Whatever is happening in the Darwinian evolution-inspired circuit designs described in the article "On the Origin of Circuits", SN Vol 156, it is certainly NOT undirected, random-chance, Darwinian evolution. The continuing evolution/creation debate is needlessly fueled by these type of articles, where "evolution" means dozens of different things throughout the article. People today have a hard time distinguishing between the evolution of their office over the past ten years, compared to biological evolution that is purposeless and totally undirected according to Darwinism.

In my field of optical design, there is not enough time or space in the entire universe to randomly examine all of the possible design configurations for a straight-forward six-element lens system (called a double Gauss). For any real-world reasonably complex system we would care to examine, Nature does not have enough time or space to sort through all the possible combinations either. The inevitable and incorrect conclusion that many will draw from research presented in the fashion of the researchers, is that since electronic evolution can supposedly be demonstrated, biological evolution (life from non-life) is to be expected too.

Let's just be honest with the readers and point out clearly that the researchers are in fact acting as Directors in their evolutionary endeavors. Were it not for their direct intervention in the "evolutionary" process, they would still be waiting for the first hint of progress to emerge from the total garbage dump of possible combinations produced by truly random-chance undirected evolution. No researcher by random-chance alone, can produce any meaningful improvement in a complex process. If you doubt this, then try it in your own field of expertise, and you will certainly get a much better feel for what the word "never" means.