Blind Watchmaker Why the Evidence. This item is unavailable.Blind Watchmaker Why the Evidence

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:

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.