Increasing diversity means accelerating evolution. The number of different kinds of organisms has been increasing, on average, over the past few hundred million years. Things appeared to level off for awhile (a long while - from around 400 million to around 200 million years ago). But since then things have been back to normal, increasing but punctuated by occasional mass extinctions, one of which appears to be happening now. A burst of new organisms may occur due to human genetic engineering, because we can now do something nature cannot, which is to combine genes from very different organisms, as exemplified above. That's not exactly evolution as envisioned by Darwin. We could, if we liked, call it heterevolution, since it mixes genes from such disparate sources. Indeed, we could probably create a viable organism whose cells contain 45 human chromosomes and 1 chimpanzee chromosome, instead of 46 human chromosomes, especially if which chromosome was substituted was properly chosen. (Would such a being be considered human and have all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto? Or just 45/46 of said rights and privileges?) More kinds of organisms means more chances to evolve new ones filling new ecological niches with new and creative biological processes. Thus evolution can be expected to speed up.
References
"The number of different kinds of organisms has been increasing, on average, over the past few hundred million years." Http://www.mun.ca/biology/
References
"The number of different kinds of organisms has been increasing, on average, over the past few hundred million years." Http://www.mun.ca/biology/