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Originally Posted by Robaggio
Throughout my life I've heard many stories of old speaking of how life was created out of the "time before man" where chaos reigned. Old cultures seemed to believe that life is order or that life is the absense of chaos. I find it interesting that life, even if artificial, is based on the concept of reducing chaotic values. Our existence is the result of attempts at order. Evolution is the act of reducing chaos. Human culture is ordered as well- we order our world through language and other symbols. It's very interesting to think about. I'm sure some people will see this as another excuse for intelligent design or some other futile attempt at understanding. However, you could also point out that this model indeed shows the bleak reality which is beyond our ordered scope of existence: chaos & nothingness.
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But evolution isn't necessarily refinement. It isn't necessarily improvement. What is better suited
for that particular situation is what survives. A giraffe, while quite adept at eating leaves in very high places, wouldn't be at home in a marine environment.
Homo sapiens sapiens look like a very dynamic, adaptable race, but we've only been around for 120,000-100,000 years. Yet as recently as the 19th century, we managed to kill 40 million bison. Imagine every other family in America having a bison in their home instead of a television at the beginning of the century, and seeing them stuffed in museums by the end of it.
I don't think that intelligence or evolution necessarily bring order. Intelligence brings with it the desire to organize and categorize, but all one manages to do is add a layer of labels to different groups of variables, rather than reducing those variables. That is "order" of our human culture.
This theory of evolution and order also seems to require an eventual utopian state. While that may occur on a cosmological level, I don't think humans will be waving that victory banner at the end of the day. At the rate we poison the air we breath, the water we drink and the food we eat...at the rate of our population growth...and at the rate of resource depletion...all signs instead point to a cataclysm that approaches at a geometric rate.
So, in a way, I think this idea is correct. But I also think the chaos that will be eliminated to acheive order includes us. Many deists make the assumption that their creator god has only us in mind and that our prosperity is an important step in a greater plan, as long as we pay our respects. The near-apocalyptic degradation of society has been trumpeted since the 1600s, but it has generally been a matter of not being proper worshippers, instead of being flawed.
Since I've gone off the philosophical deep end here, I might as well enjoy the fall: You see, when I look at society, I see concentric layers that mirror the progression of matter: atoms resemble solar systems, which rotate around galaxies. The children revolve around their parents, who revolve around their professional and social circles. But what does humanity revolve around? Is there a meta-grouping that's missing from the picture? We seem to have an overall behavioral pattern that resembles that of the orphan. The creator god is a parent of a kind, but he exists only in the abstract, albeit firmly accepted as law by the masses. I am either too cowardly or cynical to fall in line, although I do believe there is much about death and the dead that we do not understand.
So, in a way, I think think the quoted idea is wrong. I do not believe that our existence is the result of attempts at order. It is merely a result.