It definitely had an effect on me.<p>To elaborate... prior to reading TSG, I thought of myself as an atheist, but I held open a (very) small amount of willingness to consider the idea of some sort of creator, mainly because I&#x27;d not heard a convincing counter to the &quot;irreducible complexity&quot; idea.  After reading TSG, I felt convinced that there is a reasonable way for, say, the eye, optic nerve, etc., to evolve, that doesn&#x27;t require the entire thing to appear at once.<p>Once I crossed that hurdle, I felt a lot more confident in publicly declaring myself an &quot;atheist&quot; instead of just saying &quot;agnostic&quot; which always felt like something of a weasel term.<p>Of course, having grown up in the &quot;Bible Belt&quot; and having many family members who are devout Christians, this led to some interesting, erm, &quot;discussions&quot; over the years.<p>I also appreciated TSG for introducing me to things like the Iterated Prisoner&#x27;s Dilemma and the works of Robert Axelrod, Robert Trivers, etc. and ideas like &quot;kin altruism&quot;, &quot;reciprocal altruism&quot;, etc.  A lot of things make more sense after reading that book.