Evolution Works!

Thank God for evolution. Well, I guess it wouldn’t be right to thank God for that, now would it. After all, it is preposterous to think a God would exist who would be smart enough to do in six days what random chaos could do in millions of years. It is much sexier to think that a bunch of pond scum mixed together like flour and eggs to make me. And now that we are all upright and walking, evolution will ensure the continuation of the strong while the weak are lost to time for their inability to adapt. We will only have the smartest, brightest, and purest in our societies. Sound familiar?

The problem with natural selection is that for it to truly be natural, thinking, reasoning beings cannot intervene. Whether it is intervening to protect spotted owls, or preserve unsophisticated tribal cultures. If one group develops beyond another and thus the less developed group is lost, shouldn’t we rejoice that evolution is working? Isn’t it true that the true beauty of evolution is the ultimate, utopian, pinnacle of life? Sort of like the perfect representation of evolution resulting in a being that has no flaws, is perfect, blameless, knows what to do about any situation. Seems to me, that is what God is. So we have a group that prefers to think God created us and a group that works toward being God, at least organically.

So what does the evolution score card look like? Are we getting close? We are living longer. But we are not getting along better. We are not pairing up in ways that produce healthier and healthier babies and families. As a matter of fact, much of what we do to live longer and lower the infant mortality rate has to do with a kind of band-aid evolution. We eat better as parents and therefore our babies are better off. It is not just the case where only strong people are having babies that survive, either. Sick babies are made better through artificial means as opposed to biological evolution. People are kept alive longer with drugs and hospital care, not a better body. Evolution does not include an element of free will. It is purely scientific and humans simply are not able to function like Spock of Star Trek fame. We are greedy and manipulative and self centered and mean. Certainly evolution should have made some headway on that front by now. But, just like the caveman who pulled his woman back into his cave by her hair, we are still beating our wives and kids, kicking the dog and murdering our neighbors. Maybe someone could just explain to me what I am missing. Because it seems to me, the further we get from God, the more we devolve.