Quote Originally Posted by Dizaster
Whoever is really interested in this stuff should read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. That book is a total freak show when it comes to analyzing this sort of stuff.... You can find the e-book PDF in the sharing programs. I found it on bearshare so if anyone is like, totally desperate for it, I can probably e-mail it, just send me a PM or something.
I quite like Dawkins stuff, not read the Selfish Gene but I've read the Blind Watchmaker and his latest work The God Delusion.

He can be quite funny at times, and some of his analysis is excellent. He certainly makes a mockery of Thomas Aquianus' Arguments for the Existence of God when he asks us to concieve of the smelliest individual imaginable and then argues that the most smelliest would have to exist in reality else he would not be most smelly person imaginable as a real person slightly less smelly is actually more smelly than a smellier person who only exists in fantasy.

And I do find his contempt for Christians quite hilarious at times. When he tells a story about one of his science colleages being asked a morality question for example the scientist suggested they consult with a theologian. 'Why a theologian' Dawkins asks, 'Why not the gardener or the Chef?!'

He is a funny guy certainly and his critique against some of the more longstanding 'evidences' for belief in God are pretty devastating but he fails on two counts. Firstly he only attacks age old theological arguments to disprove God. His debunking of religious arguments from 900 years ago is like a creationist proving evolution is false by exposing the Piltdown Man fraud or demolishing Lamark's theory of inheritence through acquired characteristics, meangingless as both science and religios arguments have moved on since then.

His second shortcoming is that the exact same methodology he uses to 'disprove' God he is guilty of following that same flawed methodology in his own arguments.

He talks of cranes and skyhooks suggesting belief in God is a skyhook, literally pulling a belief out of thin air wheras he believes that science should work from the ground up like a crane.

How ironic then that he believes the universe itself came from nothing at all, for no reason and with no purpose, if that isn't a skyhook I don't know what is

And then he also completely fails to justify why a crane solution is more scientifically likely than a skyhook solution. I mean sure, as a scientist he will of course hope to find a naturalistic biological explanation for the origin of life, BUT if there isn't one and life really was the product of planned intelligent design, then no amount of wishing thinking or dogmatic belief in the divinty of sciene will alter that one iota.

He also uses a wonderful sleight of hand mathematical calculation to 'prove' mathematically that life must exist on other planets, as even with odds of 100,000,000 to 1 against, there are more than enough planets in the universe so that even allowing for such long odds, with an almost infinite number of planets to play around with it must be a virtual mathematical certainy that life exists on many planets in the universe, thousands in fact.

This is all very convincing on the surface but it presupposes that evolution is true. That is by giving odds of 100,000,000 to 1 he's still basically saying that evolution occurred.

However if life was a product of intelligent design and didn't evolve from non organic materials then the probability of life arising by chance is 0 and of course 100,000,000 times 0 is still 0.

A good read, I can see from the Amazon reviews though that it doesn't convert anyone in either direction. He is like most Christians in fact, preaching to the converted, athiests see in his work a dynamite rebutall of all things divine whilst Christians merely shrug and dismiss the whole book as nothing but hate and nonsense.

I recommend people read him though, he's by far the most famouse devotee of evolutionary theory in its present forms and should most certainly be read, although I think people should also read the counter argument, Dawkins God by Allister McGrath being but one example.