Progress, Complexity & Evolution

Progress in human affairs is a powerful hope and a potent ideology; scientific progress is a secular faith, but “progress” is also a transparently anthropomorphic idea that has no place in evolutionary theory. Or does it?

Have organisms become more “complex” or more “highly adapted”? How does something radically new like mind, information or value enter the world? Why, 150 years after Darwin, does the idea of “progress” continue to haunt evolution, and why does an evolutionist turn into a progressivist after two beers?