The watchmaker arguement is terrible. It's the biggest arguement from ignorance there is and, as such, is a fallacious arguement. I would start by explaining to him about older myth, such as Zeus and his smith (I can't remember his name) who crafted thunder bolts by hammering them together on his anvil, which created thunder. Then Zeus would throw these lightning bolts to the ground.

The same thing is applied here. There is no arguement that there is a creator and believing such trite is ignorant. It's also not the logical stance one should take either, as the logical stance would be "I don't know."

This is where creationists (both new and old earth) go wrong. They assume that the LOGICAL answer is god, when the logical answer is devoid of any such stance.

Response is simple. Strobel is an idiot. He has no idea about Hox genes or molecular protein dynamics or anything like that. I took the time to shorn arguments from design apart here:

• “Appears Designed Is A Contradiction in Terms”: The Fundamentals of Biological Evolution
• Proteomics and It's Applications For Evolutionary Mechanisms- Indisputable Proof of Evolution and Common Descent
• Reading the Common Descent- Endogenous Retrovirals and Mitochondrial DNA, A Very Short Page
• Entropy and Life- The Functions of Thermodynamics and their implications for biological systems
• Blood Clotting and Evolution- A Critique of one of Behe's Four Arguments of Irreducible Complexity

Also, the one answer you are looking for is:

We shall start with the most basic principles by which we need to understand evolution. Firstly, life as a system is immensely complex, intricate and beautiful, and none are in a better position to testify this than those who study it (as I). It is tempting to attribute this complex intricacy to design, to a loving creator who assembles and fashions the parts like a watchmaker a la Paley. It is thusly tempting to compare the intricacy of life to the intricacy of systems that we humans assemble, such as watches, or perhaps (in today’s world) complex electronics.

However, not only are these anologies false, but the argument which underlies them phenomenally bad. That we know that such devices as I have listed are designed is for an obvious reason, namely- we designed them, does not allow us to conclude that biological systems must undergo the same criterion, because biological systems by definition have a very special set of attributes which allows them to generate complex intricacies from simple origins. In other words, when examining an object, our question should not depend on the criterion of the complexity of the object in question, perhaps measured by the primitive notion of how many “parts” it has or how they fit together, but rather, can it come about through natural process? With our devices, the answer is no. But for biological engines, the answer is yes. This is where the insurmountable problems solved by the 19^th century Victorian naturalists aboard the Beagle in a single stroke, comes into play.

The simple refutation of Strobel's attempt at Irreducible Compexlity, which Strobel ripped absolutely and entirely (he might as well have just copied and pasted) from Darwin's Black Box by Behe, is:

Before delving into to inheritable trait and chemical encoding, we must understand this principle of the struggle for resources. Essentially, organisms struggle to survive. They fight. It is intrinsic to the nature of organisms that, being that they are the vehicle for a code whose sole purpose is self-proliferation, that they survive, which requires they gain the resources they need for survival and reproduction- food, water, shelter etc. Organisms are in competition with other organisms for resources and the variability inherent in the passing of inheritable DNA from parent to progeny means that some organisms may be better at the exploiting the environment for the gaining of resources than others, hence allowing more reproduction and the proliferation of this trait. Without this there can be no evolution. The precise molecular mechanisms by which this variability may generate the structures of complex life which allow the organisms to better exploit the environment are the subject of another essay, and unfortunately, that explanation does require some tertiary education in molecular biology to understand.(I suggest you note this down. Strobel simply does not have the qualifications to do this. He cannot comment on that which he has no idea. Ask the guy who brought his book in if the phrases "Hox genes" "The Position Vateriagation effect", "Heterochromatin shift" "Nucleosome histone tail modification" occur anywhere in Strobel's tripe about molecular mechanism)

It is not merely that a functional trait becomes more pronounced in its concentration in the pool of organisms due to the survival benefit it offers, and hence the increased reproduction, (which in turn leads to a greater increase in concentration of the trait with every generation. So, between F-1, F-2, F-4 etc, there is a calculable rate at which the trait will proliferate in the population. However, ecology is not my field, so I cannot discourse on that). But the other factor which we must look at is that the new phenotype becomes much more pronounced as a trait with the move from F-1 to F-2 and so on, until the accumulation develops into a fully fledged and distinct physiological and morphological change in the organism via speciative mechanisms we will be examining later. A wing does not spring forth overnight. Its development is gradual, perhaps the exaptation recombination from pre-existing functions (Again, zoology, not being my field, I cannot comment on this. However, I will comment on the evolution of the wing as a genetic process in the next essay). There are also physiological and natural checks on the refinement of a single morphological trait, the physiological being simply that after enough refinement, increase in size etc, the continuation of growth is no longer advantageous, and the natural being, as we shall soon see, that should the refinement of trait provide the organism sample in question with such a massive advantage that it begins to overpopulate, then crashes and burns. We shall explore this later.

