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Title: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
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Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
List Price: $15.95
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| The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by W. W. Norton Even IF blind | | .....A watchmaker is still a watchmaker, and is presumably still making a watch that works. But whenever we don't understand something in our world, we say that there is no God. We profess to be intelligent beings but we think we know all there is to know, particularly as it concerns God. Sorry, folks, we don't know everything. And when we don't, just say so, don't say there is no God when you really do not know one way or the other. Every time we wonder "why", we say oh God would not do it that way. We would do it this way. We constantly substitute our judgments and viewpoints re what we think God should do. We are not God. So Mr Dawkins is in a field in which he knows absolutely nothing (re the existence or non-existence of a Supreme Being. Neither Dawkins nor anyone else is ever in a position to definitively state that there is no God. But we say it anyway, in our ignorance. Oh well :) | | The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by W. W. Norton Essence of the scientific method | When I tell friends and family that I am reading (and enjoying) books on natural selection and Darwin I often get challenged that 'God' explains the major gaps in the theories proposed. What I appreciate about this book is that it does not stop with that answer and strives to hypothesize and explain the origin of life and the complexity that has manifested itself in the nature around us. It challenges the reader to understand organic and inorganic chemistry and the fundamental properties of materials that would allow us to explain how it all transpired.
Ironically, this curiousity and desire to learn was forged from an upbringing in a strong Christian family. From my perspective, the fact that 'God' had graced us with the gift of thought and ability to reason was always very natural to the church's teaching of striving for the truth. This is not the same lesson that my 'near fundamentalist' siblings took from a similar upbringing. I am fearful about the religious stories that shape our behaviors today. More often than not religion is a reason not to learn and creates contempt for new ideas and people who articulate those ideas.
This book challenges the reader to learn and dig deeper. It does not ignore the other schools of thought and in fact lays them out with a suitable level of respect. I look forward to uncovering more books about science that embark on this same type of teaching method for complex topics. | | The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by W. W. Norton Dawkins vs. "Peter", "Paul", "Luke", and "John" | Read the bible (written by anonymous 8th century people called Peter, Paul, Luke, John, and others), and then read The Blind Watchmaker (or any book by Richard Dawkins). One is absurd and the other is perfect sense.
I'd love to see a college professor in the US offer a course that required the reading of these two books only. Perhaps it would raise the American standards for Science (we're embarrassingly low in comparison to the other Industrialized Nations because we simply defend one book at the expense of the other without ever having actually read either in the first place.)
Read this book BEFORE you judge it. It's an incredible experience into reality that beats the bible (I know, I've read them both). | | The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by W. W. Norton Isn't concrete. | | I'm not arguing against Evolution and I'm not a Creationist, but couldn't a higher power have created evolution? Like stacking dominoes and watching them fall. | | The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by W. W. Norton Exhaustive, and exhausting | This book discusses the arguements in favor of the theory of evolution, and is persuasive, IF you can get through it. If you can think in 9 dimensions (instead of 4), you can probably get through this without problems. I can't, but I still slogged through it, in spite of the fact that I didn't know what he was talking about.
In summary, if you're a genius, especially in mathematics, you can probably follow this. If not, get "Letter to A Christian Nation". | | The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by W. W. Norton Product Description | "The best general account of evolution I have read in recent years."—E. O. Wilson. With a new introduction.
Twenty years after its original publication, The Blind Watchmaker, framed with a new introduction by the author, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. 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 Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte. Natural selection—the unconscious, automatic, blind, yet essentially nonrandom process Darwin discovered—is the blind watchmaker in nature. | | The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by W. W. Norton Amazon.com | | 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 in the witty British style: 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. You can check Dawkins's results on your own Mac or PC. |
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