blind watchmaker

Argument from creationist biology, suggesting that to create animals and plants as complex as those evident today through the random processes of natural selection is like believing in a blind watchmaker.

The name of the software program written by Richard Dawkins to illistrate an evoluationary process. Through a process of selection, complex biomorphs can be evolved. From very simple beginings, the biomorph can evolve into a vast array of diffrent shapes.

Each biomorph is a stick figure of sorts that is drawn from the interpetation of a genome. Various genomes exist for implementations of this program. The essential parts of it are: the length of the lines and angle of change. Other enhancements include segmentation, color, change of the basic drawing shape.

The standard interface for this program is a square gird with the parent biomorph in one square, and each offspring in a diffrent square. The offspring are mutations on the parent's genome. The user then selects the offspring (or parent) that he or she wishes, and the process repeats itself.

The complete algorithm for this program is given in chapter 3 of The Blind Watchmaker.