The title of
one of Richard Dawkins’s books is The
Blind Watchmaker, but its subtitle is How
the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a World without Design.1 The
subtitle, it seems to me, makes a paradoxical claim. On the one hand, it
maintains we ought to draw the conclusion that the world lacks design. On the
other hand, the subtitle suggests that he has reached this conclusion through
examining the evidence of evolution, but examining the evidence is a process designed to discover the truth. In fact,
Dawkins is fond of contrasting his own methods for reaching conclusions with
methods based on faith, which to his mind involve a lack of design. He put it
this way in an open letter to his ten-year-old daughter:
Next time somebody tells you
something that sounds important, think to yourself: ‘Is this the kind of thing
that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that
people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?’ And, next
time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: ‘What kind
of evidence is there for that?’ And if they can’t give you a good answer, I
hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.2
Dawkins appeals to a fact of experience, one
that cannot be denied without extreme implausibility. There are some claims
that can be justified only if there is evidence for it, and we form our beliefs
concerning them based on the evidence. If we want to know whether or not the
Loch Ness Monster exists, we have to look at the evidence for or against it.
Someone could have a strong feeling about it, but that wouldn’t be a reason to
believe that the monster exists, or that it does not exist. But if the world
really is without design, how is this possible that anyone can reason to a
conclusion? Of course, it could turn out that the paradox is resolvable. Still,
if the world is not teleological, those who think they
believe anything for a good reason owe us an explanation as to how that is even
possible.
