Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny

Dawkins talks about “Mount Improbable” as though it really exists and he has explored it from top to bottom. His invention has become so real to Dawkins that it now defines for him and his large following how evolution and natural selection supposedly work. His readers and listeners think that they, too, understand how it all works, and they love it. Come along with Richard Dawkins as he continues his fantasy journey climbing Mount Improbable:

“So we can’t help wondering, why didn’t Nautilus . . . evolve a lens? . . . [He gestures to the model. . . .] You see that although we’ve got one big peak there, there are also various other peaks on the way. There are quite a lot of them. . . . When the ancestors of Nautilus got to this point, that way up hill looked just as inviting . . . evolutionarily, as that way. . . .

“Evolution has no way of knowing that if you travel up that way, you’re going to end up with a lens. . . . So . . . perhaps Nautilus has got itself trapped . . . and is unable to escape because . . . the one thing you cannot do on Mount Improbable is ever go downhill.

“But let’s imagine what the ancestors of the squid and octopus did when they got to this junction here. They just happened to go up this way [uses his hands to illustrate walking up Mount Improbable], and they started evolving a lens. And we [humans] did at a different time in history.

“How might the lens have evolved? Well, let’s imagine [And he mocks faith in the essential Creator?] that it started with just a single sheet of some transparent material. And all that this is doing—it’s not “a lens yet—is just protecting the eye [What eye?].

“[Demonstrates, using optician’s lenses.] So this is the next stage in evolution. [Inserts second lens.] If an animal had an eye like that [How would it get it? Dawkins doesn’t tell us!] it would have a very, very clear view of its world and could tell exactly what its predator was. [Emphasis added]”