John Wilkins  wrote or quoted:
> Tim Tyler  wrote:
> > Larry Moran  wrote or quoted:

> > > Evolution has no purpose and no goal and it does not produce designed
> > > species. That's the result we see around us.
> > 
> > What are you going to do when nature starts producing species
> > designed for particular purposes - using genetic engineering
> > and directed mutations?

[...]

> I (prior to Larry agreeing with me - I came over all faint) never said
> there was never any design. Of course design occurs when designers make
> it. And those makers of design are evolved organisms. This gives us the
> following situation:
> 
> Teleomatic includes teleonomic includes teleological, or
> 
> Regularities include end-resulting include end-driven processes.
> 
> If we now start to regulate evolution in a few cases (and it will only
> *ever* be a few cases) this does not invert that subsetting. Design
> processes (and outcomes) are *still* a subset of end-resulting
> processes, and they are still only a subset of regularities.

I don't think design can be confined to "only a few cases".

What would happen if one of the descendants of dozens of new means of 
transmitting heritable material with high fideltiy across generations
replaces DNA as the means with which organisms store their genes?

Under such cirumstances organisms would be displaced by new organisms
based on the new techology.

Much the same thing happened long ago - when DNA replaced RNA.

IMO - the next time it happens, the medium will most likely be the 
product of intelligent design - and in the future all organisms will 
have a substantial designed element.

Maybe you are sceptical about this - but I don't think anyone can
realistically rule out such scenarios - and assert that only in a 
few cases will organisms be designed.

Maybe eventually all organisms will be have substantial designed elements.  
That's quite possible - and IMO pretty overwhelmingly likely.

> As to directed mutations - ask how they come to be directed? Do we
> intuit or know via clairvoyance what mutations will do, and how fit they
> will be in a given environment? No, we use trial, error elimination, and
> retention of success [...]

....and computer modelling, extrapolation, interpolation, gradient desent 
methods, logic, reasoning, experience, rules of thumb, market research - 
and many other approaches.

Trial and error is not the only approach to finding fitter organisms -
though it is a component of many approaches.

In practice, "directed sex" is a pretty common approach to generating
directed mutations.

When they wanted to make a fluorescent mouse their approach was to take
a gene for a fluorescent protein - and insert it into a mouse genome.

I.e. rather than using random forces to generate mutations, they
used logical deduction to go straight for the one they wanted.
-- 
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 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim{at}tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.
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