Now, the recombination of genetic material can extend far above the level of single proteins or domains. Indeed, enormous chunks of genetic material may be recombined. Hence, when examining homologies, we can examine relationships that go up to the quaternary level, caused by large order duplications or recombination. Indeed, we are often tempted to think of evolutionary increment as “adding parts” or something of that like. This is a very primitive design-style worldview of looking at evolution. Indeed, the process can add parts and delete parts via these mechanisms, but this is a rare occurrence (begging the question of what a single “part” is anyway). Many complex biomolecular structures can generated by the recombination of pre-existing structures into a new role, which is a rapid-order mutation, instead of incrementation to generate the whole structure in question, incrementing generates some of the underlying mechanisms of the structure in question, and then these underlying protein structures may recombine to rapidly form the product structure. If only two or three pre-existing major components are required to generate the new and supposedly “irreducible” function, then it can be generated by what is called exaptation which is, as described, a process by which major structures (which may have no relevance per se to the function which they recombine to form) recombine and create something, which, when broken down into its fundamental constituents, appears irreducible. However, this misses the big picture of how evolution works and how functions often coalesce to form new ones by recombination, since this is generated in one or two steps, selective pressure all the way is still achieved. Now, this is true of many structures and functions, such as blood clotting (the whole chain is homologous and formed by serine duplication) or the flagellar motor (all homologous proteins, but comprised of the recombination not of individual proteins, but rather pre-existing structures, such as, in this case, the Type III secretor system of bacterial toxin pumping).

So, I 'resolved' the dialogue with the person who 'lent' me the book.  Well, he didn't lend me the book after all, he's verified a creationist as he has a bunch of those books, ready to give out, as he let me know.  The book is mine to keep!  I commented that it must be easier to proselytise when you have books ready for the purpose.  He didn't take that to well, but I didn't feel it was necessary to continue in a conversation with him further than that.  He sits further from me in class now.  I wasn't able to give him the refutations on Strobel and Behe that I had hoped, so the dialogue is only resolved in the respect that it isn't continuing and I found out additional information about him.  It's too bad, really, that the irony of the whole situation may forever be lost on him.  I believe that I can laugh enough for the both of us though.  Perhaps shedding a tear as well would be going too far.  Oh well.  I'm glad I know that he is a creationist and didn't just naively (though this might have been correctable) think that creationists deserve equal footing with science.

... I can't decide whether my laughter should rather be tears.  The creationist position is so pathetic.

Interesting stuff Textom.
In regards to the original topic, I've also read most of Case for a Creator. While the arguments are garbage (and the way they were presented used to make me quite angry sometimes...) I think they give an interesting insight into the way that the Christian is thinking.

There are 6 main arguments in the book.
I'm mostly familiar with the 1st and 6th.
I found the first argument quite interesting.
It was William Lane Craig on the Cosmological Argument.
False but I didn't feel like I'd lost brain cells reading it.
Off the top of my head, there were 3 fallacies that stood out:

One was his argument from mathematics that claimed that an 'actual infinite' was impossible, but the guy clearly didn't really understand the mathematics involved or even infinite.
The second was his premise "Everything that begins to exist must have a cause" wasn't really justified. He didn't really go into criticisms of it and just claimed that it must be so.
The third was when he tried to point at that while it was impossible that time was infinite, it was different for God to be infinite. Again, he didn't really explain the difference or what it was significant to the argument at hand.

The 6th argument, Moreland's take on Philosophy of Mind... oh my word! Strawmanning and a butchering misunderstanding of contemporary arguments. E.g. he takes Nagel's arguments against reductive physicalism and tries to use it against physicalism in general.
Todangst often asks the question between William Lane Craig and JP Moreland, who is the biggest hack?
While Lane Craig should clearly know better having held his position for 30 years, I don't think he butchers topics with nearly the same efficacy and precision that Moreland does!

How much of a Batman comic book do you have to read before you realize it is a comic book?

Dressing up fecal matter with chocolate frosting doesnt give it merit. Apologists have been incresingly creative as to how they try to sell hocus pocus.

Your classmate cannot demonstrate HOW their sky daddy knocked up a 9-14 year old girl without a penis, much less a physicall body. And somehow their super hero sacraficed himself to himself so people would worship him. All while ignoring that human flesh cannot suffer complete brain death, lack of bloodflow and oxygen and complete cellular death and rigor mortis, only to jump up and dance the jig three days later. Zombie gods sound like fiction to me.

All your friend has in the end is, "God did it". Complex arguments do not constitute truth or scientific fact. It just means the idiot who wrote the book is despreately deluded enough to dress up his fecal matter with fairy tales.

Is the book complex? Yep, but so is Kaballah and Scientology and just as much a pile of crap.

I cant tell you how to deal with your classmate. But rest assured reading it might benifit you because you might collect more awareness of more crappy arguments you werent aware of before.

I can say that whenever I think I have heard it all, some idiot manages to buy new invisable cloths for their fictional king. It is good to be aware of redressing the scarecrow.