What Does Evolution Want?

Are human beings just an evolutionary accident? What if the evolution of humans, or some brainy creature like us, was inevitable once life first appeared on Earth? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, maverick paleontologist Simon Conway Morris explains why he believes evolution must ultimately lead to intelligent beings.

Original Air Date: November 28, 2010

Segment 1

What Does Evolution Want?

Is there some design intention behind the apparently random choices made by the evolutionary process? Steve Paulson visits with renowned British paleontologist Simon Conway Morris in his office at Cambridge University in England to talk about Morris’s radical idea that humans, or something like them, were the inevitable outcome of the appearance of life on earth.

Segment 2

What Does Evolution Want?

John Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian at Georgetown University, and the author of God After Darwin and God and the New Atheism. Haught talks with Steve Paulson about his theology of evolution. Also, paleo-anthropologist John Hawks shows Anne Strainchamps around his lab at the University of Wisconsin and they talk about how human beings have evolved since their cave man days, and how the process is continuing.

Segment 3

What Does Evolution Want?

“What-Does-Evolution-Want-Part-3” from Science And The Search For Meaning—Five Questions by Podcasts. Track 6.