Of course the feeling of love had to evolve, and of course it had to evolve from something that was not love. And of course the value of the love that we feel is not woven into the fabric of the universe; it’s only valuable to us. But it’s still a very happy thing that love exists, and it’s also sort of a lucky thing; it is not woven into the fabric of the universe that intelligent beings (or any beings for that matter) have to have anything that feels as good as love does to us. This luck may or may not be “surprising” in the sense that it may or may not be the case that the evolution of love (or something else that feels as good to the one who feels it) is highly likely conditional on evolving intelligence. I don’t know the actual answer to this, but the point is that I can at least conceive of a sense in which in which the existence of love might be regarded as surprising.
BTW, the same point can be made about the religious (specifically Protestant) origins of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment wasn’t always there, and it didn’t fall from the sky, so it had to have its origins in something that wasn’t the Enlightenment. To the extent that Protestantism had some attributes that made it fertile soil for the Enlightenment to grow from, great. But that doesn’t make old-timey Protestantism liberal or good, and it certainly doesn’t entitle contemporary* Protestantism to a share of the credit for the Enlightenments’ achievements.
Of course the feeling of love had to evolve, and of course it had to evolve from something that was not love. And of course the value of the love that we feel is not woven into the fabric of the universe; it’s only valuable to us. But it’s still a very happy thing that love exists, and it’s also sort of a lucky thing; it is not woven into the fabric of the universe that intelligent beings (or any beings for that matter) have to have anything that feels as good as love does to us. This luck may or may not be “surprising” in the sense that it may or may not be the case that the evolution of love (or something else that feels as good to the one who feels it) is highly likely conditional on evolving intelligence. I don’t know the actual answer to this, but the point is that I can at least conceive of a sense in which in which the existence of love might be regarded as surprising.
BTW, the same point can be made about the religious (specifically Protestant) origins of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment wasn’t always there, and it didn’t fall from the sky, so it had to have its origins in something that wasn’t the Enlightenment. To the extent that Protestantism had some attributes that made it fertile soil for the Enlightenment to grow from, great. But that doesn’t make old-timey Protestantism liberal or good, and it certainly doesn’t entitle contemporary* Protestantism to a share of the credit for the Enlightenments’ achievements.