“I find it seems like at least the so called lower life forms follow a program for lack of a better word. Spiders for instance seem to be very specifically programed. They do very little other than what all the other ones do. No observed idiosyncrasies or traits I can appreciate. Each species seems to act or respond the same to external forces.”
Different forms of life have evolved different kinds of nervous systems, different ways of taking in and responding to information from their environment. Those with very simple nervous systems may appear to us to be “programmed”. They are simply responding to their environment in a very direct, uncomplicated way. The brains of some animals, like humans, allow organisms to have complex interactions with their environments, such that they can make more complex choices based on multiple factors, including being able to consider the consequences of their actions.
“When I was in science classes learning about atoms , electrons , neutrons etc and their ‘behavior ’ my most common questions were why? Why do these things that make up all things do this ? Most common answer from college professor was…......Because they like too. Everything from our smallest understanding of things seems to be following a ‘program.’”
To be honest, these are not very good answers for a science teacher to give a student. Not all organisms have the ability to “like” to do things. Some are simply reacting to stimuli. Everything does not “seem to be following a program”. There is no evidence for such a statement, unless you attribute all animal behaviour to genetic inheritance, and that is extraordinarily unlikely.
“But the root of my question is whether or not everything including yourself and me could be subject to the same forces as them. I feel like I / we feel above such a ‘program ’ as we view ourselves as higher beings than others.”
It sounds like you don’t consider humans to be animals, but we absolutely are. We have more complex responses to stimuli in our environment than most animals do, because of the way our brain works. But we are responding to the same kinds of pressures that all other organisms do. Anyone who studies evolution will tell you that humans are not “higher” beings. We are well adapted to our environment, and we have developed the ability to shape the environment if it becomes a pressure on us. But consider that a species of bacterium that is thriving in a thermal vent in the ocean is a very simple creature, which may have changed very little in the millions of years that it has existed, and is perfectly adapted to the environment where it lives, although a human would die instantly if put in the same place. Which of us is then the “higher being”?
Adaptation is about how well one does in very specific circumstances. There is no objective scale of relative worth.