Here’s the opening paragraphs to a short essay that continues to develop the logic of a critique of pure randomness in evolution. My thesis: evolution is purposeful and directed, altho we have extremely limited access to what that purpose and direction is.
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As I have suggested elsewhere, we humans are entering our teenage years as a species. In the last 5000 years, in this dawning of “civilization,” we have grown from adolescents, perhaps about 10 years old, to young teenagers, say 13 years old (by way of comparing species-time to individual-time).
We have grown from an innocent but raw and unmediated selfishness, guided by a “dogpack mind” that Darwinians have enshrined as ‘survival of the fittest,’ towards an emerging “teenage” sense of the value of other, and of community, while still gripped by the dogpack mind that drives us towards all kinds of self-serving bigotries and forms of violence.
But let me step back for a moment, to make clear my context.
What is meant by this term ‘survival of the fittest?’ It is generally interpreted as meaning that life and its evolution is changing randomly, that is, without specific purpose and without intended or even definable direction, serving temporary imbalances in nature. Fitness is just a way of describing temporary species survival. Is a lion more fit than a sparrow? Is an oak more fit than a fern or moss or algae? Such an understanding of evolution implies very specifically that the process is godless. Evolution has no purpose or direction. It only serves temporary states of ‘fitness.’
Now, it is conceivable that the universe is purposeless and directionless, but I don’t believe that it is. In fact, I don’t believe that anyone, literally anyone, believes that it is! In our heart of hearts we all believe that there is meaning and purpose in our lives. We also believe there is purpose in our collective lives, as well, although we may bitterly disagree on what that meaning and purpose is. As a species we humans are utterly absorbed in and devoted to matters of purpose and direction. Indeed, the loss of hope in the purposefulness of our lives drives us to suicide. But even suicidal actions that address such a state are in themselves a desperate grasping at meaning, at purpose, in which the suicidal individual can at least direct one last act towards rejecting their hopelessness and helplessness.
And if we human beings are so driven, so utterly absorbed in the idea of meaning, purpose, direction, is this then a species-wide delusion?
I believe not. The very term ‘evolution’ inherently involves direction, and our obsession with exploring our evolution is a function of the purposefulness that shapes our every thought. The ideology of randomness in evolution is the real delusion! It is a positivist reduction and simplification, and while false, it does serve the purpose of helping us collect data with, perhaps, a little less emotional and ideological baggage. In this way it can be seen as having some value, even though it is neither truthful nor accurate in its understanding.
That said, we must be very careful not to assume what we mere humans, a genomic wavelet hurtling forward on the vast tidal wave of life-evolution, have any but the dimmest understanding of the direction and greater purpose of evolution. Indeed, the universe, and the purpose that drives it is arguably something like a quarter-billion times vaster and more enduring than the flickering space-time of our individual lives (assuming the universe is 13.7 billion years old).
Still, we can glimpse that direction and purpose, using our own direction and purpose to guide our imagination….