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 | Even IF blind

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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 338 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"The best general account of evolution I have read in recent years."?E. O. Wilson. With a new introduction.

Twenty years after its original publication, The Blind Watchmaker, framed with a new introduction by the author, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte. Natural selection?the unconscious, automatic, blind, yet essentially nonrandom process Darwin discovered?is the blind watchmaker in nature.

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A Good Introduction To and Defense of Evolution

This book is another fine effort by Richard Dawkins to explain how the complexity of life can be explained by evolution including natural selection. He uses his usual detailed, but laymen type of explanation to explore how various attributes of animals (and man) have come about.

The books closing chapters deal with some of the other theories that exist to try to explain the diversity of life. He does not take a highbrow approach. He explains the core beliefs and concepts of the theories and then using their own words, shows how they can not explain it as well as the theory of evolution can.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a good discussion of evolution. You will not find an atheist arguing here. You will find a scientist who knows his field and wants you to understand it as well.

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Even IF blind

.....A watchmaker is still a watchmaker, and is presumably still making a watch that works. But whenever we don't understand something in our world, we say that there is no God. We profess to be intelligent beings but we think we know all there is to know, particularly as it concerns God. Sorry, folks, we don't know everything. And when we don't, just say so, don't say there is no God when you really do not know one way or the other. Every time we wonder "why", we say oh God would not do it that way. We would do it this way. We constantly substitute our judgments and viewpoints re what we think God should do. We are not God. So Mr Dawkins is in a field in which he knows absolutely nothing (re the existence or non-existence of a Supreme Being. Neither Dawkins nor anyone else is ever in a position to definitively state that there is no God. But we say it anyway, in our ignorance. Oh well :)

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Dawkins vs. "Peter", "Paul", "Luke", and "John"

Read the bible (written by anonymous 8th century people called Peter, Paul, Luke, John, and others), and then read The Blind Watchmaker (or any book by Richard Dawkins). One is absurd and the other is perfect sense.

I'd love to see a college professor in the US offer a course that required the reading of these two books only. Perhaps it would raise the American standards for Science (we're embarrassingly low in comparison to the other Industrialized Nations because we simply defend one book at the expense of the other without ever having actually read either in the first place.)

Read this book BEFORE you judge it. It's an incredible experience into reality that beats the bible (I know, I've read them both).

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Essence of the scientific method

When I tell friends and family that I am reading (and enjoying) books on natural selection and Darwin I often get challenged that 'God' explains the major gaps in the theories proposed. What I appreciate about this book is that it does not stop with that answer and strives to hypothesize and explain the origin of life and the complexity that has manifested itself in the nature around us. It challenges the reader to understand organic and inorganic chemistry and the fundamental properties of materials that would allow us to explain how it all transpired.

Ironically, this curiousity and desire to learn was forged from an upbringing in a strong Christian family. From my perspective, the fact that 'God' had graced us with the gift of thought and ability to reason was always very natural to the church's teaching of striving for the truth. This is not the same lesson that my 'near fundamentalist' siblings took from a similar upbringing. I am fearful about the religious stories that shape our behaviors today. More often than not religion is a reason not to learn and creates contempt for new ideas and people who articulate those ideas.

This book challenges the reader to learn and dig deeper. It does not ignore the other schools of thought and in fact lays them out with a suitable level of respect. I look forward to uncovering more books about science that embark on this same type of teaching method for complex topics.

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