The book is written to convince the reader that evolution is valid.
But to me, the shocking thing was to really understand the religious argument for the first time, and understand why evolution challenges that world view.
In a nutshell, there is a web of related arguments which support the belief that God exists. One of them is that the eye is so complicated, that it must have been designed from the beginning by an intelligent being. Therefore God exists.
But Darwin showed that many small random changes plus natural selection are sufficient to explain the eye's complexity.
Why was this shocking at the time?
Just imagine you are walking around with a vague gut feeling that God must exist every time you see a beautiful bird or a flower. You figure that something intelligent must have designed that beatiful, complex living thing. You see another complex wonder of nature, and feeling gets stronger. Perhaps it becomes the main reason that you believe that God must exist.
Then one day, wham! Darwin releases his book, and it becomes clear that there is a valid scientific explanation for the complexity of that flower which does not require a supernatural designer.
Instantly your whole world view collapses. There's nothing in the science that says that God does not exist. Science only says that other explanations are sufficient. And yet, just that is enough to collapse that entire line of thinking. There are still other arguments for the existence of God. But the one you felt most strongly is gone.
Reading the book gave me a detailed understanding of that religious line of reasoning, and what it might feel like to lose it.
It gives me some understanding of why people, even today, have a desire to reject the scientific idea of evolution.
I suppose your praise is more due to Darwin's original book, although it is much less accessible nowadays - Dawkins does indeed explain it well.
The thing that struck me was how Darwin's ideas achieved such quick adoption, even in that most pious of times, where to avow yourself an athiest was unthinkable. It's an idea, once you are exposed to it, is so immensely powerful and perhaps even to say in hindsight obvious - that the truth of it almost bowls you over. The eldritch horror it must have inspired in the religious mind at the time can only be imagined. And yet it could not be seriously challenged - because it was so clearly TRUE.
One of the most staggering intellectual achievements of mankind. Philosophers since Ancient Greek times had been speculating on the causes of being (some even came close to guessing something like evolution) but they were just that, guesses. Then finally we get Darwin, and bam, no guesses, here is the answer (I acknowlege several others got just pipped to the post on it). That such a simple idea lurked just out of our understanding all this time, but took such staggering genius to unlock...
I haven't read that particular book of Dawkins, but I have encountered a mathematical argument I find somewhat troubling, though I don't have the background to really examine it in depth.
Essentially the number of possible configurations of the sequence of a piece of genetic code required to produce the instructions for producing a usable protein are something like 10^77 to 1. The state space is filled with an astronomical amount of unusable junk.
The next part of the argument hinges on the Cambrian explosion. They claim that mathematically there isn't enough time for life produce enough trials to give rise to the amount of species seen during that period given the duration of the period and the sheer number of combinations life has to try in order to find viable ones.
They sort of say that Darwin was like Newton. A good enough explanation of a large portion of observable phenomenon, but it breaks down at the edges and a new theory is needed.
They seem to want to fill it with Intelligent Design. I'm an atheist myself, so I don't feel compelled to fill it with the god of the gaps, so to speak. But I'm finding it hard to accept Darwin as the whole answer.
Does Dawkins book address this? Is there any book that addresses this?
In the one Dawkins book I read, the mathematical part definitely gets addressed. It may change your mind about the mathematical part.
I once read elsewhere that almost all the specific details Darwin came up with have been overturned by other scientists. But the new scientific results prove evolution and natural selection even harder.
My own personal speculation is that there may be many simple proteins that have some type of use or another. I would be interested in reading about how they came up with that 10^77 number. Sounds high to me.
On the other hand, I've read scientists make comments similar to your comments. Not in papers, but in casual interviews. Some agree with you and say that even given the current theories, there just wasn't quite enough time on earth to create life from non-life.
It's not an accepted scientific theory at all. More like a crackpot idea that will probably never be proved or disproved. But take a look at the panspermia theory. Small seeds of some kind move from planet to planet. Maybe one landed on earth long ago? It's a crazy idea. But it does address the issues you brought up.
The foundations of peoples' beliefs are not tied to logic or truth, it is tied to time, effort, character and way of life.
Any change in belief that will influence their way of life will raise psychological shields. People will very readily change their logic to maintain a belief if that meant preserving other other aspects of their lives that they have put time and effort into.
This book is written for people who already understand the true nature of science and religion. I highly doubt it can convert people, I have yet to find a technique or even a book that has the ability to do so. It's just the way people are...
Whenever you see someone convert from religion to science most of the time the underlying foundations of it had nothing to do with logical realization and more to do with some form of minor or major trauma.
If you experienced a conversion to science from religion and you yourself describe the experience as a "logical realization" I would argue that you probably weren't that invested in the religion in the first place OR that there was some associated trauma that coincided with the "logical realization."
Haha. You are much better at psychology than I am. You are so right that logical arguments just make people cling to their old beliefs harder.
But then...
What is the purpose of the book?
Is it just to give scientifically oriented people a playbook of arguments to use against anti-evolutionary bible thumpers when debating school curriculum?
I'll accept that.
The book is written to convince the reader that evolution is valid.
But to me, the shocking thing was to really understand the religious argument for the first time, and understand why evolution challenges that world view.
In a nutshell, there is a web of related arguments which support the belief that God exists. One of them is that the eye is so complicated, that it must have been designed from the beginning by an intelligent being. Therefore God exists.
But Darwin showed that many small random changes plus natural selection are sufficient to explain the eye's complexity.
Why was this shocking at the time?
Just imagine you are walking around with a vague gut feeling that God must exist every time you see a beautiful bird or a flower. You figure that something intelligent must have designed that beatiful, complex living thing. You see another complex wonder of nature, and feeling gets stronger. Perhaps it becomes the main reason that you believe that God must exist.
Then one day, wham! Darwin releases his book, and it becomes clear that there is a valid scientific explanation for the complexity of that flower which does not require a supernatural designer.
Instantly your whole world view collapses. There's nothing in the science that says that God does not exist. Science only says that other explanations are sufficient. And yet, just that is enough to collapse that entire line of thinking. There are still other arguments for the existence of God. But the one you felt most strongly is gone.
Reading the book gave me a detailed understanding of that religious line of reasoning, and what it might feel like to lose it. It gives me some understanding of why people, even today, have a desire to reject the scientific idea of evolution.