The Blind Watchmaker thesis

"The Blind Watchmaker thesis"- evolution #6-

The meanings of evolution, from "Darwinism, Design and Public Education":

1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature
2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population
3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.
4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.
5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.
6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.

-was put forth by Richard Dawkins, a noted evolutionist. His thesis was/ is supported by many scientists, including many evolutionary biologists, for example Crick. In the book "Darwinism, Design and Public Education", Massimo Pigliucci and William Provine, both evolutionists and both biologists, have chapters that agree with it. Ernst Mayr, in "What Evolution Is", makes it clear that teleology is NOT allowed. PZ Meyers, evolutionist and biologist, is in agreement with the blind watchmaker thesis. Then there are the 38 Nobel laureates...

"Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection."

... who although they didn't win their respective Nobel in biology, to even suggest they don't understand the subject defies reasoning, especially in the absence of an explanation- other than "they aren't evolutionary biologists" (neither was Darwin).

It is obvious that the blind watchmaker thesis is NOT an opponents construct. That the Thought Provoker has said this on a few occasions makes me wonder what he is trying to provoke. Oh well.

Also if one disagrees with evolution #6, what exactly, is your position/ how does it contrast with ID?

Especially seeing that there are only 3 options to our existence:

1) Unintelligent, blind/ undirecetd (non-goal oriented) processes
2) Intelligent, directed (goal oriented) process
3) A combination of 1 & 2