Well, you won't like the answer I think (or you'll scorn it), as I am a religious guy. But I do think that some of our human abilities (especially in the areas of abstraction - like beauty, understanding good and evil, our longing to know the truth of our existence, our abilities to create (things like Shakespeare's plays or Beethoven's music), our imaginations) may stem from more than just natural selection. Think about this: As I said in the previous post, we have stopped evolution to some extent (the unfit survive). Yet we have the knowledge and abilities to change the very fabric of life (cloning, DNA rebuilding, etc.). Evolutionists believe, in a sense, that life has no purpose other than survival of the species. Religious people, like me, believe that there is a definite Godly (and intelligent) purpose to the drawing up of intelligent life out of the chaos of the universe. But now WE (humans) have the ability to decide what purposes human life will have (and the form it will take). In that sense, for better or worse (I think worse, naturally), we are becoming our own Gods. It is our abilities of abstraction that allow us to do that. Does it not seem that there is some purpose there that gave us those abilities (or allowed them to develop). Or are we still just doing all things human in the name of species survival? - And me too - time to hit the sack. Best, Yendu Bwam
Hmmm... in a sloppy metaphorical sense, perhaps. Like how people will fall into the trap of referring to a species' evolutionary "strategy" to explain how a certain feature developed, as if the species decided to move in a certain direction.
But as an Objectivist I believe that "purpose", to a species with free will, is what the people make of it. Ultimately, for society's sake it's not how we came to be humans, with our free will, that's the important question. It's what will we do with our lives given that we do have free will.