Probability

As the title of Dawkins's book suggests, the basis for the evidence of a world without design is rooted in probabilities. The first chapter is entitled Explaining the Improbable, and in it Dawkins analyses the statistical probabilities of spontaneous creation of complex objects such as airliners and human eyes. He uses the combination lock on his bicycle as an example to educate the reader in elementary statistics in random numbers. Of course the main point about natural selection, as Dawkins points out in several places in the book, is that it is not random at all. It is the mutations, which are subjected to natural selection, that are random.

In Chapter 6 Dawkins discusses Origins and Miracles, and the main topic is the problem of how life originated on the planet Earth. In doing so he considers the probability of similar life occurring on other planets in the Universe...