When people say "design", there is often an unspoken phrase after it: "by an intelligent being"
Thus when we say "The C-130 Hercules is one of the best designed airplanes ever", the unspoken thought is that the airplane was designed by a team of humans at Lockheed. Which it was.
However, design does not have to be by an intelligent being. What Darwin discovered in both "artificial" selection (by breeders) and natural selection is an unintelligent process that gives design. Let's call it Darwinian selection.
Another way to say this is that Darwinian selection is an algorithm to get design. An algorithm is a process that, followed by a servile dunce, always yields the intended product. Long division is an algorithm. It takes no thought to follow the steps (a calculator does) and it always yields the correct answer.
So yes, living organisms are designed: by natural (Darwinian) selection. That Darwinian selection gives design is illustrated by the fact that humans use it when the design problem is too tough for them. Also, you can tell the humans didn't do the design because they don't know how it works when it is done. No human watchmaker is ignorant of how the watch works.
Darwinian selection has 2 elements:
1. Variation
2. Selection
The selection is against the requirements of a particular environment. When humans do Darwinian selection they set the environment.
So, let me give you a couple of examples of humans using Darwinian selection:
1. A computer program to play checkers. It eventually beat the human checkers champ. AI Samuel, Some studies on machine learning using the game of checkers. IBM Journal of Research Development, 3: 211-219, 1964. Reprinted in EA Feigenbaum and J Feldman, Computers and Thought, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964 pp 71-105. Samuel set up a code with the rules of checkers and the ability of the program to introduce (random) new code and then the command to keep code that resulted in winning games and discard code that resulted in loss. Then he had the game play checkers -- thousands of games. At the end, after the program beat the human checkers champ, he examined the program. There were large sections of code that he had no idea what they did.
2. DNA enzyme. RNA that also catalyzes reactions (enyzme) are well known in nature, they are called ribozymes. The smallest is 3 nucleotides long. But there are no DNA molecules that are also enzymes. A biochemist -- GF Joyce -- wanted to make one but had no idea how to do so. So he made 10^14 random DNA molecules 50 nucleotides long. So he has 10^14 DNA molecules with 50 nucleotides each, but does not know the sequences. He then tested them against the "environment", selected those with any enzymatic activity, put them through a chemical reaction that randomly mutated those, and then selected again. He did 5 rounds of selection and ended up with 20 individual strands with high enzymatic activity: Chem Biol 1994 Dec;1(4):223-9 A DNA enzyme that cleaves RNA. Breaker RR, Joyce GF. Only after all that did he look at the sequence. If Joyce were doing the designing, he would have used a DNA synthesizer that adds 1 nucleotide at a time to the DNA and known which nucleotide to add and why. Later researchers had Darwinian selection start with Joyce's 20 DNA and then Darwinian selection designed an enzyme to design a DNA enzyme to prevent proliferation of smooth muscle cells after angioplasty: FS Santiago, HC Lowe, MM Kavurma, CN Chesterman, A Baker, DG Atkins,LM Khachigian, New DNA enzyme targeting Egr-1 mRNA inhibits vascular smooth muscle proliferation and regrowth after injury. Nature Medicine 5:1264-1269, 1999. It's in clinical use.
3. Designing computer chips. There is a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip that can reprogram its architecture. Adrian Thompson of Univ. of Suxxex used Darwinianselection to have chip write its own architecture to solve problems. First problem was to distiguish between 1 kiloHz and 10 kHz sound. Thompson allocated only 100 logic elements out of 4,096. And there was no clock. Chip did the job with only 32. Thompson can't figure out how. A chip designed by a human would require 10 to 100 times as many logic elements -- or at least access to a clock -- to perform the same task. G Taubes, Evolving a conscious machine. Discover 19: 72-79. June 1998.
Before you reply "humans were involved, so there was intelligence", remember, human intelligence was not used. A watchmaker builds the watch and knows how it works; what each part does. In all these cases humans did not do the building: other processes (like chemistry) did. And the humans did not know how it worked.
