[dekhn]

While I generally agree with you, is it really "lazy" to say "humans evolved to walk to"? Usually in the context, it's not being used to claim there is some sort of intent or purpose, but rather to shortcut the (rather verbose) description you gave.

Also I can think of some counterpoints to yours: the people who bred teosinte into corn (or any wild grain into a domesticated one) appear to be making conscious choices or direction- that is, they used their intelligence and reasoning from observed examples of pairings to conclude that they could make improved specimens based on selective breeding (without knowing about random mutations of natural selection!).

And if we start to modify human germline then would also be an example of evolution with conscious choice or direction (assuming the modifications became fixed in the population).