The blind watchmaker: why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design

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 Darwins brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte. Natural selectionthe unconscious, automatic, blind, yet essentially nonrandom process Darwin discoveredis the blind watchmaker in nature.