Evolution is not intrinsically involuntary. Many animals, including humans, tend to select certain traits that, for whatever reason, they find desireable. For example, in America the average height has increased 2" over the last 100 years and it's not because of diet. Why did this happen? It appears that men who are very short tend to marry somewhat less than men who are taller (but only to a point), thus having the effect of increasing height over many generations. We there any other factors involved? Maybe.

Women's breasts are another example. With the great apes and monkeys, female breasts tend to lie flat unless the female is lactating. Humans are the only primate whereas the female breasts tend to stand out even when not lactating. Somewhere along the line of human evolution there likely was a shift, probably quite gradually, that accentuated the breasts to stand out more. Why did this happen? Possibly the more portruding female breasts became something that was more sexually attractive, thus increasing the chance for those who had them to reproduce. Hard to say with any certainty, however.

With birds, coloration is important with certain colors being characteristic with certain species. The same holds true with bird calls, and these both probably relate to finding mates for reproduction.

So, there's many examples whereas certain traits are selected for within a given species, and sometimes it may have nothing to do with survival of the fittest per se.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

Metis, I don't think anyone will agree with you characterization of a voluntary aspect to evolution before the human species appeared on earth. Where do you get that from?

As an anthropologist, we do look at the works of those in related fields such as primatology, paleontology, and biology. It would be a mistake for someone to believe that us humans are the only reasoning animals that have developed some culture. Chimps, for example, can reason at about the level of a two year old human child. Gorillas are pretty close to that as well. If one wants to check back on this, there have been numerous articles on this and human evolution in general in recent years found in Scientific American and National Geographic, for examples. About two years ago, one entire monthly edition of Scientific American was devoted to the evolution of human ancestry, so one might check at their local library or maybe even try to see if they can get some of the articles on-line.

So, the bottom line is if there is reasoning, then voluntary selection comes into play.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

That's an unsupported conclusory statement. Spencer and Davidson certainly disagree with you.

I told you were to find "support", and if you don't wish to check it out, then that's obviously your choice. I've spent plenty of time studying primatology over the decades, so this is an area I'm quite familiar with having taught anthropology for over 30 years.

Believe what you want.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

I don't know what time has to do with it. Just imagine how many years the natural philosophers had been studying and teaching the subjects and still they refused to accept Galileo's submissions on the nature of the cosmos.

That's a daft comment! The truth of the matter is that very many of them did indeed accept Galileo's conclusions. They just couldn't say so under threat from the church, which was substantially more powerful than the universities of the time.

Not only that, but you must also remember that they scarcely had time. Accepting Galileo's viewpoint requires that they put their Ptolemaic views behind them, and begin learning again. That takes time, and the plain, incontrovertible fact of the matter is that when sufficient time had passed for the required study and scholarly analysis/review, everybody and his dog did come around to Galileo's Copernican view of the Solar System.

It took a long time for all scientists to accept Einstein's theories, too, and they wanted proof, a piece of which had to wait for an opportune eclipse. But the fact that for quite a while not everybody accepted Copernicus's, Galileo's, Newton's, Einstein's, Darwin's and others' views did not make those views wrong. It made the rest slow on the uptake.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

On the contrary, it was Galileo's opponents who complained to the church that he was teaching contrary to church dogma. They solicited the church to aid their cause.

Since no remains of anthropoid apes or primitive ape-like men have been found in America, anthropologists who support Darwin's theory believe that the continent therefore had no idigenous inhabitants.
With equal validity it could be argued that as there were no apes in America the first Americans did not descend from monkey-like ancestors, but as their stories and myths claim, they came from the stars.
with all due respect to Darwin, perhaps no men ever descended from monkey-like creatures, but from colonists from other planets.
IMO it seems to take less faith to believe that than the idea that we just appeared from mud over millions of years.
Admittedly zoologists do establish close similarities between the behavior of Men and Monkeys.
Some claim to have much in common with their noblest friend, the Dog.
What does that prove?

Oh, I get it now! Ignore all the accumulated, observable, testable evidence, conjecture, theory and just make something up. You're right. That's way easier. Thinking and testing is just too much like work, isn't it?
Except it leaves the issue of where those mysterious spacemen came from, doesn't it. Or did they have better mud?

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.