Is it intelligent to design evolvable species?

It's a common mistake to assert that adaptability is somehow "programmed" within living organisms; the reason that this is a mistake is because it isn't individuals that adapt at all; only populations adapt via the differential survival and reproduction of their individuals.If adaptability were programmed, then all individuals would exhibit it, and selection would not occur. Instead what we observe is that some individuals, thanks to coincidence, exhibit congenital characteristics that allow them to survive where their peers do not; these individuals did not "adapt" to that new environment or situation, they were already born that way.Individuals do not adapt; populations do. Thus, we know for a fact that this outcome is not "programmed" behavior of individuals, and appeals to macro vs. microevolution are false. Actually it turns out that very simple self-replicators can be easily synthesized.

As I've proven, it isn't "programmed." If it were programmed then all individuals would adapt.We know that no individuals really adapt - only populations do. There's nothing a population possesses that could be said to be "programmed"; only individuals are programmed with a genetic code.Because only populations adapt, and because populations cannot be programmed, we know that your remarks are false. Adaptation is not programmed. It's simply a natural consequence of the laws of physics. Here's an article on a very simple chemical peptide self-replicator: No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.chemsoc.org/chembytes/ezine/2002/gross1_aug02.htmMaking things that self-replicate isn't that hard. Making useful self-replicators is another matter, I guess. My original point is that there's nothing inherent in self-replication that necessitates complexity.

Well, no, you read it wrong. Go back and read it again. It's talking about biological molecules not being self-replicating. The molecules in the example are self-replicating. You read it wrong.

But that's just ludicrous. The "variability" that you refer to is caused by chemical inaccuracies in the replication of DNA; its not caused by a program within the DNA itself.Organisms are not "programmed" to vary; in fact, the laws of physics make it impossible to prevent variation. That's not variation. That's sexual recombination of genes. What we observe in populations is not simply the recombination of genes and the expression of recessive traits, but new traits arising through errors in gene replication.Since that observation is not consistent with your model, we know that your model is wrong. We know from observation that it is not. A population of sufficient size will accrue new gene alleles that none of its members originally possessed. The source of these new alleles is known to be mutation. True, but hardly an obstacle to evolution. Natural selection provides a mechanism whereby detrimental mutations are eliminated and beneficial mutations are magnified.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 10-19-2005 06:29 PM

Sure. A commonly done experiment is to raise a population of bacteria, which are asexual, from a single individual.An individual bacterium is haploid, that is, it has only one copy of each gene (one allele). Sexual organisms like us are diploid, and have the two copies per gene (two alleles) you referred to in an earlier post.Anyway, in an environment suited for rapid bacterial growth, a population is raised from a single individual. Every individual is a direct decendant of that first single individual. After a certain period of time, a few of those individuals are collected, and their genes are examined.We invariably discover that the individuals differ amongst each other genetically; some of them have different alleles for each gene. Remember that the original population (of one individual) had only one allele per gene; thus, if any of its ancestors have alternate alleles - if the population has more than one allele per gene - then we know that those arose from mutation, because there's no other source of new alleles into the population.Clear enough?