Steve Shaw

I have no idea what directed mutation could possibly be.

Well, you'd better ask Foolestroupe. He's the one who introduced the term in his post of 30 Sep 10 - 10:51 PM .

"Are you and Steve claiming that there is a cause for the specific new order of bases after the miscopying?"

Why not? There would be a cause for the initial impetus to change and a cause for the particular way of recombining.

That sounds as if you are saying that there is mechanism in a bacterium that says "Aha! I'm being exposed to Methicillin. I'd better make some changes to my DNA. I'll just change that Adenine to a Thymine and that'll sort it out." That sounds dangerously close to Lamarckism.

The specific new order of bases you refer to will almost certainly be completely useless, remember.

Quite. The sequence of bases resulting from the change, whatever the cause for the change, is random; it's natural selection that determines whether it is any use or not or, more specifically, whwther it survives.

Just so we don't waste any time on side issues, God does not come into the argument in my problems with what you are saying.