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Read other letters about this article
Nice interview, and for me personally, a Karen Armstrong presents a very inspiring viewpoint of religion and mysticism. I'm currently reading "The Great Transformation" and it's as fascinating as it is well-written.
As a scientist, though, I have to take issue with this statement by the interviewer:
For the evolutionary biologists, the question is whether there's some natural progression to evolution.
That betrays a profound misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, which is based on the idea that random genetic changes can lead to improved fitness - that is, likelihood of procreation - and that these mutations are inherited by the next generation. There is nothing whatsoever about a "progression" - evolution can just as easily lead to "regression" - loss of features, such as limbs in whales or eyes in cave-dwelling organisims. Evolutionary biology strives to understand the mechanism, but it is universally accepted that the only direction of evolution is in what makes survival more probable.
