Ok I've added this book to my Amazon wish list, and will download to my Kindle later. Anything ferguson disagrees so angrily with, must contain some intelligent cogent thoughts. As his angry ignorant rants are clearly insane idiotic nonsense.

Ok here goes.

The introduction (paraphrased) states:

The purpose of the book, is to provide counter arguments to many of the popular arguments made for God.

This of course is not what the title suggest. No criticism intended of course, as titles are supposed to be catchy and grab the attention. However when an ignorant and angry theist like ferguson reads the title and not the book, combined with his woeful grasp of English and the basics of how to construct strong rational arguments, well the risible results are in this thread for all to see.

The introduction explain that each chapter contains a short and simple explanation of the (theistic) claim, followed by a response showing the problems and fallacies inherent in that claim.

NOTE ferguson HAS NOT BOTHERED WITH ANY ANALYSIS OF THESE

It goes on to explain the book is intended for atheists, who think the concept of God is an important one worth examining and discussing critically.

For theists, who disagree with its contents, to allow them to understand the reasoning behind many people's atheism, and to help them debate and have more productive discussions with atheists having taken the time to understand their position.

NOTE THIS COULDN'T BE FURTHER FROM THE POINT OF FERGUSONS RANTS

MORE TO FOLLOW...

OK so chapter 1 is a rebuttal to the apologist argument that science can't explain the complexity and order of life, so god must have designed it to be this way.

The author references Paley's teleological argument, and of course his now infamous and much debunked watchmaker fallacy. Making the obvious point that in an entirely designed universe complexity would be irrelevant, as there would be no difference between a watch and a rock, or even a grain of sand. Thus complexity would be irrelevant. 0

We have an infallible benchmark that infers design, and this is designed things never occur naturally, or in nature. This is before we point out we have objective evidence that watches are designed, Paley simply picked something we already know is designed, he even compares the designed watch to it's NATURAL surroundings, without seeing his obvious error.

The author then references John Conway's the game of life, a mathematical model that objectively evidences complexity arising from a few simple cells following basic mathematical rules. Without the need for any intelligent intervention. Of course evolution is an entirely natural process that has produced immense complexity. The author then explains that if complexity inferred design, then a deity would necessarily have to have been designed itself, or else the argument has an obvious and inerrant contradiction.

Now compare this to ferguson's disjointed and irrelevant rant.

ferguson "CHAPTER 1

This chapter is too stupid for comments but I shall make an effort.
Complexity by design.
In the Creed, I am asked to confess that I believe that God is the Creator of everything. In actual fact that does not mean much to me.
If I had to prove that God created life and the universe, I cannot. I cannot go back all those millennia and see what actually happened.
Nor can atheists prove to me that complexity was created naturally. We are on the same boat.
They cannot prove that ancient tribes saw deities in lightning and volcanoe eruptions. They would have to go back all those centuries and do a poll across people of those days to ascertain why they belived that.
Our theory is just as valid: God "wrote" His signature inside every human being, so that they would not completely lose touch with the Divine.
Evolution by natural selection is one more such theory. It is only a theory. It explains how species evolved from the beginning, but there is absolutely no proof, no evidence, that things actually happened that way. It is just one more theory. Plus, the scientific community is still divided between evolutionists and creationists, so you see . . . .
As regards hurricanes, Christians believe that God is quite capable of sending a hurricane in addition to those that happen naturally."

I seriously don't think he has the reading capacity to understand let alone critique this book, Look at his comments on lightning and volcanoes, and compare it to the reference to these in chapter 1, it's pitiful.

With respect to the whole "design" assertion (which has never been anything other than an assertion on the part of mythology fanboys), there are so many holes in this, that it's actually more holes than substance. Paley himself apparently never noticed either the irony or the incongruity, of choosing to base his assertion on an artefact that exhibits numerous radical differences from the entities observed in the biosphere. First of all, virtually none of the constituents of the biosphere are constructed from refined metal alloys, or in a manner that allows significant structural parts to be removed therefrom without damaging the whole. (Organisms such as lizards that can shed their tails to avoid predation, then grow a new replacement later, of course deserve their own special attention, which is beyond the scope of this critique). Indeed, this was one of the aspects of the output of the notorious Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar (under his pseudonym Harun Yahya), that led to much mirth and merriment when his expensively produced Atlas of Creation was circulated to scientists around the globe.

For those unfamiliar with the Harun Yahya hilarity, I shall expand here. The lavishly tooled Atlas of creation was disseminated by Oktar's organisation (which has since come to the attention of Turkish law enforcement for racketeering and sex crimes, but I digress), with the sole, repeated ad nauseam aim of trying to peddle the notion that a wide range of organisms had purportedly remained unchanged over millions of years. This despite, of course, the detailed work of the requisite experts establishing through proper comparative anatomical analysis that the organisms in question were indeed different species, and in the case of many of the insects, would have been unable to reproduce through mechanical genital incompatibility. But again, I digress. However, it is obvious that the modus operandi underpinning the Atlas of Creation, consisted of drafting assorted mythology-addled madrassa inmates into the project, for the purpose of surfing the Internet for lots of pretty pictures that could then be printed side by side in facile comparative manner. Unfortunately, the total biological ignorance of these draftees led to much hilarity, such as comparing eels with sea snakes. Richard Dawkins alighted upon some pants-wetting examples of this stupidity back in 2008 or thereabouts.

But, matters are even worse than this. Some of the photos purporting to depict various spiders or caddis flies, for example, are, wait for it, photographs of fishing lures. PZ Myers milked this finding for all it was worth over at his Pharyngula blog, and the original fabricator of those fishing lures, one Graham Owen, enjoyed his Warholian 15 minutes in the spotlight when it was revealed that the photos in question were lifted straight from his website. A brief exposition of the fiasco can be read here over at PZ Myers' other home, and a more detailed look at the stolen photos can be enjoyed here. Last time I checked, no caddis fly, living or fossil, had a honking big metal hook sticking out of its arse end, and I'd have laughed at this even before I studied any actual invertebrate zoology.

