force" is a concept you may wish to reconsider. It wasn't Darwin's term, was it? I hope your genetics course will clear one or two things up for you.