Thoughts in a Haystack

The difference between biology and engineering is that Life "makes it up as it goes along." Organisms look like they know where they are going mostly because they "know" so much about where they have been as a result of inheritance from their parents – this is the sense in which common descent is the explanation for the mistaken appearance of design in living systems. There is no preset endpoint, so organisms and populations follow the line of least resistance in the environment through time. And if it does not know where it is going, it can get there much more efficiently in that manner than by being directed to a preset endpoint regardless of the environment.

Daniel R. Brooks, "ID: Intelligent Design as Imitatio Dei (report on the 2007 'Wistar Retrospective Symposium')" at the Panda's Thumb blog, February 6, 2008