Thank you, Foolestroupe!

I have no idea what directed mutation could possibly be.

Imagine (not that you have to - it's real enough) two identical strands of DNA. One of them mutates and the other stays as it is (duh). Let's suppose (more difficult) that every environmental condition had been absolutely identical for both those pieces of DNA. Then I might have to admit that the change was random (I wouldn't like the term much, applied to a single example, but hey ho). But did I just say "more difficult?" I think I might well have meant well-nigh impossible. It is often difficult to pin a particular cause to a particular mutation, but that's only because we don't understand everything yet. What you can't say is that the change happened without cause. Well you can say it but I wouldn't believe you. I'd want to be looking ever more closely for a cause. But because I don't care for "random mutation" it doesn't mean I believe in "directed mutation." The cause is there, the DNA is there but they are blind to each other.

Natural selection gets to work ruthlessly on mutations, but there is no goal. That isn't to say that there won't be progress in a particular direction, but that is not the same as a goal. Likewise, evolution doesn't have a goal nor an end-point, something which is misunderstood by those who claim that God kick-started evolution then let nature get on with it (poor old God is even more redundant than that). Evolution is full of dead ends, wacky failures, Heath Robinson arrangements and natural extinctions. Even if I did believe in God (heaven forfend...oops!) I'd be pretty annoyed with him for pissing around like that.