I don't understand your first argument. My feeling is that you got side-tracked by the use of the word "engineer" because it shouldn't be used in its literal me

I don't understand your first argument. My feeling is that you got side-tracked by the use of the word "engineer" because it shouldn't be used in its literal meaning, but was it the intent of GP? There are scientific papers, BTW, which engineer solutions by evolutionary algorithms. Is that evolution or engineering? Clearly there's an engineering setup, made of all the constraints you speak about for the evolution process to take place, and that evolution process is also defined artificially, yet just like the real stuff, it follows a set of rules, so where's the divide? Why nature couldn't be engineering life with evolution, but humans could? Your last point OTOH is quite relevant.