I think spiritual evolution works rather differently from organic evolution- while the body evolves by gene inheritance, the mind is memetic (1). So the biological functions are subject the darwinist development- genes don't read back the results of the individual organism's lifetime experience- they can be modified, but not in a purposeful way. Whereas the mind/ soul/ spirit undergoes much more of a lamarckian process. We can incorporate our own experiences into received ideas, and pass on the modified version- that's what makes the most developed animals, and particularly humans, such powerful learning machines.

But we are equally not fully in control of our own meme set. Some current thinkers suggest a parallel to the "selfish gene"- just as from the gene's point of view(2), it is its own survival that is the important thing, so the meme has a life of its own- some memes are more contagious than others, and whole communities can be suddenly swept up by a rampant meme. Just as with mutant genes, this is almost always damaging to the host organism.

I thought of this recently, listening to a radio program about the Serb/ Bosnian war. The correspondent described Serbia at the time as having an "atmosphere of evil". The circumstances favoured the propogation of the idea that to do dreadful things to the "enemy" was not just necessary or acceptable, but a virtue in itself.


(1) A meme is a vague sort of thing at the moment- sort of a unit of idea. The whole thing is a bit like talking about evolution between Darwin coming up with it in 1859, and scientists realising that Mendel's genes were exactly what was needed to explain evolution, sometime in the 1930s.

(2) A metaphor. Genes aren't conscious in any way. Memes are not viewed as conscious either- though they are the building blocks of consciousness.