The outsider position affirming a direction in evolution

Those who believe in the complete randomness of evolution, the vast majority of scientists, often make dismissive comments regarding any kind of direction to evolution, usually in footnotes to show its unimportance to the text, but then the footnote’s are often emotional and long, protesting too much. I find the arguments that evolution is “non-purposive” and random as closed as the religious arguments denying evolution, information is lacking in both arguments.

A few men have had the courage to claim some sort of internal direction, or a development toward complexity in evolution, Ken Wilber and Francis Heylighen are two thinkers who do have courage in discussing a direction in evolution. Philosopher Wilber said, evolution is “the opposite of chance or randomness in the universe. It's evidence of a force that is pursuing against randomness in the universe... Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory holds that all of these transformations upward were just the result of chance and randomness. But there is no way in hell that the universe went from atoms to Shakespeare out of random stabs. This is an extraordinary driven process. The astrophysicist Erich Jantsch referred to evolution as “self-organizing through transcendence,” which is a good way to think about it...” (Conversation in Enlightenment, Issue 47, 2011 -p-48)

Scientist Francis Heylighen wrote, “ ...it is assumed that evolution is largely unpredictable and contingent on a host of uncontrollable factors, which may steer its course in any of an infinite number of directions. However, it is noted that directions in which complexity increases are generally preferred...Though fitness is relative to the environment, it has two components that can increase in an absolute sense, internal fitness (strength of linkages between components) and number of environmental perturbations that can be counteracted. Increases in these two components tend to be accompanied by respective increases in structural and functional complexity...Still, it can happen that systems evolve towards a simpler organization, although this seems rare. It is most likely to occur when the system enters a simpler environment, as when an organism becomes an internal parasite or moves back from the land to the water, but these are obviously unusual examples which go against the general trend of environments becoming more complex. The net effect will tend to be that the new ecosystem, formed by environment together with the newly added system (parasite, cave fish, aquatic mammal, etc.) will become more complex than it was before the appearance of the simplified system... ("The Growth of Structural and Functional Complexity during Evolution”)

I see evolution moving inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements, and the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward “higher and higher more effective living forms,”as Cattell put it. The goal of evolving to Godhood need not deprive us of either science or religion. Defining the Spirit-Will as internally activating life toward evolving toward higher and higher forms and eventually to Godhood, shaped by natural outside evolution, may be a bit further than these men want to go, but we go there. I think such a drive and direction will one day be acknowledged by science. and religion.