Chris
Well, it IS another form of creationism, unless you are saying that the
designer passed his design on to someone else to do the actual creation. It
has essentially the same flaws as creationism, as well, and for the same
reasons. It is arbitrary, a violation of Occam's razor, requires special
evidence that is still lacking, etc.
Of course, the DEFINITION of evolution should not say anything about the
meaning or purpose issue, and it doesn't need to, since evolution is just
the development of information storage, information variation, and
information culling in different forms. Whether the processes of information
variation and culling are directed or performed by some "Cosmic
Animal-Breeder" or by purely natural processes is a different matter. But,
of course, without special evidence to the contrary, such as the ACTUAL
(rather than merely asserted) discovery of irreducible complexity, the
Occam's-Razor presumption must be that both are natural processes,
particularly since our knowledge of physics, chemistry, and of the
requirements of continued survival of a species leads to predictions that
variations and culling will be of the kinds we do in fact see (variation:
genetics, with mutations, recombination, etc.; culling: animals obviously
unfit for a particular environment don't do as well as animals that are fit
for it; a fish that cannot get oxygen from water OR air will die; this is
not, despite some creationist claims, a mystery that can only be alleviated
on theistic grounds).