another remark or two: evolution is non-hierarchical and is value-blank. a human being is no more evolved and no higher on the (alleged) evolutionary scale than a virus. evolution undergirds and justifies no values: it cannot be used to generate any moral or aesthetic truths. it does not prefer life to death, order to chaos, cooperation to competition, beauty to ugliness. it is as compatible with a holocaust as with a commune. if we want any values, we have to get them somewhere else.

in some ways, people have actually tried to make evolution do some of the things god did: order the universe, explain human values, give us a special status in the world, make meaning. but it is a complete blank on all these matters.