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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Against Cosmic Consolation

A Manifesto for Taking Evolution Seriously

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

1. Evolution Needs No Upgrade

Evolutionary theory does not require spiritual completion.

It is not a preliminary draft awaiting metaphysical correction.

Its power lies precisely in what it does without invoking purpose, intention, or direction.

To demand more is not to deepen evolution, but to domesticate it.

2. Meaning Is Not a Feature of the Cosmos

Meaning does not inhere in the universe.

It arises within organisms capable of interpretation, memory, and valuation.

This is not nihilism.

It is a refusal to project human longings onto cosmic processes.

Evolution explains how meaning-makers came to exist.

It does not owe us a meaningful universe in return.

3. Explanatory Gaps Are Not Invitations

Unanswered questions in biology are not metaphysical vacancies.

They are:

• research problems

• technical challenges

• temporary limits of knowledge

To fill them with Spirit, Eros, or Intelligence is not insight—it is impatience.

4. Teleology Is Not a Default Setting

Direction is something we perceive after the fact, not something evolution pursues in advance.

Complexity increases locally, temporarily, and contingently.

Regression, extinction, and stasis are just as fundamental.

Any theory that privileges ascent over accident is storytelling, not science.

5. Minority Science Is Not a Wedge

Scientific dissent is part of science, not a breach in it.

Using minority views to undermine naturalism while ignoring mainstream consensus is not critical thinking—it is rhetorical laundering.

If a spiritual theory depends on scientific crisis, it is parasitic on misunderstanding.

6. Eros Explains Nothing

A principle that explains everything explains nothing.

If Eros predicts no outcomes, constrains no processes, and can accommodate any evolutionary history, it is not an explanation—it is a comfort.

Comfort is not a sin.

But it is not knowledge.

7. Integration Without Accountability Is Appropriation

To “include” science while exempting spirituality from evidence is not synthesis.

It is asymmetry disguised as transcendence.

If Spirit interacts with the world, it must submit to the same critical standards as any other causal claim.

If it does not, it should not pretend to explain evolution.

8. Evolution Is Enough

Enough does not mean complete.

It means sufficient.

Evolution accounts for life's diversity, complexity, and intelligence without guarantees, without goals, and without cosmic reassurance.

That is not a failure.

That is its achievement.

9. The Real Challenge

The real challenge is not accepting evolution.

It is accepting that:

• we are not the point of the process

• consciousness was not promised

• meaning is made, not discovered

This demands maturity, not metaphysics.

10. Let the Universe Be Indifferent

A universe that does not care about us is not hostile.

It is simply honest.

From that honesty, something rare becomes possible:

meaning without mandate, value without guarantee, and responsibility without cosmic backup.

Closing Statement

Evolution does not whisper secrets of Spirit.

It does not hint at hidden purpose.

It does not wait for interpretation.

It just works.

And if that unsettles us, the problem is not with evolution—but with our need for consolation.