Language requires a sense of agency and purpose is for meaningful speech. And Darwinists are looking for ways to change language, for that very reason. Friend have written to offer some helpful bibliography items along those lines:
– Andrew Moore Editor-in-Chief, “We need a new language for evolution… everywhere,” BioEssays, Volume 33, Issue 4, page 237, April 2011 :
It is about time that we stopped such anthropomorphic terminology and thinking, and confronted the likelihood that – far from being ‘excusable short-hand’ – it is an important contributor to a false impression of evolution among many non-scientists. I feel that much of the ‘excuse’ for using terms that evoke will, direction and strategy in evolutionary processes is a problem of finding the right words; or at least of not falling so easily into the anthropomorphisms that we use in other realms of experience
– Marc H. V. Van Regenmortel, “The rational design of biological complexity A deceptive metaphor,” Proteomics (2007) 7:965–975 :
Biologists often claim that they follow a rational design strategy when their research is based on molecular knowledge of biological systems. This claim implies that their knowledge of the innumerable causal connections present in biological systems is sufficient to allow them to deduce and predict the outcome of their experimental interventions. The design metaphor is shown to originate in human intentionality and in the anthropomorphic fallacy of interpreting objects, events, and the behavior of all living organisms in terms of goals and purposes. Instead of presenting rational design as an effective research strategy, it would be preferable to acknowledge that advances in biomedicine are nearly always derived from empirical observations based on trial and error experimentation. The claim that rational design is an effective research strategy was tested in the case of current attempts to develop synthetic vaccines, in particular against human immunodeficiency virus. It was concluded that in this field of biomedicine, trial and error experimentation is more likely to succeed than a rational design approach. Current developments in systems biology may give us eventually a better understanding of the immune system and this may enable us in the future to develop improved vaccines.
– W.J. Bock, “Design An inappropriate concept in evolutionary theory,” J Zool Syst Evol Res (2009), 47(1): 7–9 :
The concept of accident in evolution refers to causes which are stochastic with respect to selective demands arising from the external environment and acting on the organism, while the concept of design refers to causes which meet the requirement of these selective demands. The condition with respect to selective demands is generally forgotten so that evolutionary changes are described as being design modifications. Design is an invalid synonym for adaptation. Further it implies a designer and has been used by some authors since before Darwin to argue that design in organisms demonstrates the existence of a designer and hence a plan. Yet if evolution depends on two simultaneously acting causes, one of which is accidental, then the process of evolution and all attributes of organisms are accidental. The concept of design is inappropriate in biology and
should be eliminated from all biological explanations.
In any event, Darwinians ultimately believe that consciousness is an illusion anyway. They think that we did not evolve so as to know whether something happened by design or not. We must trust them, our betters, that the answer is no.
What matters is not the greatest idea but the biggest fist.
See also: Note to Darwinists: Language itself is “anti-science”