Some time ago sergei_sh has brought to my attention the works of Jeffrey A. Gray and I have decided to read his book, Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem. I will definitely write more about it, as I like it a lot. Right now one statement not that related to the main content of the book struck me. I will just quote is out of the context (Chapter Reality and Illusion, p. 63).
For the good fit between conscious experience and outside reality, the idealist philosopher Berkley called in God. In this more materialist age, it is Evolution that we must thank.
What I like here is similar to Laughlin’s statement from quite a different context (I am not sure if Jeffrey A. Gray has meant the same):
Evolution by natural selection, for instance, which Charles Darwin originally conceived as a great theory, has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong. Your protein defies the laws of mass action? Evolution did it! Your complicated mess of chemical reaction turns into a chicken? Evolution! The human brain works on logical principles no computer can emulate? Evolution is the cause!