"It is amazing that you can still read calculations like my haemoglobin calculation, used as though they constituted arguments against Darwin's theory. The people who do this, often expert in the their own field ... seem sincerely to believe that Darwinism explains living organisation in terms of chance - 'single-step selection' - alone. This belief, that Darwinian evolution is 'random', is not merely false. It is the exact opposite of the truth. Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe, but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially nonrandom."
~ The Blind Watchmaker, Chapter 3, 1986
As I read this book I keep getting the uncanny feeling Dawkins is reading my thoughts. Early on, he mentions that natural selection is not purposeful, just an inevitable occurrence when you have variation within a population that reproduces and passes on its characteristics. I thought to myself that thinking this is in some way directed is like thinking that a sieve in a river catching large but not small objects is doing it for a purpose. This organisation out of chaos is not for anything, it's just a consequence of how sieves work. Two pages later and he's talking about sieves. I guess it's just a common example.
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