BIOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 41 I 



purpose. Finally, the argument illustrates human conceitedness rather than 

 objective fact. The purpose of evolution, as thus interpreted, is to develop 

 man, and man is the end, the,completion, the perfection of the process. We 

 accept the teleological interpretation of evolution because it glorifies man 

 as a superior product which required so many difficult aeons of prepara- 

 tion. Even those who add that the purpose of the evolution of man is to 

 serve God do so in the interest of human conceit by saying, or implying, 

 that man is the chief object of God's attention, and the trouble God went 

 to in planning such a complicated evolution demonstrates the greatness of 

 God's consideration for man. But, if man could discount his own conceit, 

 he would see that the argument for world purposiveness from evolution 

 would have little basis. 



Value. "Even though the previous arguments from design, analogy, 

 complexity, and evolution fail to prove that the world has a purpose, one 

 other additional argument does. Value or goodness exists. Many types of 

 value or goodness exist. For example, the value of life, of hope, of love, of 

 companionship, of beauty, of faith, of honor, of loyalty have been mechani- 

 cally caused. Literature, music, art, drama, painting, pageantry, and poetry, 

 are more than machine-made or circumstantial products. The ecstasy of 

 love, the subhmity of symphonic music, the peace of worship, the exalta- 

 tion of success, the inspiration of faith in the future — all of these are values 

 which could not just have happened. Life is too worth-while just to have 

 occurred." 



Critics may hedge and hesitate to explain value in non-purposive terms, 

 but usually they hold that even though it is not necessary, yet it is possible 

 to do so. Value consists in pleasant feeling and pleasant feehng is produced 

 in bodies by proper stimulation or, according to at least one psychologist, 

 when synaptic resistance to nervous impulses is decreasing. Such reduc- 

 tion of resistance is explainable completely by chemical and physical in- 

 terpretation. Value exists in the world because those chemical combinations 

 organized into living being that produced pleasure survived better than 

 non-plcasure-producing hving beings. Synaptic and glandular conditions 

 may cause objects to appear magnificent, grandiloquent, ecstatic, but such 

 illusions merely happen to have been useful for survival rather than to be 

 true ideas about the real world. Values exist, but exist as illusions, albeit 

 happy and pleasurable illusions. Illusions of value may beget illusions of 

 purposiveness, but unless these illusions also are enjoyable there is no point 

 in being deceived by them. 



Critics call attention also to the existence of evil. Values might serve a 

 purpose, but what good is evil? The horror, fear, hatred, anguish, pain, 

 ugliness, nausea, and sufiFering of life and death are a part of the total pic- 

 ture. There is too much evil in the world for anyone to have planned it 

 that way. The existence of evil is at least as much proof that the world 

 has no purpose as in the existence of good proof that the world has a pur- 



