The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
by Richard Dawkins

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
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Book Summary Information

Author: Richard Dawkins
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1996-09-17
ISBN: 0393315703
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
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Book Reviews of The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

Book Review: Fatally Flawed!
Summary: 1 Stars

Richard Dawkins makes a strange and unconvincing case for the theory of evolution!
We are lucky to be here; but we're not here by chance! Yes, Richard Dawkins feels strongly both ways!

The eternal Watchmaker can't exist because even though there is a great `illusion of design', a Designer would need an even greater Designer. This certainly is not my definition of a Designer. He might want to check out `There is a God' by Antony Flew, touted as the `world's most notorious atheist' turned theist, who came up with some great philosophical arguments for theism after a 20-year study.

Against `unimaginable odds', natural selection through a patient natural sieving he calls cumulative selection, working with time and environment, is our very creator! Life is so complex (particularly DNA), it simply could not have happened accidentally. I can finally agree with him on this.

He doesn't explain, however, how life began, including non-material things such as consciousness and self. While we're at it, where did reproduction come from?

If you saw the movie called `Expelled', Ben Stein directly asks Dawkins how life started and he said he didn't know. Stein pressed him and he got a bit miffed, which is unusual for the mild-mannered Dawkins. It also begs the question of how the original stuff of the universe even came to be. How does evolution explain something coming from nothing? Sounds like a pretty shaky foundation to me.

If this is not a fatal flaw for the theory of evolution, I don't know what one is.

Summary of The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

Patiently and lucidly, this Los Angeles Times Book Award and Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize winner identifies the aspects of the theory of evolution that people find hard to believe and removes the barriers to credibility one by one. "As readable and vigorous a defense of Darwinism as has been published since 1859."--The Economist.
Richard Dawkins is not a shy man. Edward Larson's research shows that most scientists today are not formally religious, but Dawkins is an in-your-face atheist in the witty British style:

I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence.

The title of this 1986 work, Dawkins's second book, refers to the Rev. William Paley's 1802 work, Natural Theology, which argued that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Dawkins: "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way... it is the blind watchmaker."

Dawkins is a hard-core scientist: he doesn't just tell you what is so, he shows you how to find out for yourself. For this book, he wrote Biomorph, one of the first artificial life programs. You can check Dawkins's results on your own Mac or PC.

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