Philosophy and religion usually seem concerned with a static universe. Absolute truth, eternal gods, ideal forms, rigorous logic. People as transient players on the fixed stage of unchanging existence. That was the one constant in all those ideological logical systems for thousands of years, self-evident to any deeply thinking person.
Evolution destroyed that concept. Everything is in flux, there is no permanence, accidents occur.
Species fit well into a current ecology, change and specialize, are wiped out by other species or sheer bad luck. Individuals only win by surviving. Maybe individuals don’t even matter and it is simply a game of genetic continuance.
Any modern philosophy, then, must begin with a treatment of evolution. Traditional religions do so by calling evolution an illusory evil. Traditional philosophies do so by pretending it is irrelevant. But if there are no permanent rules, no purpose, no grand universal design – what then?
One answer is solipsism – I am the only reality and the only purpose. That hardly describes who we are in normal social life.
Trying to discover exactly what evolution means to our relation to society is the genuine philosophic necessity of our age.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 