Allow me to sketch out a summarised time-line of Life, the Universe and Everything as seen by Atkins, Dawkins and my postman. (French postmen can be very talkative, and very opinionated. They have also been known to deliver the mail. The Quantum Delivery Service – both my neighbour and I receive my letters.)
In the beginning there was nothing. (An RDNet mathematician once tried to explain to me that mathematical nothing, or zero, was “unstable” and bound to become something sooner or later. Well, that reasoning didn’t work with my bank manager, so it won’t work with me either.)
Then there was a Bang and it was very Big. (We don’t know why, but that doesn’t matter. Get yourself a life.)
Perhaps three minutes later there was a generalised baryon, invitation-only knees-up which led to the appearance of helium and hydrogen.
The grand cosmic Dance of the Particles continued (“What was there to stop it?” a Yorkshireman could ask) yielding atoms, molecules, galaxies, stars and eventually – perhaps ten billion years later – life.
When life was only beginning to flex its muscles, it was just a question of some complex molecules accidentally acquiring the capacity for self-replication which required their eating each other from time to time then going to pieces and falling apart.
Simultaneously, evolutionary mechanisms kicked in, and it was just a matter of time (about 3.5 billion years, give or take a few nano-seconds, but who’s counting?) before the appearance of Manchester United supporters, Dawkins and me.
So far so good.
Evolution explains everything about Life.
Whatever shows up, if it favours survival and replication, Evolution invites it to the party.
Sooner or later.
Usually several magnitudes of later.
Except for the occasional surprise, open-air concert given by The Saltation Army.
(Sorry – I digress. Normal service will be resumed as soon as probable.)
The human being is an example of evolution in its most staggeringly complex, tax-paying form.
The human brain evolved leaving the brawn with flat feet, inguinal hernias, and chronic back pains (none of which apparently hinder reproduction. Well, that’s what they say in the books.)
Ah, the human brain.
That’s where things start to get messy for the Dawkinsian atheist.
In RD’s own words (according to the blurb on the cover at least)

“The brain exists originally as a device to aid gene survival; the ultimate rationale for the brain’s existence and very large size in our own species is, like everything else in the living world, gene survival, which tends to imply short-term selfishness. ”
BUT
as part of this the human brain has been equipped by the natural selection of genes with the power to make its own decisions, which can override the ultimate goals which were originally used to programme it.”
Elsewhere Dawkins has said:
“Our brains are flexible enough to be reprogrammed away from the goals that are directly concerned with gene survival, and toward a new and competent purpose, led by a religion, by patriotism, or a sense of duty or loyalty to a party or faith.”
Faith?
Well, hallelujah, brother!
Er, no, not exactly.
But almost.
“We need to rise above our Darwinian heritage,” he says.
In what way? “Well, we devote our lives to writing books, composing music, creating poetry — all higher functions of the brain. If we were following Darwinian dictates, we males would be spending all our time fighting other males to get females ….in order to have lots of children and grandchildren. I’m very glad we have risen above all of that.”
Hang on a sec, what is going on here?
Evolutionary forces have allowed us to rise above…..evolutionary forces?
OK. Let’s accept that for a moment.
We’ll move into our “Willing suspension of disbelief Happy-Hour.”
What do we get when our brain has out-evolved evolution?
Books, music and poetry.
Patriotism, a sense of duty, loyalty to a party or faith.
Religion and God.
Brotherly love.
Self-sacrifice.
And a whole truck-load of other “non-essential “stuff.
(I sense myself reaching for my coffee at this point – my disbelief suspenders are being stretched to their limits.)
Do our evolutionary gurus have an explanation for any of this noble silliness?
Well, yes, actually.
Things like brotherly love, symphonies, a sense of humour, condoms, child adoption and God are:
“evolutionary misfiring”,
“spandrels”,
“exaptations”,
“by-products”
and more recently “neo-purposes ”
or “neo-goals” as an accidental extension of “archi-purposes”.
I’ll bet that makes you feel better, mate!
(Just don’t make the same mistake as I did last Valentine’s Day. I sent my significant other a card with the message:
“My evolutionary survival mechanisms are powerfully misfiring in your direction.
You are the spandrel of my dreams.
Let us exapt together forever”
She put salt in my coffee.)

As I consider all this, I am tempted to paraphrase Shakespeare and say, “There is something mad-bad-or-stupid in the kingdom of Dawkins.”
Humankind’s finest aspirations are simply evolution gone wrong? (including Dawkins himself, who shamelessly cherry-picks his exaptations, his ability to exercise this choice being another exaptation of course. Like the legendary turtles, it’s exaptations all the way down.)
“I am a passionate Darwinian,” he tells us, ” in the academic sense that I believe that Darwinism is the main ingredient in our understanding of our own existence and that of all life, I am a passionate Darwinian in that sense, yet I am a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to human social and political affairs and political planning for the world.”
So, Darwinianism got us into all this mess, but it will take anti-Darwinianism to get us out.
Darwinian in order to make a living and sell books.
Anti-Darwinian when he gets the chance to rule the world.

So – has the blind watchmaker’s watch stopped telling the time?
Has the selfish gene become the accidentally repentant gene?
Have Dawkins and his pals arrived at the summit of Mount Improbable and fallen over the edge?