Dawkins, Ancestors Tale or Blind Watch Maker?

[Plastictowel]

I read almost all of The Selfish Gene, but my layman understanding of evolution made a lot of it hard to grasp. I went out and purchased The God Delusion today (read 103 pages in one sitting so I know I'll finish this bad boy soon). Anyway what should be read first, AT or BWM? They both seem like they would give me a much stronger understanding of evolution, and both look very intersting (although AT looks intimidating in size). What would you fellows recomend?

[Kochanski]

I've read both and Ancestor's Tale is my favorite of the two. It is a hefty book, but you can read each tale separately and enjoy them that way, so it is not so daunting a task, really. I read it and was tempted to start again at the beginning of the book, but had more (way too many more) books on my must read now list.

Do tell us what you think of The God Delusion. I just ordered it, so I should be getting it soon and will then have to decide where it goes on my must read list (it gets longer all the time).

[Rodney]

I read almost all of The Selfish Gene, but my layman understanding of evolution made a lot of it hard to grasp. I went out and purchased The God Delusion today (read 103 pages in one sitting so I know I'll finish this bad boy soon). Anyway what should be read first, AT or BWM? They both seem like they would give me a much stronger understanding of evolution, and both look very intersting (although AT looks intimidating in size). What would you fellows recomend?
Today's NY Times' review of The God Delusion: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/Holt.t.html Excerpt: "The book fairly crackles with brio. Yet reading it can feel a little like watching a Michael Moore movie . . . In a particularly low blow, he accuses Richard Swinburne, a philosopher of religion and science at Oxford, of attempting to 'justify the Holocaust,' when Swinburne was struggling to square such monumental evils with the existence of a loving God. Perhaps all is fair in consciousness-raising. But Dawkins’s avowed hostility can make for scattershot reasoning as well as for rhetorical excess . . . Dawkins also deals at length with the objection, which he is evidently tired of hearing, that the arch evildoers of the last century, Hitler and Stalin, were both atheists. Hitler, he observes, 'never formally renounced his Catholism'; and in the case of Stalin, a onetime Orthodox seminarian, 'there is no evidence that his atheism motivated his brutality.' The equally murderous Mao goes unmentioned, but perhaps it could be argued that he was a religion unto himself . . . Despite the many flashes of brilliance in this book, Dawkins’s failure to appreciate just how hard philosophical questions about religion can be makes reading it an intellectually frustrating experience."

[Foster Zygote]

Well I think it can be argued that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. were all religions unto themselves. They didn't slaughter people in the name of atheism, they slaughtered people in their own names.

Steven

[logical muse]

I read The Blind Watchmaker many years ago, after reading The Selfish Gene. I then read The Extended Phenotype and subsequently all his other books (haven't read The God Delusion yet...).

TSG and TBW are still my favourites, but I think that's because it was those two books that exposed me to a lot of new ideas.

[Dragon]

BWM then AT.

The Blind Watchmaker expands on The Selfish Gene and gives you an insight into the evolution of adaptive complexity etc. Ancestor's Tale is a wonderful series of "stories" about the evolution of different lineages - I think it helps to have the background of BWM (and SG) to get the most out of it.

[Plastictowel]

And any good Daniel Dennet pieces out there? Dawkins is always quoting him, and I've seen this man before randomly on the net, I'd assume he's a good writer (he has several points where he's quoted in The God Delusion).

[Hux]

"Breaking the Spell" By Dennett is his latest, specifically aimed at religious belief. It is also the easiest of his to get to grips with.

Could I also recommend "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Dawkins? It never seems to get much of a mention but it is a very good nursery slope and contains a lot of the essentail rebuttal he is keen to offer, regarding randomness. Well worth the read.

[pchams]

I have read The Ancestor's Tale, and I don't think it is too difficult a book for those less versed in evolution.
It has the interesting perspective of walking backwards in time as opposed to forwards. That took a while to get used to, but is an interesting approach.