EVOLUTION The word is deceptive. Originally, to "evolve" simply meant to "turn out of" or "gradually change from", as compared to "revolve" or "involve". But it has come to mean something rather different. A certain quality has been introduced to the change. To "evolve" now means to "develop" or to "grow out of "or "from" another as when humans are described as having evolved from a "less developed" or even - despite its political incorrectness - a "lower" species. So, "evolution"- whether we like it or not - has come to mean gradual development and growth into what is better suited or best suited to live - as compared to whatever it was in the past from which the present evolved. Since the time of Darwin, the term "evolution" has also been associated with "natural selection". On page 5 of his book, "The Blind Watchmaker", Mr. Dawkins explains the title.

"Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker."

On page 62, he briefly explains how natural selection makes its selections. "In nature, the usual selecting agent is direct, stark and simple. It is the grim reaper. Of course, the reasons for survival are anything but simple - that is why natural selection can build up animals and plants of such formidable complexity. But there is something very crude and simple about death itself. And nonrandom death is all it takes to select phenotypes, and hence the genes that they contain, in nature."

Mr. Dawkins is preoccupied with the question of how - not why - we and other things were made. With his focus on the exceptional, the random gene, he describes an evolving world in which - by natural selection - diverse individuals and species best suited to grow in their changing environment are gradually and constantly developing. Even in the production of the first living cell, "the DNA/protein replicating machine", from which all the billions of living species have evolved, Mr. Dawkins can find no role for a supernatural Designer. Why not?

"To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer." p141.

Furthermore, he believes that the process of the cumulative selection of self replicating, inorganic crystals is quite adequate to explain the origin of the genes, the set of instructions embodied in the first living cell. There is no need for a Designer, "in order to understand life or anything else in the universe." p.147.  For Mr. Dawkins, evolution involves 3 factors, namely:

1) random changes or mutations (in clay, rock crystals or genes), owing to anything from radiation to cataclysmic events,
2)  4 billion years and
3)  nonrandom death or destruction.

Obviously, by themselves, random mutations, time and death are not able to forecast or foresee the growth and the developments - the complex diversity - that they have produced. He concludes that the evolution of our biosphere is therefore a blind, automatic process. Whatever evolution may have done, it has not done on purpose. Mr. Dawkins does not see the growth and development from the embryo, from the first living cell or from the molten mass of the earth - as a process towards any sort of goal, objective or purpose. He sees what is present as the product - but never, ever, the purpose - of what is past. So the growth of our entire biosphere from the first living cell is no more the purpose of the evolutionary process than a fully developed baby is the reason for the growth of an embryo into a fetus. A fully grown tree is not the reason why an acorn sprouted. Pollination does not take place in order to grow a new plant. A child is the mere product, not the purpose of the growing fetus and the tree is the mere outcome of the sprouting acorn - not its objective.

If the process of evolution - by cumulative, natural selection - is truly an adequate explanation for the diversity and complexity of our biosphere, it would at least appear that for billions of years, the process of evolution by natural selection has been acting for a purpose, namely: to develop every species which is - at least temporarily - best suited to grow in each generation with its changing environment. Mr. Dawkins is like an observer at a firing range who sees nearly every shell landing right on target. From his study of mechanics, he knows that the guns and the shells adequately explain the resulting explosions. He does not think the spot where they are landing is a target. He realizes that neither the guns nor the shells have a mind of their own and so he comes to the conclusion that there is nobody aiming them - at what may appear to be the target.

Mr. Dawkins claims that natural selection is "The Blind Watchmaker" of the biosphere but perhaps he is confusing the "Watchmaker" with the Watchmaker's tools. Although the watch is keeping almost perfect time, he does not see that keeping time is the purpose of producing a watch. An accurate timepiece is a mere unintentional side effect of the unthinking tools. By showing us that since natural selection is completely blind, Mr. Dawkins has inadvertently proven that there has to be Someone who is aiming evolution at its obvious target - which is the interdependently developing world that we live in, commonly called, "CREATION".

I think God is directing creative evolution and it is God's instructions that are embodied in the genes of living things. Humans, both as farmers and as scientists, have now evolved to the stage where we can co-create, modifying and improving both inanimate and every living species including our own, doing deliberately what we and other species have done instinctively in the past. We can also, as always, deliberately (or unknowingly) destroy all things, including ourselves. The least we can deliberately do is to recognize that destiny to which - by our survival instinct - we are instinctively directed: to love living so that we can come to love the proximate and eventually, the ultimate source of our living: our neighbor and our loving God. Then we can try to do it.

Finally, I believe that just as nonrandom death - as Dawkins describes it - is the blind instrument of natural selection for the improvement of the species, our personal death is the final step in the development and perfection of each human individual, the time for our union with the risen, unselfish and loving Source of our lives, without the mental block of what we call the "physical necessities of life".