Why are we here?

Darwin:

• Natural selection is about survival
• Natural selection rewards tiny changes
• Natural selection explains how but not why
• We are here only long enough to pass on our genes
• This is the reason we are here

Richard Dawkins provides an answer to this existential question from a scientific perspective. Dawkins argues that we appear to be breaking Darwin’s rules through technological progress. What does this mean? In Dawkins view, evolution explains how we came into the world with the basic goals to survive or reproduce. But we freed ourselves from spending all our time passing on our genes. The thing that freed us from our genes was also the result of natural selection: the human brain. Natural selection rewarded a genetic advantage. Our brains got bigger and evolved the ability to set goals. We evolved the capacity to seek, to strive, and to set up short term goals in support of long term ones. The brain also gained the capacity to ask why. We were no longer content with what nature told us to do. Language became a tool. We adopted purposeful behavior through the communication of goals that benefit more than an individual. We accelerated the pace of evolution through technology which is currently evolving millions of times faster than genetic evolution. We created a technological world that enabled us to move faster, alleviate hunger, and cure disease. We started living longer. We invented with purpose. There was no purposeful design in nature. Powered by our technical progress, we explored the universe. We looked across the vacuum of space, backward in time to the birth of the universe. At the other extreme we looked at sub-atomic particles. We dissected the living cell and unraveled the digital code of genes. We hacked ourselves.

Dawkins explains that we provide the purpose in a universe that would otherwise have none. We are in charge. Why we are here resides in us.