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Comment by jostmey | Hacker News Reader

When I first picked up the book I was not ready for it---I hated it. It took about ten years for me to read the book, and by the time I finished my view of biology/evolution was forever changed.

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What did you hate about it?

I can’t speak for the OP, but my experience with giving the book to people who say they hated it, is that for some people it questions too many of their basic assumptions about the world. They can’t rationally argue against the content so they are left with irrational hate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance at work

Another explanation.

After reading and accepting the ideas the person can't say. -"God has a plan for me" or "I'm on a mission from god" To see life positively one has to interpret things like -"I'm so lucky my ID created me" into -"I'm lucky to be in this small habitual space in the galaxy where the sun shines and I don't have to fear death on a daily basis."

Reviews insist it's depressing but I don't think so. I'm not going to personally go shouting at people to "accept the truth". An atheist version of a Jehovas Witness is quite similarly obnoxious.

I remember asking a friend who was majoring in biology if he read it, and he said "of course not, it's bullshit". When I wondered why he said "the book defends that evolution happens at the gene level, instead of the individual". I said that, yeah, that was the whole point of the book, and why it was awesome.

So I guess some people don't like to question their assumptions about the world, like danieltillett said.

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