The world is a complex place. In our struggles to simplify and understand, we often identify some bugbear and then make it responsible for all evils. - Stephen Jay Gould

The universe was here for whatever reason (if any) and we fit in much later. It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us…Sure we fit. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t. But the world wasn’t made for us and it will endure without us.

Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among million; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied.

In his anti-Darwinian book... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe), Francis Hitching tells the story... "The need to survive by reaching ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation." Hitching is quite correct, but he rebuts a fairy story that Darwin was far too smart to tell - even though the tale later entered our high school texts as a "classic case" nonetheless.