Evolution Has No Ethics

Author's preface: Special thanks to reader Andrea Corwin for sparking my thinking on this particular angle of evolution.

I find it fascinating to ponder the fact that evolution has no ethics. I am speaking metaphorically here of course but evolution does not care anything at all about morality or right or wrong or pain or pleasure. It does not care if the changes it selects for result in unimaginable suffering or the deaths of millions or even billions of other life forms. To the extent it could be said to 'care' about anything, the only thing it does care about is ensuring that life goes on. That something, anything survives another day, another year, another milennia. It does not care if the thing that survives is good or the ultimate evil. It does not care what that thing looks like, or how it survives, or who it hurts or doesn't hurt in order to survive. It does not care what that thing does to the world it happens to inhabit, and it certainly does not care what those things that survive think about evolution, or even that they are capable of thinking. A non thinking life form is exactly as valuable to evolution as the most intelligent of species. As long as it is well adapted to its environment and can survive to pass on its characteristics to another generation of life, it has done its job. Religious people often object to evolution because of how it has been used to explain the evolution of the human species. It contradicts with their stories of divine creation and makes human beings no different in principle than any other intelligent animal on the planet or in the universe. It takes away our specialness, which they fear. From my description above one could see how they could also view it as an evil force, since it has no ethics, it has no morality or code of conduct. It has no constraints at all beyond those which are required to ensure its continued functioning. However, I would urge the religiously inclined to reconsider that line of thinking. If you believe life is valuable, and as a religious person you must. Then evolution is the greatest force for good in the universe that has ever existed and will ever exist. Because, without it, life could not go on. It would surely end. All life would end. Without the invisble hand of evolution driving all living things to get stronger, to get better, to become more fit, they would surely all eventually die out. The light of life would go out in the universe like a bright candle extinguished at the end of a night's burning. Instead of a force for evil, in this view, evolution becomes an instrument of God's will. One could even go so far as to argue evolution is God, or perhaps the holy spirit. Working continually to ensure the survival of things, the continuation of life, the birth of creatures like man with consciousness, intelligence, and the ability to think about ourselves and for ourselves. It is in a sense omnipotent since no known force can stop it exactly like God is supposed to be. One would be hard pressed to say it is omniscient since knowledge is not a think which evolution requires in order to operate as it does. On the other hand one could argue it does know everything, how else would it know which living creatures are the more fit among all the possibilities or which particular changes will result in living things the best adapted for survival. One could easily argue that in order to cause such changes, to select for them, it must 'know' all those things and to know all those things would require one to know everything and thus to be omniscient. So there you have it, evolution as an omnipotent and omniscient God. The major downside for the religiously inclined is that this God has no ethic, or only one, life must go on.