Hey Adam,
That’s right. We need to rid ourselves of the idea that evolution means that “the strongest survive.” The stongest don’t always survive. Sometimes the strongest get hit by a bus on their way to the Mr. Universe contest. The Dinosaurs never even saw the bus that hit them. Richard Dawkin’s gave what I think is the best “nutshell” definition of the evolutionary process:
“Life results from the nonrandom survival of randomly varying replicators.”
Another misleading notion some folks have is that evolution is synonymous with progress; that it always leads to the betterment of a species. In fact, the evolutionary process can just as easily lead a species up a blind alley to their extinction, or around in circles. Evolution is a natural process. It’s not a plan for success. It’s not even a plan. It’s just the way things happen.
“Life is a huge blackboard filled with a million marks of chalk. Every thirty million years that chalkboard is wiped clean, leaving only a few smudges in the corners, whereupon life begins again without regard to perfection and adaptation, what has come before it, or the miserable consciousness of those few creatures able to wonder why they are here.” – Tom Bissell, A Comet’s Tale; On the Science of Apocalypse
Michael