According to the dictionary, purpose implies intentionality. Based on that definition, either a prime mover instigated evolution and its purpose is to foster life, or evolution developed due to conditions that arose around it that promulgate that process, and I wouldn’t see a purpose there, except one we impute to it after the fact. But that’s not intentionality. That’s conditions arising to support that process starting to happen, the way a certain mix of air pressure and temperature creates conditions for a snowstorm or a tornado.

So I don’t think Dr. Frist is wrong on that point. According to panpyschism (the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness), conditions could arise for consciousness at many levels without requiring a prime mover with intentionality. We may not understand all the variables, but if a brain gets a certain number of cooperating neurons or a computer makes enough connections using the same “network effect” model, consciousness may arise, for example. Why? Because the conditions arose for it to support that process starting to happen. Evolution and the weather probably fall into that category — they have the *effect* of purpose, but not the intentionality.