Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
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. – Richard Dawkins
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.”
“The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the evolution of organized complexity.”