As much as I love that post, I’m not sure if it would be helpful to someone who has little to no idea how evolution works, since some of the terminology it uses (e.g. the title) can be misleading to the inexperienced. But if you really, really want to show this piece, I would recommend supplementing it with a more traditional exposition to evolution (preferably one that discusses the overwhelming evidence) and possibly the post on optimization.
I agree. “An Alien God” is more of a piece for ironing out kinks in a person’s understanding of evolution than an introduction to the idea itself. The beginning is also way too anti-theistic to expect good results from handing it over to a creationist.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kr/an_alien_god/
I definitely like An Alien God, but the article would be attacking her entire meme-plex at once and it would just fail.
As much as I love that post, I’m not sure if it would be helpful to someone who has little to no idea how evolution works, since some of the terminology it uses (e.g. the title) can be misleading to the inexperienced. But if you really, really want to show this piece, I would recommend supplementing it with a more traditional exposition to evolution (preferably one that discusses the overwhelming evidence) and possibly the post on optimization.
I agree. “An Alien God” is more of a piece for ironing out kinks in a person’s understanding of evolution than an introduction to the idea itself. The beginning is also way too anti-theistic to expect good results from handing it over to a creationist.