[DBrow]

Strictly speaking, Darwin did not write about a direction to evolution (better and better, for instance) but spoke only of change.

If I remember correctly it was Darwin who described the now-extinct Irish Elk, who through continued selection wound up with antlers so huge the animal could not navigate a forest.

So in Darwinian theory, if a species moved all the way to a single-cell blob from a complex finch, that would not be de-evolution, just evolution from one state to another.

[Robwin]

Ok, then, give me a call when these birds devolve back into reptiles, or snails, or bacteria, or whatever it is you Evos claim they evolved from.

[mikeus_maximus]

Strictly speaking, Darwin did not write about a direction to evolution (better and better, for instance) but spoke only of change.

Then boy, he sure fooled Huxley! :)

[DarkSavant]

So in Darwinian theory, if a species moved all the way to a single-cell blob from a complex finch, that would not be de-evolution, just evolution from one state to another.

Exactly, the only direction of evolution is survival. It has no care for the ideals of 'progress' or complexity. What survives over a long period is what was fittest for the environment.

[Stingray]

"Strictly speaking, Darwin did not write about a direction to evolution (better and better, for instance) but spoke only of change."

From Darwin himself:

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter4.html

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter14.html

You may want to read Darwin before you presume to quote him.