About a blind watchmaker and a clever scientist

Review of the book The Blind Watchman / Richard Dawkins

Zvi Reiter, from the bulletin for biology teachers, on the Swallow website

Richard Dawkins targeted creationists. For more than three hundred pages, he fights his enemies mercilessly, using and exploiting solid new evidence, but mainly Dawkins clings to theories and hypotheses that are not fully proven, in the way of hypotheses.
The key list of modern genetics/Darwinism and neo-Darwinism, lead the author towards his crown: the eradication of the belief that life in its forms was created consciously, in advance planning (for some purpose), by a higher power.
By the way he writes, Dawkins can convince those who are already convinced, but he cannot undermine the belief of those who believe in creation. These do not need scientific proofs to establish their faith and therefore will not accept the scientific method that could undermine the stability of their faith.

Everyone has heard something about quantum theory, Einstein's special and general relativity and Darwin's theory of evolution. However, while the general public leaves it to professionals and experts to deal with quantum theory and relativity, the theory of evolution, so to speak, is known and "understood", usually in its abbreviated and incorrect formulation which claims that "man descended from the ape".

This street version has supporters and opponents. "Everyone thinks they understand the theory of evolution" said Jacques Monod, but most of the supporters and opponents don't actually understand a thing and a half of Darwin's theory. And so Dawkins sets two goals for him in his book: one - to teach Darwin's theory. The second - to convince of its truth.

It seems that the human mind was designed to misunderstand Darwin's teachings. The complexity of life embodies the complete opposite of chance, and chance is at the heart of the theory of evolution. Therefore, it is not surprising that we would intuitively oppose Darwin's teachings. In addition, our mind and intuition are built to handle short-term events, minutes, days, years. After all, the course of evolution is a process of millions of years. How do we understand him?
Man is a creative designer. We have become accustomed to the idea that complex elegance indicates skillful design with first thought. When we look at the complexity of the animal world, we are therefore inclined to conclude that there is some kind of supernatural being that outlined things.

Indeed, the intuitive opposition to Darwin's theory is clear, since our minds were designed from the beginning to deal with problems of hunting and gathering, mating and raising offspring, processes that take place in the world of objects of medium size, in three dimensions and at not high speeds. However, similar to the complexity of evolution, the problems from the field of physics, such as understanding the nature of tiny particles (such as the atomic particles) or of huge dimensions (galaxies, light years) are not intuitively perceived in our limited minds.

Dawkins, in his arrogant language, sorts the physical problems into the field of "the simple problems". After all, Niels Bohr already said about quantum theory that those who start to understand its meaning must get dizzy as soon as they start to understand it. If so, why don't quantum theory and relativity "draw fire" and don't need words of defense similar to those Dawkins brings about the theory of evolution?

It seems that the answer to this question is the apparent "simplicity" of Darwin's theory. This Torah is complex and complicated and Dawkins expands and explains, details and gives examples. His explanations are usually clear and allow the reader to deal with difficult material from the fields of biology, logic and probability theory.

A single biological cell encodes much more complex processes than any known physical phenomenon. Therefore, the physical objects and phenomena were studied, understood and defined more easily. And perhaps this is the reason for the abundance of the following mathematical equations to describe processes in the physics books and their almost complete absence from the biology books. The world of computers, made by human hands, is even more simplistic.

Therefore, I did not like the many analogies that Dawkins brought from computer theory. Excessive use of analogies from the world of computers dwarfs the mysteriousness and power in the study of biology in general, and the understanding of evolutionary processes in particular.

Dawkins found him a comfortable partner to deal with. His victim is William Paley, author of the book "Natural Theology" (1802). Paley sought to prove in his book the existence of a creator of the world from observation and observation of the complexity of nature in general and life in its forms in particular. Paley distinguishes between natural physical objects such as stones and designed and manufactured objects such as a watch.

The watch was built by a craftsman for the purpose we find that it actually fulfills it. The craftsman understood its structure and designed its suitability for the purpose. And from the analogy of the watchmaker, Paley continues and says that all the signs of the first thought of design that we found in the watch, are found in the creations of nature; And the difference is that in nature these appear more strongly and in varying sizes.
Dawkins refutes this conclusion and claims that the only clocks in nature are the blind forces of physics. And further adds that the process of natural selection is unconscious, aimless, there is no thought or thinking mind behind it, no foresight and no vision at all. "If we can say about this process that it fulfills the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker". In his book, Dawkins provides an alternative explanation to Paley's belief and points out that the processes of evolution are possible without a plan. However, he cannot show that Darwin's theory is the proof of the non-existence of a plan, that is, of the non-existence of God.
Paley is blind in his theological belief in a Creator. Dawkins is unable to rise above the bitter debate and therefore he is also like a blind man, a blind man of the atheistic type, who embarks on a fruitless battle with creationists equipped with Darwin's writings and the achievements of modern science.

Dawkins, unlike scientists who are skeptical by nature, is sure of his righteousness. Already at the beginning of his book, the author claims that the question of the existence of the human race is no longer a mystery since Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Walls gave "an elegant and beautiful solution". The Darwinian worldview is the only theory capable, in principle, of deciphering the mystery of our existence, Dawkins claims. However, as "elegant and beautiful" as it may be, Darwin's theory has not yet been fully and partially proven in theory only. And Thomas Huxley already said that the great tragedy of science is the slaughter of an original and beautiful theory at the hands of an ugly fact.

Quantum theory brought a new perspective. The accepted and basic approach of having a subjective observer observing objective reality was broken. The idea that the observer is a part of reality is more and more accepted. Dawkins ignores both schools of thought and positions himself and his ideas as embodying the absolute, objective truth, high above the opposing arguments. His arrogant writing ("not to mention those who don't even know that the question exists", "for those whose eyes have not yet been opened to see", "spectacularly wrong, completely wrong") indicates that, in fact, Dawkins himself, the fearless fighter for creationists, is a foolish follower of the Torah Otherwise, the theory of evolution, already at the beginning of his book, Dawkins states that the role of his book is to provide information and inspire. Another and possibly main goal of the "blind watchmaker" is to convince. In the first two tasks, Dawkins stands up with respect, and therefore his book is worthy and highly recommended to read. In his third task, to convince creationists, Dawkins failed.

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