But, absence of metal parts aside (with the exception of some ichneumon wasps that have zinc ovipositor tips, but that's an interesting evolutionary development that's attracted its own collection of scientific papers), there are much bigger holes in the "design" assertion, than those involving elementary comparisons of watches with seaweed, for example. One of the big conceptual holes centres upon the fact that human design activities are being used in Paley's failed apologetics as a proxy for supernatural magic "design". Except that supernatural magic "design" is asserted from the beginning, to possess features that have never been a part of human design activities, which means that this is an apples versus aeroplanes pseudo-comparison fatally compromising the entire apologetics, before said apologetics even begins moving properly. The diligent will be able to verify independently, that a central feature of supernatural magic "design", certainly as asserted by creationists, is that it involves perfect foreknowledge of the behaviour of components in isolation and when integrated, a feature that has never been a feature of human design activities, and which makes supernatural magic "design" so radically different from human design as to invalidate the comparison from the start.

Using human design activities as a proxy for supernatural magic "design" is even worse, however, because any proper analysis of human design activities, reveals that they are, in fact, far closer to the evolutionary process than the asserted "design" process of imaginary magic men. Every technology humans have devised, has been developed via the following steps:

[1] Generate some variations;

[2] Discard the failures;

[3] Build upon the successes.

Which, wait for it, is exactly how evolution operates in the biosphere!

Taking for example, aircraft design, which creationists love to use for their apologetics via the tiresome "747 from a junkyard" apologetic faeces, one only has to look at the documented early history of this sphere of activity, to realise that aircraft development was far closer to an evolutionary process than to any process involving magic and a magic man. Because the surviving film footage from the era, documents the numerous hilarious early failures that were generated and subsequently discarded, before actual working, successful first aircraft were developed and took flight. This short video clip is merely one of many available on YouTube covering that early period of experimentation and generation of numerous failures. This also exposes the duplicity inherent in that part of creationist apologetics, which points to mature technologies as purportedly supporting the "design" assertion, whilst failing to mention the early history thereof and its litany of trial and error. For that matter, even mature technologies sometimes contain examples of interesting failure, the classic one in recent times being Air France 296.

As if all of this were not enough to expose the vacuity and intellectual bankruptcy of the "design" assertion (and I have yet to encounter a supernaturalist who knows what is required to turn that assertion into something other than a blind assertion - the regulars here who so know what's required are requested to let the supernaturalists do their own homework unassisted at this juncture), watchmaking itself also exhibits a smiliar, evolution-like history of its own. When one traces the actual documented history of watches, one finds again a process of gradual development involving trial and error. The first portable clocks were still far too big to be carried in a pocket, let alone worn upon a wrist, and the first such instances of these, back in the 15th century, only had an hour hand. The accuracy of these devices was so low that they were little more than expensive toys for rich people.

It took finite time for watchmakers to learn, for example, that the force delivered by a mainspring is not a constant, and that some means of taking account of this had to be devised, and the first of these, a device known as a stackfreed, was abandoned after about 100 years because of the undesirable friction it introduced into the mechanism. The fusee, a different device, persisted for longer, but was eventually abandoned in the 19th century when a superior solution arose. The balance spring only appeared in 1657, and the first watches with a minute hand only appeared around 1680 as a result of the development of the balance spring. The verge escapement, which had been used in large pendulum driven clocks since the 13th century, was replaced by the cylinder escapement in 1695 - it took humans three hundred years or so to move on to this better idea. We had to wait until 1759 for the lever escapement, which, ironically, only made major inroads into Swiss watchmaking around 1900.

We had to wait until 1923 for the first successful self-winding system, based upon converting the wearer's arm motion into rotary motion that kept the mainspring tension constant. The Incabloc shock protection system, to protect jewel bearings from critical failure stresses if the watch was dropped, wasn't invented until 1934. The first working electrically powered watches did not appear until 1957.

Once again, the history of watches is replete with trial and error, discarding of failures, and building upon successes, and the development of the modern wrist watch bears more resemblance to an evolutionary process than to "magic design". As a corollary, using watches as a proxy for "Magic Man did it" constitutes apologetic failure at its most ludicrous to those of us who paid attention in class.

The fun part being, of course, that Paley himself would, if he had exercised diligent effort in this vein, have discovered how watchmaking had exhibited an evolutionary history of its own, and avoided using this in his ludicrous apologetics, but intellectual diligence tends to be absent from much supernaturalist apologetics full stop.

Then, of course, we have the fact that humans document their design activities, and in many instances that documentation enters the public domain, enabling the successes to be replicated by anyone who possesses certain key basic skills. Indeed, the written word and the diagram have become, in a sense, the "genetic material" facilitating replication of the successes. No such documentation exists for the biosphere - biologists and chemists have had to tease out the details through two centuries of diligent experimentation, in order to figure out the operation of various parts thereof, and one of the ironies of this process, is that scientists seeking solutions to various problems, have pressed evolution into service in the laboratory as a means of generating the solutions they seek. I have numerous scientific papers covering the application of in vitro evolution (not to mention in silico evolution in the case of computer simulations) that illustrate this point perfectly, namely, that evolutionary processes work to the point of being pressed into scientific service in laboratory experiments.

Quite simply, there is so much basic, elementary conceptual failure endemic to the "design" assertion, that resort to this failed apologetics should properly be seen as an act of desperation on the part of mythology fanboys. Dismissal thereof after recognising the requisite conceptual failures, is unavoidable for anyone who conducts discourse in an honest manner.