Richard Dawkins celebrated “blind watchmaker” metaphor implies an unseeing, groping in the dark. It evokes powerfully the Darwinian algorithm. We might assume that this watchmaker is an anonymous personage who bears a nagging family resemblance to an intelligent creator. Dawkins (1986) quickly shatters this misconception:

Paley's argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological scholarship of the day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong. The analogy between telescope and eye, between watch and living organism, is false. All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind force of physics, albeit deplored in a special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. 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.

Dawkins, Richard (1986) The Blind Watchmaker. Penguin. New York.