Is The Human Brain The Pinnacle Of Creation

Friday, 8 August 2025, 12:32 pm
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

The human brain the pinnacle of creation on Earth. So why Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Between the days commemorating 80 years since the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I’m asking the question: Does the evolution of the human brain have a cosmic meaning, or is it just a random event?

Though I risk wading into the murky waters of teleology, which presupposes not only directionality but also design in evolution, the evolution of a brain that has the capacity for both doing tremendous evil and being silently aware of the inviolate raises immense questions.

Is cosmic and terrestrial evolution merely a process that randomly develops brains with the capacity to be directly aware of the immanent intelligence of the universe? Is Homo sapiens the only intelligent life in the universe, even though true consciousness is still a potentiality within us? To answer yes seems illogical.

If you ask AI, which threatens to become the authority on all things, whether evolution has an intent (we must insist on no authority with regard to such questions), it conflates two things in a dogmatic answer:

“No, evolution does not have an intent or predetermined goal.”

Hold your horses. The question of whether there is an intrinsic cosmic intent is distinct from the question of a predetermined goal. More importantly, the question of cosmic intent (without design, goal or creator), or just total randomness belongs to philosophy, not to science.

All-knowing AI goes on however: “Evolution is a process driven by natural selection acting on random genetic variations within a population. There is no conscious entity or force guiding evolution toward a specific outcome. Evolution simply reflects the ongoing process of organisms adapting to their surroundings.”

Even most scientists now agree it’s not that simple. Disregarding the canard about “specific outcomes,” this view, though commonly held, is a theological claim, not a scientific fact. It may be true, but there’s no way that science can determine whether it is true or false. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The question of teleology is fraught, since it traditionally means a pre-ordained purpose and predetermined goal from a divine plan. There’s a longstanding rightful reaction to centuries of Christian belief of man’s special creation, of man (as opposed to the human brain) as the “pinnacle of creation,” and of “man created in the image of God.”

No one but die-hard fundamentalists believes such nonsense anymore, though it’s important to acknowledge how powerful such ideas were in the formation of western civilisation.

Teleology is a much more nuanced inquiry than these antiquated stereotypes. For example, reflecting a common false equivalence in science, AI also conflates “divine plan” with “inherent drive.”

Without falling back into asserting an outside force or divine plan, it’s absurd to argue against inherent drive in evolution, since from the first trillionth of a second since the Big Bang the universe has been expanding, developing galaxies, stars black holes and all the other incredible phenomena in the cosmos.

The same inherent drive exists within life on Earth, from the first single celled prokaryotic cells to the human brain, the most complex thing on Earth, with as many neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way.

That doesn’t mean that the human brain is the goal of terrestrial, much less cosmic evolution, but it does raise the question of cosmic intent without divine plan or predetermined goal.

In a tongue-in-cheek article about how many times “things keep evolving into anteaters,” a science writer asks, “Will humans one day follow suit?”

Citing how many times anteaters have independently evolved in different environments (12 since demise of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago), Helen Pilcher makes an unserious argument for “the importance of random events.”

Repeated, independent evolution of anteaters is an example of “convergent evolution,” Pilcher says. However, “the fact that convergent evolution occurs does not necessarily make it the default pathway.”

True, but it does point to evolution not being a totally random process. The flaw in the bedrock idea of total randomness is that rests on a completely mechanical view of evolution. And though there is no separate “Creator,” a mechanical universe is not a creative universe, and does not produce planets teeming with diverse and complex life.

Ironically, dogmatic randomists tend to believe there are no other planets with life, much less intelligent life in the universe, are bedfellows of the die-hards that cling to the “special creation” of man.

Not coincidentally, the father of teleology was a Jesuit priest, Pierre de Chardin. He argued that the universe is progressing toward a higher state of consciousness and unity, culminating in what he called the Omega Point.

Though a favorite of New Agers, de Chardin failed in his quest to reconcile evolutionary theory with Christian theology. What’s more, his concept of the “noosphere, the sphere where human thought and consciousness were seen as a crucial stage in evolution,” has been debunked by man’s destructiveness of the Earth.

In short, man’s increasing destructiveness, culminating in fragmenting the Earth to the point of ecological collapse, disproves the idea of gradual progress toward the Omega Point, and turns the idea of the noosphere on its head.

Both theologians and scientists often exhibit an enormous failure of awareness and insight by not seeing the huge distinction between the way humans operate and the way nature operates. Humans separate and fragment; nature seamlessly unfolds.

Where human consciousness is concerned, we are neither progressing toward the secularists dream of utopian material abundance, nor the religionists dream of an Omega Point.

And yet, despite the basic anomaly between the basic way humans, who evolved along with all other life, conduct ourselves on Earth, and the way life unfolds in seamless wholeness, the human brain is still “the pinnacle of creation” on this planet.

To misanthropically hope for our extinction is to hate evolution and life as much as man.

As man, in the form of the tech bros, chase after AGI (AI as smart as humans and able to replace us in most jobs), and “superintelligence” (the fabled “singularity” where AI far surpasses human cognitive ability), the question of the point of the human brain is now front and center.

To my mind, the evolution of intelligent life through random processes, with brains containing galaxies of neurons, represent the capacity of our brains to be directly aware of the immanent intelligence of the universe.

The evil of developing and using atomic weapons fits nicely in a worldview that believes in a totally random, meaningless universe. But randomness defines the process of evolution, and cannot account for beauty, mystery and awe.

So the question stands: why does the human brain, the pinnacle of creation on Earth and the only brain with the capacity for ineffable states of cosmic awareness on this planet, continue to generate so much darkness and evil?

Martin LeFevre

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Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Scoop Contributor

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.

His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

lefevremartin77@gmail