Oh, okay. I think I understand what you're getting at now. It sounds like the idea of "man's place in the universe," which presumes that we have some greater purpose instead of accepting that we're just another life form that developed on this planet. I do think that the idea of "human progress" in that context is religious or spiritual, presuming some transcendent quality that leads us towards something greater, instead of simply being a way of making life more tolerable before the Sun expands and fries the planet to a crisp.
I can dig that. I'm glad for whatever it was that led humans to design LCD televisions and microkinis, though. It may not progress us towards some greater universal goal, but... damn...
I can dig that. I'm glad for whatever it was that led humans to design LCD televisions and microkinis, though. It may not progress us towards some greater universal goal, but... damn...
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
