=1 "Evolution = aspiration"
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Evolution = aspiration
Theologians for a thousand years have tried to explain the existence of evil. Either God is not all good or he is not all powerful, otherwise how could he permit evil to exist. But when we accept evolution the explanation becomes clear. There is no evil. There are only things which, because of evolution, are now out of place and have to go. All evil is subjective. We resent a thing when the time has come for it to go. Things that have outlived their age, which are now out of step, present themselves to our attention as evil. But it is simply the evolutionary force at work which is expressed in the receptors of our mind as an opinion: “This is evil”, just as the evolutionary force expresses itself in our deeper feelings as an aspiration: “This is the way it should be”.
We think that our aspiration, our longings for a better life, are strictly personal, perhaps even the most personal part of our being. But when in some Devonian age our remote ancestors were trying to climb from the water on to the land they must have had the same feeling: “Let's get out of here. Look, how beautiful it is out on top.”
And when the reptilian ancestors of the birds tried to fly, did they not have the same feeling as Lilienthal or the Wright brothers – that longing to be airborne?
When science looks at evolution, it speaks largely in terms of bones. But the bones changed only as a result; the longing for change always came first. This change in the bones may not have been the direct outcome of the longing. Perhaps by itself longing was not sufficient. But the same force which brought about the change could also have created the longing.