The Blind Watchmaker

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1. InsideOutSantaMay 2026
   Agree. "The Selfish Gene" finally made me understand how evolution actually works. I wish more people would read and understand that book. I also enjoyed some of his works on atheism. It might not be the deepest work on the topic, but I enjoyed reading "The Blind Watchmaker."

   What he has done in the past decade or so, on the other hand, is deeply disappointing.

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2. freedombenMay 2025
   Indeed, this is a variation on the "Watchmaker Analogy." It presupposes that there isn't an alternative explanation to design that can describe how things could be so intricate and complex (Darwinian Evolution provides that alternative explanation). I highly recommend Richard Dawkin's book "The Blind Watchmaker" for anyone wishing to dive deeper on the subject.
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3. satvikpendemFeb 2025
   > The easier explanation is a higher power seeded life here. If you find a functioning phone on a beach, you don't just think a bunch of silicon molecules just evolved into a phone over millions of years. Someone is manipulating those molecules via complex processes.

   You should read The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins as it directly refutes your claims. This is not a new debate in the field of theology.

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4. msgilliganNov 2024
   It's almost 40 years since it was published and almost as long since I read it, but The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins [1] has a chapter or section about echolocation in bats that I found fascinating.

   As I recall, it talks about how the scientists who discovered echolocation were initially laughed at (the greatest human engineers had just invented radar, how could the bats have evolved it?), how echolocation may have evolved stepwise, some of the specific physiological adaptions, and included some speculation about what kind of cognitive maps would be required within the bat's brain.

   I don't know how well the science in that section holds up 40 years later, but it was beautifully written for the layman and was fairly high-level. If you're interested, I would definitely recommend taking a look.

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker

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5. canadianfellaOct 2024
   The Selfish Gene was published in 1976, not 1989. I read it as a teen in the 90s and it is probably my favourite book of all time.

   Also,

   Bill Bryson’s “Short History of Nearly Everything”.

   Brian Greene’s “The Fabric of the Cosmos” (and all of his other books)

   Richard Dawkins’ “The Ancestor’s Tale” and “The Blind Watchmaker” are also amazing.

   Fiction:

   Adrian Czajkowski‘s “Children of Time” and Orson Scott Card‘s “Ender’s Game” are both anong my favourites.

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6. mindcrimeMay 2024
   > Out of curiosity, would you say your understanding changed or deepened upon re-reading it?

   It's hard to do justice to that in a few words. I think I had a different reason for reading it the second time, as opposed to the first time.

   The first time around, I think I was more reading it because I like to think of myself as an educated, scientific-minded person, and it was one of "those books" that any self-respecting "educated, scientific-minded person" was sort of "supposed to" have read. That and I was mentally already in a place somewhere in the nether regions between "agnostic" and "atheist" and I knew of Dawkins as a strong advocate for atheist thinking, and I guess I was looking for something that might convince me one way or the other. Or maybe that's just post-hoc rationalization on my part, but that's what I felt like I found. I felt much better about just calling myself an atheist after reading the book.

   Anyway... one thing I was struck by though, was his discussion of things like kin altruism and reciprocal altruism and some of the game theoretical stuff, including mentions of Robert Axelrod and his research. So the second time I read the book, I was really looking to focus more on those sections, and take notes and do some further research. And all of that was really driven by my interest in evolutionary computing / genetic algorithms / etc. and a thought that I might find something there that I could apply to those areas. I wound up buying Axelrod's book The Evolution of Cooperation, but I sadly have not quite gotten around to reading it yet.

   > And read the author's sequel books to it.

   I've also read The Blind Watchmaker twice, although that was sort of by accident. I forgot I'd already read it, and I was moderately deep into the second read before I realized I'd read it before. It was worth it though.

   I still have Climbing Mount Improbable, The God Delusion, The Ancestor's Tale, and a couple of other Dawkins books queued up to read as well.

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