Again, there is design in living organisms. BUT, that design is not due to an intelligent being (thank God), but to the unintelligent process of natural selection. (You might think a bit why I, a Christian, sincerely said "thank God")
Thus when we say "The C-130 Hercules is one of the best designed airplanes ever", the unspoken thought is that the airplane was designed by a team of humans at Lockheed. Which it was.
However, design does not have to be by an intelligent being. What Darwin discovered in both "artificial" selection (by breeders) and natural selection is an unintelligent process that gives design. Let's call it Darwinian selection.
Another way to say this is that Darwinian selection is an algorithm to get design. An algorithm is a process that, followed by a servile dunce, always yields the intended product. Long division is an algorithm. It takes no thought to follow the steps (a calculator does) and it always yields the correct answer.
So yes, living organisms are designed: by natural (Darwinian) selection. That Darwinian selection gives design is illustrated by the fact that humans use it when the design problem is too tough for them. Also, you can tell the humans didn't do the design because they don't know how it works when it is done. No human watchmaker is ignorant of how the watch works.
Darwinian selection has 2 elements:
1. Variation
2. Selection
The selection is against the requirements of a particular environment. When humans do Darwinian selection they set the environment.
So, let me give you a couple of examples of humans using Darwinian selection:
1. A computer program to play checkers. It eventually beat the human checkers champ. AI Samuel, Some studies on machine learning using the game of checkers. IBM Journal of Research Development, 3: 211-219, 1964. Reprinted in EA Feigenbaum and J Feldman, Computers and Thought, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964 pp 71-105. Samuel set up a code with the rules of checkers and the ability of the program to introduce (random) new code and then the command to keep code that resulted in winning games and discard code that resulted in loss. Then he had the game play checkers -- thousands of games. At the end, after the program beat the human checkers champ, he examined the program. There were large sections of code that he had no idea what they did.
2. DNA enzyme. RNA that also catalyzes reactions (enyzme) are well known in nature, they are called ribozymes. The smallest is 3 nucleotides long. But there are no DNA molecules that are also enzymes. A biochemist -- GF Joyce -- wanted to make one but had no idea how to do so. So he made 10^14 random DNA molecules 50 nucleotides long. So he has 10^14 DNA molecules with 50 nucleotides each, but does not know the sequences. He then tested them against the "environment", selected those with any enzymatic activity, put them through a chemical reaction that randomly mutated those, and then selected again. He did 5 rounds of selection and ended up with 20 individual strands with high enzymatic activity: Chem Biol 1994 Dec;1(4):223-9 A DNA enzyme that cleaves RNA. Breaker RR, Joyce GF. Only after all that did he look at the sequence. If Joyce were doing the designing, he would have used a DNA synthesizer that adds 1 nucleotide at a time to the DNA and known which nucleotide to add and why. Later researchers had Darwinian selection start with Joyce's 20 DNA and then Darwinian selection designed an enzyme to design a DNA enzyme to prevent proliferation of smooth muscle cells after angioplasty: FS Santiago, HC Lowe, MM Kavurma, CN Chesterman, A Baker, DG Atkins,LM Khachigian, New DNA enzyme targeting Egr-1 mRNA inhibits vascular smooth muscle proliferation and regrowth after injury. Nature Medicine 5:1264-1269, 1999. It's in clinical use.
3. Designing computer chips. There is a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip that can reprogram its architecture. Adrian Thompson of Univ. of Suxxex used Darwinianselection to have chip write its own architecture to solve problems. First problem was to distiguish between 1 kiloHz and 10 kHz sound. Thompson allocated only 100 logic elements out of 4,096. And there was no clock. Chip did the job with only 32. Thompson can't figure out how. A chip designed by a human would require 10 to 100 times as many logic elements -- or at least access to a clock -- to perform the same task. G Taubes, Evolving a conscious machine. Discover 19: 72-79. June 1998.
Before you reply "humans were involved, so there was intelligence", remember, human intelligence was not used. A watchmaker builds the watch and knows how it works; what each part does. In all these cases humans did not do the building: other processes (like chemistry) did. And the humans did not know how it worked.
Again, there is design in living organisms. BUT, that design is not due to an intelligent being (thank God), but to the unintelligent process of natural selection. (You might think a bit why I, a Christian, sincerely said "thank God")
