Why are we here?

Unfortunately very often the consequences of a deeper understanding of the evolutionary theory are ignored or misunderstood by many people. On an intellectual level, some beliefs seem to ignore completely the meaning of evolution. This is probably due both to our cultural and religious traditions, both to the real difficulties of people to accept, for example, that man has no privileged place in the world or in the universe. This is one of that consequences that most of all have difficulties in being finally accepted, together with the fact that human intelligence is nothing more than one of the many products of evolution, like the wings of bats or the cactus thorns.

Regarding the man's role in the world, the studies of the history of life and the discoveries of geology provides a very clear answer. Many people think they know how the evolution works, and are convinced that it proceeds undisturbed, incessantly and inevitably, from more "primitive" organisms to better adapted ones. If this would be true, the result would have been one or a few super-adpted life forms. They not consider the fact that the existence of most species is largely due to external contingent events.

In fact, the survival of organisms living in a certain environment, is closely linked to unpredictable events (such as natural disasters) that indiscriminately strike all life forms, from the strongest and most numerous one, to the apparently weakest one.

Therefore, whether we speak of small-scale events, or we consider the mass extinctions, the organisms that survive may not be the ones that during the previous period of stability had achieved greater success in evolutionary terms. Just think, for example, to the best known mass extinction, at the end of the Mesozoic era.

In the course of nearly two hundred million years, reptiles had so diversified that they became the dominant group of animals in almost all environments, while mammals and then birds occupied the few remaining ecological niches. After a catastrophic event happened about 65 million years ago, many of the reptile groups became extinct, and mammals, through a process called adaptive radiation, became the new dominant animals in many environments.

There is evidence of at least 5 mass extinctions. The existence of the modern species, including humans, is characterized by being incredibly improbable. This means, quite simply, that human life not only ever had no character of necessity, but that it is only thanks to a chain of contingent and extremely unlikely events that have occurred throughout Earth's history, that we exist.