Ruthless utilitarianism trumps, even if it doesn't always seem that way?

Does "it" refer to "nature" in " Ruthless utilitarianism trumps, even if it
doesn't always seem that way"?

Background info:

Knowing that we are products of Darwinian evolution, we
should ask what pressure or pressures exerted by natural selection
originally favoured the impulse to religion. The question gains
urgency from standard Darwinian considerations of economy.
Religion is so wasteful, so extravagant; and Darwinian selection
habitually targets and eliminates waste. Nature is a miserly
accountant, grudging the pennies, watching the clock, punishing
the smallest extravagance. Unrelentingly and unceasingly, as
Darwin explained, 'natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinis-
ing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest;
rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is
good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever
opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being'. If a
wild animal habitually performs some useless activity, natural
selection will favour rival individuals who devote the time and
energy, instead, to surviving and reproducing. Nature cannot afford
frivolous jeux d'esprit. Ruthless utilitarianism trumps, even if it
doesn't always seem that way.