Seversky,

Thanks for the quote. This appears somewhat contradictory. It seems that even Dawkins cannot escape the language of purpose “deployed in a very special way.”

Here’s the conundrum. The purpose of evolution is to be purposeless. The plan of evolution is to not have a plan, and is “deployed” by natural causes, which mount upon previous natural causes ad infinitum, which render them causeless. I know that Darwinists insist that ToE does not deal with origin of life issues, but they need to do some hard thinking in that area in order to avoid not making any sense.

Sure thing. The laws of physics created that Urwerk watch too

It’s just that his clock went backwards to try to turn back time…

Blythe wrote about natural selection before Darwin.

And there isn;t any data which demonstrtates an accumulation oif genetic accidents* can do what Dawkins claims.

*accumulation of genetic accidents- in Dawkins’ world all mutations are accidents and they accumulate via various processes- Dawkins calls it “cumulative selection”.

Dawkins’ book was a response to Paley’s thesis. As he wrote:

Despite all appearances to the contrary, there is no watchmaker in nature beyond the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

As such, it doesn’t seem clear to me that Dawkins intended the BW as an analogy to illuminate how intricate systems came about… but rather to provoke the reader by the intuitive impossibility of a literal blind watchmaker….

So he could’ve just as easily called his book The Impossibility?

As such, it doesn’t seem clear to me that Dawkins intended the BW as an analogy to illuminate how intricate systems came about… but rather to provoke the reader by the intuitive impossibility of a literal blind watchmaker; and then to illuminate the theorized mechanism by other analogies and arguments. (The latter fail, but I don’t see that as a failure of the book title.)

Disclaimer: I can’t say I’ve read the book first-hand. I just know it through the numerous quotes and discussions about it.

It probably wouldn’t be sufficiently “empowering” for modern sensibilities, though.