Before there was life on Earth, there were no purposes, no reasons. Things just happened. How could purposes emerge from such purposeless conditions?

Looking back at the evolution of life on the planet, we can now see – if only dimly – the patterns that led to the exquisite functional organisations of matter that living forms exhibit.

We human beings are the only living things that can represent these reasons, and comprehend them, but that does not make them illusory.

Darwin’s discovery of biological evolution by natural selection revealed how life evolves through the blind process of random mutation and environmental pruning, without any outside purpose or design.