Reddit mentions of Why Darwin Matters

Who's the author you're looking for?

EDIT: I can't give it to you free, but is this your author?

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Darwin-Matters-Against-Intelligent/dp/0805083065

LeAgente answered things better than I could. Also I was thinking of checking out these books that relate to your first question:

Why Darwin matters: the case against intelligent design

why evolution is true

I haven't read them, but took note to maybe read them (probably through this subreddit I heard of one). It seems like they're geared towards people who were raised without much education on evolution or from YEC backgrounds. Reviews said they laid things out well. You may be interested.

Also...if anyone has read these...what'd you think? Any other recommendations?

On evolution:

I urge you to read some books on the issue that aren't written with a fundamentalist Christian slant. The science is decisive, and the distinction between "macro" and "micro" is itself a religious confusion. (as others have already pointed out).

On the Big Bang: The biggest problem with the Big Bang is that we don't know how it happened. That is a problem, and scientists are working obsessively to solve it. But saying "God did it" buys you a whole host of new problems. How did God happen? Who created God? Why did he create the universe? You haven't answered anything by saying "God did it": you've just kicked the can down the road and added an additional unfalsifiable and unsupported assumption.

Also, the evidence for the Big Bang is all around you: look up background microwave radiation,distribution and evolution of galaxies, the abundance of light elements, and the expansion of space.

On the supernatural:

Any thinking that starts with "Do you think it's possible that..." is a HUGE RED FLAG. Almost anything is possible, but usually the sort of logic that must be defended with a "Well, it's possible..." is absurdly improbable. This is a good example. Yeah, it's possible that an entire other world could be layered on our own - but it's more improbable than winning the lottery, and I don't buy lottery tickets.

If I had to explain the fundamental difference between the way I think about the spiritual and the way you think about the spiritual, it would be this. You ask "Is it possible that..." and "Do you think that maybe..."

I ask "Is there empirical support for..." and "Does the evidence support the assertion that..."

As for the hope that human consciousness continues on....

Nope. This is it. That sucks, and I'm sorry. It's among the hardest pills to swallow about being an atheist - but it's true whether you believe it or not.

Hijacked is too strong a word, but I think two points are notable. First, arguably most of the really popular and notable books on evolution released in the last twenty years were penned by New Atheists proper or by authors who basically fit the New Atheist mold but aren't one of the four specific authors. A big part of the reason for that is simply Richard Dawkins. He's a popular writer and a biologist, so it was almost inevitable that he'd pen books about Darwin and that they'd hit the bestsellers lists. And if it were limited to Dawkins, I'd think nothing of it, but there's Dennett and Shermer, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Harris release one before long. Another part of the reason is that a number of the other books about Darwinian evolution that have sold well in past decades were penned by creationists like Michael Behe, so a certain measure of response is, from my perspective at least, welcome. At that point, it's about market share, and we don't want creationists having too big a piece of the market share. Their point of view is, after all, problematic to say the least. If it weren't for my second point, it wouldn't even be problematic that a) popular books on evolution are basically split between creationists and New Atheists, and b) that New Atheists make up such a large share of that market.

But my second point is this: New Atheists aren't just popularizing or "standing up for" Darwinian evolution; they're attaching a political and ideological agenda to that effort, and that runs several risks, the most obvious being that it can polarize people against evolution, as some commentators have warned it might do in Muslim countries. To my mind, the more insidious risk is that, once you've connected a scientific theory to a political or ideological effort, it becomes all to easy for its patrons to see it in those terms even when it has nothing to do with that effort. Without much noticing it, pro-Darwinians may start seeing barely articulated associations as part and parcel of evolution, until evolution is something more than a scientific model. Dawkins, for example, has turned evolution into a theological disproof with the subtitle of "The Blind Watchmaker". The title of Shermer's "Why Darwin Matters" sums up the achievement of evolutionary theory as a form of polemic against intelligent design theory. Dawkins, at least, is close enough to the professional practice of biology that he probably doesn't need reminding that evolution isn't really about atheism, but all of these guys are writing books for people who don't have the continual reminder of working in the field where evolutionary theory is most functional.

I say none of this in defense of the Guardian article, but I do think there's something to be said for the idea that our society stands to lose by leaving it up to the New Atheists to give evolution its popularly received meaning.