Exactly.
>"Myth number three: Evolution couldn’t have a purpose, because it doesn’t have a direction."
"
>"on balance evolution tends to create beings of greater and greater complexity"
Just because something has a direction doesn't mean it has a purpose. A warm body cools, that is a direction, but there isn't an invisible man in the sky causing that, it is simply a law of thermodynamics.
I think the idea that evolution has a purpose and a direction is more than common enough that when someone says something like that things that evolve never lack a purpose, they've gone wrong in their understanding of evolution, even if only in subtle ways they may not be aware of themselves.
Anyways, I think the juxtaposition is funny no matter how seriously they meant it. We all want to believe that consciousness is something that can be easily defined and yet our use of aspects of it is extremely fuzzy.
Evolution doesn't have a goal or purpose, and it just doesn't make sense to say that 'Humans evolved to...' for anything. You could on the other hand say something like 'human story telling is a consequence of evolution' (though I don't agree).
This comment is quickly going the way of "correlation doesn't equal causation" style of karma-whoring. It's so overused, and more often than not misplaced, that it's a net negative to the discussion.
Yes, evolution doesn't have intentions or goals, but scientists, actual zoologists and evolutionary biologists, speak of "intentions", "goals", etc when speaking of evolutionary processes (just open a Dawkins book). Anthropomorphizing a natural process is a short-hand that allows one to communicate ideas more effectively and more naturally. Everyone knows that there isn't an actual Gaia-like being pulling the strings of nature. Pointing this out is just noise in an otherwise productive conversation.
Evolutionary biologists are perfectly comfortable with the idea that focusing light is the purpose of a lens, and cutting meat is the purpose of sharp teeth, and structural support is the purpose of a skeletal system, etc. etc. etc. It's not fallacious in any sense. What they rant against is the idea that items with a purpose must have been ordained by a supernatural force.
This seems like an over-application of the (valid) claim that evolution doesn’t have any specific objective. The sentence you quote doesn’t describe an objective. It only describes a necessity.
You clearly misunderstand your own theory, because this specific paper written by an evolutionist (on TalkOrigins, the shrine of evidence for Evolution) reinforces the view on why biological evolution has no goal:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/teleology.html
When Dawkins talks about genes maximising their representation in the gene pool, this is a metaphor not an explanation. Genes just replicate. It happens that those that out-replicate others end up out-surviving them. There is no 'goal' to genetic behaviour.
Evolutionists are always screaming about the evidence, and it's rarely been debated that biological evolution is completely devoid of a designer, purpose, intelligence, or end goal anywhere in the process. That's one of the basic truths you get out of the naturalistic assumptions that base biological Evolution.
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