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?
> 
> It seems to me that that has already happened.
> 
> Are these things not part of the process of evolution?
> 
> Are they not designed - despite being made by human engineers?
> 
> What gives?

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.

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. When this happens in biology unsupervised, it is
called natural selection. Nature is not obviated because we design
something.
-- 
Dr John Wilkins
john_SPAM{at}wilkins.id.au   http://wilkins.id.au
"Men mark it when they hit, but do not mark it when they miss" 
                                               - Francis Bacon
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