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 | Richard Dawkins | So where is the watchmaker's maker's maker?

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The Blind Watchmak...

	The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Richard Dawkins W. W. Norton, 1996 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 341 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fascinating and Satisfying!

What a wonderful job of bringing highly complicated scientific matters down to the level of understanding possessed by the common individual! It's a wonderful work, and I wish my father had lived to read it! He was a true man of science, and a retired high school science teacher, who as the late, and great, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr would say (tongue in cheek) is in heaven now!

I also recently read his latest book, "The God Delusion" and found it equally fascinating. Unfortunately, the media prefers to fan the flames of controversy and I was disturbed to see that even a periodical of, normally high, literary merit such as "Harpers" chose to assign the task of reviewing the book to a writer of fiction with strong deistic leanings -- What a silly idea!

We seem to have forgotten the true purpose of a book review (some Amazon reviewers should take note), and instead we have reduced the once useful exercise to a silly contest of editorial rebuttal! Too bad -- both books are well written, and should be evaluated as works that bring science, anthropology and psychology together in a most illuminating way.

Dr. Dawkins has approached a delicate subject with a rare talent for combining scientific mastery, literary ability and humor.

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So where is the watchmaker's maker's maker?

As much as one wants to avoid getting drawn into the largely pointless arguments with believers, Dawkins has been such a special writer and teacher for me that I must at least add to his support. People who, for whatever reason, cannot do anyhing but believe in their God are hardly going to have anything good to say about Dawkins. I just feel so sorry that so many people would rather fill their brains and time during their short existence with palliative religious beliefs than actually see what actually exists in this world.

Why did God create the parasitic wasp, the salmonella bacterium and countless other creatures that are not so bright and beautiful? One of my favorites is the deep sea angler fish in which the males are born without stomachs and must quickly find a female to merge into. The females swim around with perhaps half a dozen sets of male gonads (all that remains of the male) attached to her body to provide the necessary sperm for reproduction. Believers should at least admit that their God has both a mean streak and a wicked sense of humor. Not to mention his perhaps most important role in human tribalism.

Dawkins does not ask questions like these in this book but he does, as always, go to great lengths to try and get important information about the real world across to as many people as possible.

For example, to expand on the peacock's tail - it can be damaged by parasites and poor male condition ie it signals the genetic quality of males to females who are seeking good quality genes for their offspring. Also, simply managing to survive as a male with such a handicap signals good genes. Just as human males respond more sexually towards females who are healthy and fertile rather than older or post-reproductive - it all just means that those peahens who preferred poor quality males did not leave offspring with that inherited preference or carried that trait. Men who might have preferred older females did not leave any offspring to inherit that preference - something that would be strongly selected out as is very clear to all of us. Incidently, if estrogen is suppressed in peahens she will grow a 'male' tail - showing that she is carrying the genes for the 'male' tail passed down through her parents. In this way certain traits can evolve over time, step by step, mating by mating, generation by generation. God did not design the peafowl.

Natural and sexual selection is both incredibly simple and obvious yet clearly extremely difficult for some to understand. Much still needs to be learned and expanded upon etc but this does not take anything away from the fact that its basic message is correct.

Those who disagree and continue to insist that God exists insist that God is real and even more impressive than humans so, surely, mustn't He have a designer? One can almost picture a population of gods somewhere arguing about whether or not they were designed by a SuperGod Creator or simply evolved! Where is the watchmaker's maker's maker?

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Good for beginners, but needs more depth

Dawkins is clearly writing to an audience that knows very little about evolution, so he spends most of the book simply trying to explain the basic concepts like the power of cumulative selection, the effects of sexual selection, how selection works on DNA, possible origins of life and so on. The book focuses so much on processes (which are, granted, very important to understanding evolution) that it gets rather boring for someone who already knows a bit about evolution. I was hoping for more evidence and examples, and also some of the areas of research that are going on (or at least were at the time of publishing). Although the book is certainly more entertaining than a textbook, one could certainly learn all this in the first few chapters of any textbook on evolution. I suppose the book was "meant" for beginners, so it accomplishes this task, thus four stars.

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