The "Best Book Ever Produced" on Evolution.
That's what Michael Shermer says of Donald Prothero's book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, in his latest eskeptic. He wrote...
The claims of the Intelligent Design creationists are brilliantly encapsulated and devastatingly dismantled by the geologist and paleontologist Donald Prothero in the best book ever produced on the subject. In particular, Prothero’s visual presentation of the fossil and genetic evidence for evolution is so unmistakably powerful that I venture to say that no one could read this book and still deny the reality of evolution. It happened. Deal with it.
4 comments:
I have just started reading this book. I have to agree that it is excellent. It is very well written & makes a very compelling case for rejecting the case for creationism as promoted by the fallacious & disingenuous "Intelligent Design" movement.
-evan
I'm not entirely sure Shermer is rightly presenting intelligent design. Many ID'ers teach (and I am not an IDer btw, I just think we should be accurate) and concede evolution happened, roughly in the time-scale and evolutionary chronology along that most scientists present- and so accept science's presentation of the fossil record. (all biologists affiliated with the Discovery Institute I believe accept man came from apes). They instead argue that this couldn't have been produced from purely natural processes. The term 'front-loaded' evolution is gaining prominence I have noticed.
Its a narrowing of the argument, most concede evolution happened, in largely the accepted chronology and sequence, with hybrids and vestigial organs. Its creationism/ID lite. Less area to attack them on. That is not to just dismiss all of them though. Some can be quite well thought out. Mike Gene's 'the design matrix' in particular, and it has some good reviews by non-ID, evolutionist academics.
He quite openly admits that this front-loading mechanism could in all probability have a naturalistic cause which we don't yet understand.
I own this book, and have read about 60% of it, and intend to finish it later. It is very good, well written, and I have learned a lot from it, but I doubt that it is the "best book ever" on the subject.
Hi ehaffa. Remember me?
Hello Sindri.
Nice to read you here. I hope all is well with you up there in Iceland (despite all the banking grief).
-evan
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