The Evolution of God positive review in "The Atlantic", saying that the book "...gave me hope that we can avoid both the barrenness of a world without God and the horrible fusion of fundamentalism and weapons of mass destruction." "Newsweek" religion editor, Lisa Miller, described "The Evolution of God" as a reframing of the faith vs. reason debate. Drawing a contrast to such authors as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, Miller gives an overall positive review of the book's approach to the examination of the concept of God. In a review for "The New York Times", Yale professor of psychology Paul Bloom
Gene-centered view of evolution views selection as working on many levels, and has called attention to a hierarchical perspective of selection. Gould also called the claims of "Selfish Gene" "strict adaptationism", "ultra-Darwinism", and "Darwinian fundamentalism", describing them as excessively "reductionist". He saw the theory as leading to a simplistic "algorithmic" theory of evolution, or even to the re-introduction of a teleological principle. Mayr went so far as to say "Dawkins' basic theory of the gene being the object of evolution is totally non-Darwinian." Gould also addressed the issue of selfish genes in his essay "Caring groups and selfish genes". Gould acknowledged that Dawkins was