I remember once thinking what an amazing stroke of luck it was that on the Earth there happen to be so many wonderful gifts for people to enjoy.  For example, it seemed close to definitive proof of a benevolent God that tangerines were just hanging there from trees for us to pick and eat.  Somebody had to understand us very well and care about us a lot to give us this delicacy for free.

Of course this is a fallacy.  It was not the fruit that was designed for our taste buds but the other way around.

We need to be incentivized to consume whatever we need to survive. And there is no need to bring any Designer into the story because this can be taken care of by natural selection.

These points are nicely recounted in this TED lecture by Dan Dennett.  However, he stops short of considering the plot twist in which we develop conscious thought and learn how to manipulate nature’s incentive scheme.  It starts with nutra-sweet, vasectomies and pornography.  That’s when the real game begins.