1. Godless was a bestseller.
2. Godless was simplistic and radical.
3. The God Delusion is a bestseller.
4. Therefore"¦

Keiths, you are distorting a clear argument. The God Delusion is seen as simplistic and radical. It has nothing to do with its best seller status. Colter has been a best seller too. But that is not why Krauze thinks her last book was simplistic and radical. That combination may be a formula for best seller status although I have personal reservations about that. Am I wrong Krauze?

Keep that straw man to yourself, thank you very much. Any argument about the quality of Dawkin's book should start here.

I seem to remember something about Ann Coulter's Godless being a bestseller as well. The lesson seems to be that if you're writing a book, make sure it is as simplistic and radical as possible.

What's simplistic is Krauze's implied argument:

1. Godless was a bestseller.
2. Godless was simplistic and radical.
3. The God Delusion is a bestseller.
4. Therefore…

Go to either Barnes & Noble or Border's and you'll see the God Delusion on all the end caps.
Product placement plays a role"¦. as does the general ideology of the bookstore's employees.

If you want a telic friendly book from Borders of BnN, and if it's a newer release"¦. chances are you'll be ordering it from them.

Doug,

It has nothing to do with ideology. The God Delusion is #9 on the NY Times bestseller list. The latest major "telic-friendly" book, Jonathan Wells' PIGDID, isn't on the list. Amazon puts it around 9,500th in sales.

If you're a bookstore manager who has to report her sales figures to corporate HQ every week, which book are you going to feature prominently?

By the way, PIGDID got quite a push from my local (SF Bay) Barnes and Noble when it came out. There were a lot of copies, and the book was shelved sideways so it would "jump out" relative to the conventionally shelved books on either side.

He believes that most people"”even many scientists"”do not fully understand just how powerful an idea it is

Natural selection as the cause of creativity — yes it is a remarkably powerful meme indeed, in the number of people who have fallen under its sway.

If one endorses standard evolutionary theories, including the basic mechanisms by which it is said to have occured, he will still incur the wrath of Dawkinites if he insists a design inference can be found in the data.

But philosophically (metaphysically), a design inference is inescapable. Consider the words of Emile Zuckerkandl in his article for the journal Gene…

If the higher intelligence had to conform to time, then why not to the other dimensions of nature? It looks as though beyond the ascendancy of nature any other power may be superfluous - and inherently limited. Since life in particular could under no conditions be created instantaneously - biology makes this abundantly clear, because certain required simultaneities can only result from a history - no God can be almighty.

Where has he established that "higher intelligence" must conform to time and all other dimensions? "Emergence" is a scientific formulation of the design inference, and because it entails supervenience (complete with all applicable philosophical arguments) it cannot be necessarily true that the "emergent" IC property itself must conform to the limitations of its medium. In fact, its irreducibility to the properties of the medium is what qualifies it as "emergent." The only necessary relationship between the substrate and the superstrate [emergent property] is that the substrate be existent *as* the medium, subject to whatever limitations the medium demands.

IOW, the sculptor does not need to be clay in order to use clay to express his designs. The painter need not be a water-based substance in order to use watercolors to express her designs. The designs will be limited to the medium (a clay statue is physically "identical" to the clay from which it is sculpted), but the statue [form] is ephemeral compared to the clay.

We don't have much trouble recognizing intelligent design - expression of a designer's design - in a clay dragon. We know that the dragon is embodiment of an immaterial thought-form created by a designer - hardly anybody older than 2 believes the clay made itself into a dragon, or that there was a force field "dragon-matrix" specified by the environment which shaped the clay. Eventually the dragon will deteriorate into clumps and dust, the idea gone [where?] while the clay still remains. Doesn't this describe what we 'know' about form in life (and all other things physical)? Is this not The Law of clay?

Most humans do apprehend the situation - reality here in 3+1. We observe it every day, understand it intimately. Where does "I Am" (the thought-form) go when the clay turns back into clay, available for embodiment of a new thought-form? For a time, in time.

Zuckerkandl has made a gratuitous and appallingly unsupported assumption about the nature of "higher intelligence." His prior sentence outlines his criteria:

Time and change as unavoidable conditions of existence would have had to impose themselves upon that "higher intelligence" that is being peddled to the public.

Why?

Without bothering to question the definition of "intelligence" either as it manifests in clay (emergence) or what would qualify as "higher" than the clay embodiment. He has presumed his conclusion, a good example of confirmation bias, but metaphysically insupportable from the outset. Odd that he managed to get this published in a biology journal. It would never have passed peer review in a philosophical journal, so long as biology recognizes anything so philosophically debatable as "emergence."

There is a shorthand route to distinguishing scientific from metaphysical concerns. If one endorses standard evolutionary theories, including the basic mechanisms by which it is said to have occured, he will still incur the wrath of Dawkinites if he insists a design inference can be found in the data. That wrath is not induced by a concern for science.

KC: Reading Shermer's review tells us why he thinks the book is an important work of science, and it's not for the reasons given above:

Dawkins also wants to raise consciousness about the power of Darwin's dangerous idea of natural selection. He believes that most people"”even many scientists"”do not fully understand just how powerful an idea it is. He attributes that failure to the need to be steeped and immersed in natural selection before you can truly recognize its power. In this context, natural selection "shatters the illusion of design within the domain of biology, and teaches us to be suspicious of any kind of design hypothesis in physics and cosmology as well."

So where is the science in these assertions. Natural selection is a focal point but for design as well as those attempting to debunk it. A contravention of selection would indicate design.

If you want a telic friendly book from Borders of BnN, and if it's a newer release…. chances are you'll be ordering it from them.

So PJ has been right all along"¦.amazing.

Not really so amazing. The EAs [Evangelical Atheists] have been there all along, taking up the banner of Darwinism as soon as Origin… was published and running with it through all the serious challenges and changes to it over the past century and a half. It was seized upon immediately as means to an "intellectually fulfilled" atheism by atheists seeking intellectual fulfillment through science.

Johnson recognized this because it's always been entirely evident on the philosophical level. Denials from the EA contingent have never been very credible. My first exposure to the radical fringe came about when I was referred to Internet Infidels when first becoming interested in the debate (and why so much absolute garbage was being asserted by people who claimed to have science on their side). THAT qualifies as a car wreck!

It immediately became obvious to me that this was a metaphysical corruption of everything science was designed to be, and it seemed a very big shame. Because science was designed to be our most powerful and useful tool for controlling conditions in this world. It was never about metaphysics, and wasn't invented to seek metaphysical truths. The pretension that science *does* seek - and establish - metaphysical truths is the greatest threat to the scientific endeavor that science has ever faced.

Galileo could recant on the insistence of the Pope [power] because he understood that the [relative] physical truth couldn't be destroyed by imposition of any particular metaphysical interpretation. It would outlive him, and sure enough did. It was the metaphysical imposition that had to give way, because it was erroneously applied. Science won that round, but it can't win this one because this time it's the scientific imposition that is in error.

I didn't agree with the Wedge or the metaphysical impositions it sought. It was politically incorrect at the most basic level of our political charter. It failed precisely because it was anathema to the political system it sought to subvert. We can't have a theocracy in the US under the charter we've got - we'd have to change form first.

The same thing is true of an atheocracy, but so long as it can slip itself in disguised as a scientocracy it might succeed where the Wedge failed. Thus it represents the bigger corruption - the bigger danger to that which we as 'free people' value most highly.