Is there progress in evolution? Many, including Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles), Herbert Spencer, Julian Huxley, and Richard Dawkins think there is. Others are not so sure. Some, like Charles Darwin himself, sit on the fence. It is hard enough getting progress, let alone putting up barriers like the non-directedness of the Darwinian evolutionary process. One problem is that of defining evolutionary progress. Often it is done in the name of complexity, but as paleontologist Dan McShea points out, to define complexity is a far from easy process and it is not always the case that complex means desirable. The backbone of the whale is simply but highly adapted for life in the deep. A number of possible progress-supported mechanisms are introduced and discussed – arms races, morphological convergence, and even some natural unguided processes simply emerging. The drunkard is going to fall off the sidewalk eventually, even though he doesn’t plan it. All are found lacking, as one might have predicted. Darwinian theory is drained of absolute value judgements. Progress is of absolute value. Hence, it cannot be derived from Darwinian theory.

Several high-profile evolutionary biologists in the twentieth century were committed organicists. Conrad H. Waddington, the British geneticist was one, trying to simulate Lamarckian processes through orthodox genetical approaches. Another was the well-known American paleontologist and scientific popularizer Stephen Jay Gould, who promoted morphology over adaptation. And a third was the founding populational geneticist, American Sewall Wright. He argued that random processes, genetic drift, could and would lead to major adaptive breakthroughs. Philosophers likewise embrace organicism, including the British John Dupré and the American philosophers Jerry Fodor and Thomas Nagel. Nagel in particular has been highly critical of Darwinian theory, thinking it to be crude materialism masquerading as science. Expectedly, the Darwinian mechanists have struck back, confirming the suspicion that we have paradigm differences at stake. The two sides, mechanism and organicism, defend their positions with alternative reasons. For the mechanists, the triumphs of their approach trumps all. The double helix is a popular example in support of mechanism. For the organicists, the special place of humans trumps all. We are superior and no further argument is needed.

Here, I start by discussing Stephen Jay Gould’s famous thought-experiment of ‘replaying the tape of life’. If we could wind back to the early days of evolution and reboot, would the tape play out in a similar way? Gould thought not, but his hypothesis was untestable since a real version of his thought-experiment is impossible – at least on Earth. However, other inhabited planets represent independent playings of the tape of evolution, and when we can observe enough of these we will know to what extent evolution is repeatable in a broader context than the one that Gould considered. We can hypothesize in this broader context, confident in the knowledge that our hypotheses will ultimately be testable. Plausible hypotheses are: (1) most life is based on carbon (not carbon chauvinism – the assertion that all life must be based on carbon); (2) most life is based on cells; (3) many features of large life-forms will recur often across different inhabited planets, including skeletons and muscles; (4) intelligence will be absent from some inhabited planets, just as it initially was on Earth – where it occurs, it will be the exception rather than the rule, just as it is here.

In 2005 I was invited to contribute to a volume celebrating the life and work of Richard Dawkins, which was published in 2006 under the title Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think. My essay title plays on Richard’s 2003 anthology A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. After decades of illuminating the minds of millions of people through his popular science writing, Richard Dawkins turned his keen mind to religion, and the result was the birth of the New Atheist movement, which began shortly after this tribute volume was published.

This chapter relates religious experience to morality, with special attention to the role of God and with response to Kant and Stephen Jay Gould.