Life as a Masterpiece

I read an interesting article in the New York Times Op-Ed section this morning by E. O. Wilson, a renowned professor emeritus from Harvard University. E. O. Wilson who is an incredibly good scientist and a scientific materialist (a person who only believes that matter and energy are all that exist, i.e., no God, gods, or spiritual dimension) who has recently joined the chorus of scientist who have written books to debunk God, writes about the need to discover and catalogue all of the species that exist on planet earth. He says that we only know about 10 percent of them! Wow. I was surprised by that statistic.

In the middle of the article I found this statement which I thought interesting: "Why bother making such an effort? Because each species from a bacterium to a whale is a masterpiece of evolution. Each has persisted, its mix of genes slowly evolving, for thousands to millions of years. And each is exquisitely adapted to its environment and interlocks with a legion of other species to form the ecosystems upon which our own lives ultimately depend." The phrase that caught my attention is "masterpiece of evolution." I went to Dictionary.com and looked up the word "masterpiece." These are some of the definitions :"1. a person's greatest piece of work, as in an art. 2. anything done with masterly skill: a masterpiece of improvisation. 3. a consummate example of skill or excellence of any kind: The chef's cake was a masterpiece."

I was struck how he was using a noun, "masterpiece," which applies to a sentient being. My point here, to be clear, is not to argue about evolution, evolution without a Being behind it. How can an impersonal process create a masterpiece? It reminds me of Harvard Psychologist Stephen Pinker's and fellow scientific materialist concluding his article on the brain in Time some months ago. He conclude by saying that we should "give thanks" for the complexity of the mind. I think "give thanks" is the exact wording, but I didn't go back and check. Again, the language infers a sentient being to whom one would give thanks.

I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, but when talking about creation and life, scientific materialists always end up using nouns and adjectives that assume sentie