Atheism, Evolution, Science, & Rationality - Part 2

In line with my last post, reading Dennett's book has provoked subsequent thoughts along other lines, one of which is how evolution, on its own terms, can explain why the survival of a species is a good or desirable thing. As I understand it, evolution is defined as the random genetic mutation of species and the natural selection of preferred mutations that result in the peferred mutations surviving in certain species while the species that lack preferred mutations go extinct.

I ask, "If we suppose that random genetic mutation took place, what interest would Nature have in perpetuating a particular species?"

The answer comes back, "So that ecological balance is achieved", or "So that life continues, or advances, or improves..."

I respond, "Why does Nature care?"

(Note the personification of Nature, or evolution, as though some metaphysical entity called Nature or Evolution is choreographing life's origins and perpetuity - sounds a lot like God to me).

In fact, we'd have to ask why Nature would have any notion of "improvement" at all? This is one of evolution's insurmountable challenges, it seems to me: how there exists any notion of better/worse, improvement/decline, etc. in or of a species. I dont' deny that we live with such notions today, but I do deny that naturalistic philosophy should produce them from it's own principles.


Evolution can't explain how it moves from what is to what ought to be; things like injustice and obligations simply gum up the bloody evolutionary works. In fact, it can't even explain how it moves from Nothing in the first place to Life in the second, but that's another issue. For now, I simply wonder why so many people who believe that evolutionary theory explains life's origins get so upset by earthquakes, hurricanes, and cyclones when it may just be (according to their own theory) Nature's way of eliminating the less desirable members of the human species.


The evil of evolution is seen in that last sentence; it is blasphemy to belittle the image of the glorious God so. Oh, that more people would lay down their evolutionary and atheistic idols and embrace the dignity given to them by being made in God's image! Not to mention the redeeming dignity of being "renewed in knowledge after the image of our creator," by believing in Jesus, the incarnate image of God.