Why evolution should not be equated with progress?

My science textbook says this,

Evolution should not be equated with progress. In fact, there is no real 'progress' in the idea of evolution. Evolution is simply the generation of diversity and the shaping of the diversity by environmental factors. The only progressive trend in evolution seems to be that more and more complex body designs have emerged over time. However, again it is not as if older designs are inefficient! So many of the older and simpler designs still survive [..] In other words, human beings are not the pinnacle of evolution, but simply yet another species in the teeming spectrum of life.

I am not sure if I agree with this, after all humans do seem to be more advanced than dogs. Many people have asked me why I thought this was true, so here is my answer. Today, humans could wipe out dogs from Earth if they wanted, but you can hardly imagine a scenario in which dogs would do the same to humans.

What am I missing here?

Answer

I'm glad you've asked the question as it is a common layman misunderstanding.

Your example comparing humans and dogs is actually very central to the logical flaw that yields many to equate evolution with progress.

There are several issues when you say

humans do seem to be more advanced than dogs

1. 
   

   Humans are not more evolved than dogs

   
   
   
   
   
   • Humans, dogs, jellyfish, oak tree, fungi, bacteria, .... we have all evolved during about 3.5 billion years. None of the extant lineages is more evolved than any other at least in terms of the number of years of evolution. Note, however, that what matters most when considering evolutionary time is the number of generations. Humans having a rather long generation time, it tends to make fewer generations. In this regard, one could expect a dog to have been through more generations than humans and could eventually be called more evolved but even there it is not that easy. See also Are we “more evolved” than present-day bacteria?
   
   
   
   


2. 
   

   You are a human, be aware of your biases

   
   
   
   
   • As @Jamesqf rightly said in the comments, you did not feel like considering the dog's extraordinary sense of smell, better hearing, higher jumps, stronger jaws or protective fur. Not to mention, dogs can typically raise way more offsprings than humans can. Not to become personal but my 8 months old, 9 kg Cocker Spaniel runs 300 meters at the same time Usain Bolt runs 200 meters! You seem to have only considered things that make you human such as opposable thumbs and high cognitive abilities. Coming to cognitive abilities you will note that a puppy learns by association faster than a baby human. Dogs just plateau much quicker than humans.
   
   
   • Make sure that you understand that high cognitive abilities are not a goal or a direction of evolution. While it is hard to measure the evolution of intelligence for both a question of definition and question of measurement tools, it is very very likely that many lineages (incl. eventually the Homo lineage) have evolved toward reducing intelligence at some point (see this post).
   
   
   • You say humans could wipe out dogs from Earth however again it feels very human (and awkwardly combative and hostile) to consider the ability to kill as a measure of progress.
   
   
   
   
   


3. 
   

   The illusion of considering two variables

   
   
   
   
   • You consider a correlation between two variables 1) how evolved a lineage is and 2) how advanced a lineage is. (As discussed in the first point, there is actually no variance in how evolved lineages are if we consider evolutionary time). You are determining those that are more evolved by how "advanced" you visualize the lineage. Your explanatory and response variables are therefore the same and you do not explain anything by saying 'humans are both more advanced and more evolved than dogs so evolution should equate progress'
   
   
   
   

A big issue in your question is the definition of progress. For example, if you define progress as an increase of mean fitness (the concept of fitness in biology has nothing to do with bodybuilding, see here) over time, then yes evolution is in part to be equated with progress as increase in mean fitness over time is exactly what natural selection is doing (see the so-called Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection).

So, let's assume we define progress as an increase in mean fitness over time. As stated in the previous section, this is exactly what natural selection is doing. So, instead of saying Evolution should not be equated with progress, one could say Natural selection is to be equated with progress (as a reminder this assumes a very specific definition of progress)

You will note that I replace the term evolution with natural selection. It is often unclear to laymen but these two terms, while related, are different.

Evolution is a change of allele (loosely speaking, an allele is a variant of a gene) frequency over time. There are a number of mechanisms that can cause evolution, one of which is natural selection (which itself is caused by a fitness differential associated with genetic variance). But there is way more to evolution than just natural selection. Genetic drift, mutations, migration and other demographic elements are all important factors causing the evolution of populations.

You should have a look at Understanding Evolution by UC Berkeley. It is a very introductory online course on evolutionary biology that will teach you about the basic forces that cause evolution.