Are you trying to turn this into an intelligent design argument?
Human life is short, so instead of going through lengthy trial-and-error, like nature does, our brains evolved to make complex predictions about our environment based on past observations and simulation. That's what we call intelligence. It's not necessarily the best way to build something complex, but it is fast enough to be useful in a life time. I don't see any reason to assign additional meanings to the word like "how well a system is built" or to personify evolution into something other than a trial-and-error process.
Simply put: what if the entire ecology of the planet is part of an integrated system that has an intelligence of its own, motives of its own, and merely operates at an epic time scale.
Just as the bacteria in our stomachs don't know they're contributing to our well being, so also may we not know that we're contributing to the well being of Gaia.
The issue I have with that is that it seems unproveable, and therefore its truth or falsity has no impact on our daily lives.
Right. But also, we wouldn't be a bacteria in the stomach contributing to the well being. We seem more like a virus. Or maybe I'm just thinking in a too short time span.
Human life is short, so instead of going through lengthy trial-and-error, like nature does, our brains evolved to make complex predictions about our environment based on past observations and simulation. That's what we call intelligence. It's not necessarily the best way to build something complex, but it is fast enough to be useful in a life time. I don't see any reason to assign additional meanings to the word like "how well a system is built" or to personify evolution into something other than a trial-and-error process.