You are right for trying to do so. Darryl is playing word games and pretending not to understand the most basic of concepts. Then, when one of us tries to respond like you would to a child, through gross oversimplification, our answers are left with the flaws that oversimplification produces.
For example, I felt forced to say "brown bug" instead of "brown trait" (3 posts above) as if I were talking to a child who hasn't learned the concept of traits.
But clearly selection acts on traits within populations. Action on populations is the important point you are making, DaveC. Here we begin to differentiate between phenotype and genotype, but even that is X-rated language in front of darryl.
And Grumpy, another word for "directed" (or direction) is determinism, or more commonly, just selection. Those are all concepts darryl also pretends not to understand. I understood you clearly.
Instead darryl is playing word games, as a tactic for arguing ID covertly. By focusing on "directed" and "nonrandom" he inches closer to "design". Or so he thinks.
Add to this all the manufactured controversy, and the pretense that "no one can define evolution", and pretty soon the reality of what evolution is - what nature is actually doing - has been buried under a rock.
Along the way great contributors like Darwin get bashed, without any regard for their place in history. One thing Darwin left the world, which leaves his antagonists in the dust, is an impressive set of books, journals, notes, sketches and letters that demonstrate his fascination with nature and his many projects to unravel it. I am particularly impressed with his fascination over coral reefs, and his methodic practice of stopping the ship to take soundings and collect specimens. If I recall, one of the reasons the Beagle was gone so long was due to Darwin's insistence on cataloguing the reefs, and he probably realized he was the first to do so. Apparently he took the crew wandering over many out of the way places just to examine and document more specimens.
That's just a snippet of the man's work, but compare what I've already said about him to these pundits darryl is offering, who have no rep to stand up to the trailblazing, rolled-up shirtsleeved, world-trotting achievements of the likes of Darwin, or of countless other scientists who merely address nature on its own terms, not these invented ones.
If only the naysayers would take off the blinders, put away their prejudices and actually try to learn something, they could disabuse themselves of their errors without all the drama.
