When Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion in 2006, he was at the forefront of a movement some have retroactively dubbed "the new atheism," which also includes bestselling authors Christopher Hitchens ( God Is Not Great ) and Sam Harris ( Letter To A Christian Nation ). Though The God Delusion became the British scientist's most famous work, Dawkins had already written more than half a dozen books about evolution and genetics, beginning with The Selfish Gene in 1976.

In his most recent book, The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution , Dawkins makes his case for evolutionary theory. With the increasing prominence of creationists claiming intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in public schools, Dawkins realized that for years he had been writing about evolution, but always with the assumption that readers accepted it as fact. To coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On The Origin Of Species , Dawkins wrote the new book to get that point across. In a recent visit with The A.V. Club , Dawkins discussed the deception of Ben Stein, the "Sarah Palin constituency," and why he will never participate in a formal debate with a creationist.

The A.V. Club: Some creationists are using the upcoming 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's book On The Origin Of Species to get their views heard, mostly in opposition to his theories that seem to threaten their religious beliefs. As a starting point, can you maybe summarize what it is about Darwin's discovery that still causes such a rift between people?

Richard Dawkins : He showed how you can get things which look overwhelmingly as though they've been designed, because they are so complex and they work so well, they function so well at doing whatever it is that they do, like wings that fly, eyes that see, ears that hear... They work in a detailed, complicated way, and he showed that the illusion of design--that immensely powerful illusion of design--can be put together by the blind forces of physics working through this very special mechanism called "natural selection," so that in the end, they almost precisely mimic what a designer might have produced. That is a staggering overthrow of what appeared to be common sense right up until the middle of the 19th century.

AVC: Creationists will often concede that they are not against having evolution taught in public school, they just think it should be "balanced" with a teaching of intelligent design. If evolution is a fact, how does intelligent design qualify as the only counterargument?

RD: Yeah, you're right. On the one hand, there could be an infinite number of opposite views. It could be that it was all done by Zeus, or Mithras, or Wotan, but I suppose you could roll all that up into some sort of intelligent designer. The problem is, it's not really a scientific idea at all, because they do not provide any positive scientific evidence for design. All they do is point to what they see as shortcomings in the evolutionary view, and say "Therefore God did it." It's a bit like saying we have two theories: Theory A and Theory B. Theory A, which is evolution, has masses of evidence going for it. Theory B has no evidence going for it at all . You find a little lacuna, a little gap in Theory A--which we would say is just temporary--and you say "Therefore, Theory B must be right." You can immediately see, when you put it like that, how illogical that is. 

AVC: There was a lot of hostility directed at you with your last book, The God Delusion , because you were taking direct aim at beliefs people hold sacred. But with this book, you're using scientific evidence to show that something is true, you're not trying to debunk anything else.

RD:That is correct. And what's more, not only is it not debunking, but also, I'd like to think, it's kind of enthralling in its own right. It should be really exciting to see this evidence laid out. It is a very beautiful story. So you don't