But doesn't Darwinist theory say that natural selection is what promotes the "survival (and thus reproduction) of the fittest?" At the very least, it would appear that survival (reproduction) is the "end," goal, or point of the exercise, the "good" toward which nature "strives." (I used quotation marks to indicate figurative language, so don't go hoopy on me). Or are you suggesting that what evolution really means is "change for the sake of change -- no good changes, no bad changes; just changes, randomly produced?"
Forgive me, Doc, but this strikes me as totally mindless.
I assume this offends your aesthetic and moral sense. I'm not exactly sure what kind of argument this is. Is it more pleasing to contemplate all the suffering in the animal world to be the result of a deliberate act of design?
Mind could be visible at some scales and not noticed at other scales. That gets back to emergent properties. What seems random at the quantum scale becomes order and predictibility at the macro scale. We do not know if there is a scale at which natural selection might appear to be the workings of a mind. Underlying randomness noes not preclude emerging order.