We understand this ID(!), but you're still missing the point. We can observe and study a highly evolved creature or organ and say: 'Wow, that's a neat design.' What we really mean, though, is: 'Wow, that functions exceptionally well.' It really does come back to 'design' being used as a verb or a noun. I suggest we drop the word immediately to avoid further confusion.
This polemic defender of Evolution concurs!
... yes, but always with an eye for improvement in the long term, just like technological developments.
No. Evolution is not goal-seeking, and selection has a complete short-term bias. There is no such thing as the "long term" in regards to selection. What we would identify as "improvement" is irrelevant to selection. Peacock feathers and stag horns are an immensely costly investment, but males of those species have them simply because females are attracked to them. Runaway sexual selection, as foolish as it appears to us, can seriously harm the "long term" survival of a species. That's just one of many ways in which evolution can dramatically betray its short term bias.
Numerous species have long ago lost keen senses, flight, locomotion, and other traits merely because they did not need them to reproduce in the short term. I'd say a puffin, capable of swimming, flying, and burrowing, is a "superior" bird to a kiwi, but they both are fit in their habitats, which is all the counts, not "improvement." In evolution there are no points for style.
Not necessarily. I'm sure we'll look back on many present-day cutting edge designs in decades to come and observe: Gee, that was a cool and sophisticated [fighter jet] with a wicked [targeting system], but remember the [air frame]; what were they thinking?! I suppose it's because they hadn't developed [titanium impregnated carbon fibre self-repairing fabric] at the time.' Designers can only make use of the technology available at the time, until 'evolution' (technological development) takes its course and new materials and innovations emerge. Do you see where I'm coming from here? Don't look too deeply.
No, I do not see where you are coming from. One the one hand I see machines, each designed by intelligent actors, none of which contains the blueprints for their own development inside themselves, and none of which reproduce and pass on heritable traits, and on the other hand I see life forms. They have less in common than a raven and a writting desk.
See above. It happens all the time, to the point where, looking back, it becomes laughable.
But they do! OK, not solely, but largely, which is exactly the point. Just consider the developmental history of the microprocessor, for example.
The 'freshness' can be compared to the mutation process in organisms. Something radical happens by chance (often with technology too). It leads to an improvement so is retained for future models, until the next 'mutation'. It's an analogy, not a direct comparison of the exact processes that cause it.
Are you seriously suggesting that micropocessors have arisen through selection pressures on reproducing microprocessors, which contain within themselves the mechanisms for their own reproduction, or are you still trying to draw a really tennuous analogy?
Does a lion not have 'purpose' when stalking prey in an organized pride, or bees when creating a hive and producing honey? They may not realize they have purpose, but then neither does a washing machine, or TV, for example.
The characteristics of such organisms and machines have evolved to improve the functionality necessary to satisfy such purposes.
No. The lion was not designed. It has no purpose, only functions. The lion hunts, it also radiates warmth, and has fur. Is the "purpose" of the lion to provide habitat for fleas? Is the "purpose" of the lion to ambush small children who wander too far from their mothers in the night? The lion was not designed, and has no purpose, unlike a televion, or a washing machine.
That's like saying a TV is a vehicle for the persistence and distribution of transistors, diodes, capacitors, PCBs, etc.
Only if TVs reproduced and their survivability in an environment were dependent on the phenotypical traits that the transistors, diodes, capacitors and PCB's give it.
The components (genes) are meaningless individually. Only when they lead to the creation of a complete entity do they have any purpose, whether that arises through chance and evolution or otherwise.
That is why genes don't reproduce on their own. However, genes are extraordinarily selfish. The fitness of the gene is the lowest level on which selection takes place. The effect a gene has on an organism effects the fitness of all the genes in the organism, but organisms can be remarkably selfless, which evolution has
selected in favor of.
Altruism is a fascinating area of research in biology. A single worker ant can never directly pass on its genes, and thus is a highly "unfit" individual, if you focus on the ant alone. What the ant does, however, is dramatically increase the fitness of the genes it shares with its mother, the queen ant. In the case of ants, the genes have had the effect of using a vast number of organisms to reproduce the genes within a single, solitary organism. Evolution relentlessly pushes
genes to be selfishly fit. Organisms are just along for the ride. When selection favors blind, deaf, dumb, limbless organisms, the genes that give rise to such a blob flurish, the organism be damned.
