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MoBoReMo 2: The Greatest Show On Earth
The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution
by Richard Dawkins
Free Press
2009
If I were involved in designing the book jacket for this tome, I would not have put "Bestselling author of THE GOD DELUSION" at the top of the front cover. Not because Prof. Dawkins should feel ashamed of having written that book--he shouldn't--but because it's not an appropriate comparison for TGSOE. He is also the author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and other biologically inclined works. In TGSOE, he honestly intends to speak to people who don't already agree with him, which means he doesn't touch the question of God's existence. He certainly doesn't pretend to be a believer, but he says, at the beginning, in so many words, that he is not writing as one of the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse: "This is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. Is is not intended as an anti-religious book. I've done that, it's another t-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again." With that in mind, I don't agree with the publisher's sticking "THE GOD DELUSION" on the front cover, and I hope it didn't scare away any readers who are ambivalent about the validity of evolutionary theory but would otherwise be curious about Prof. Dawkins's case for it, because it's an immensely helpful book and I would highly recommend that they read it.
The extent of the anti-religious content in TGSOE is the occasional contrast/critique of creationist theories as placed in opposition to various points of evolutionary theory. These critiques do not extend to arguing against religion itself, but rightly illuminate the hilarity of the evolutionary history-deniers' logical contortions. My favorite is the circumvention of radioactive isotope dating. The decay of certain isotopes, such as potassium-40, shows that the Earth is billions of years old, and in order to claim that our planet is actually much younger than that (the idea of Earth being more than 10,000 years old is deeply problematic to many creationists for some reason), the history-deniers claim that the half-lives of those radioactive isotopes were much shorter before Noah's flood.
Let's go over this argument, before I go any further: the creationists claim that the Earth is only thousands of years old, and not all that many thousand, and in order to square this with the evidence, they say that the radioactive isotopes' half-lives used to be very different. Then Noah's flood happened--and there's no evidence for the flood, either--and after the flood, the laws of physics changed to make the isotopes suddenly decay much more slowly and thus fool the scientists who figured out radioactive clocks in later centuries. The laws of physics changed, they say. This is, needless to say, an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary evidence, and creationists have none to offer.
All that said, it's not enough to poke fun at the scientifically ignorant, as Prof. Dawkins means to educate, not criticize. One of the things I didn't know before reading this, or at least didn't know in nearly as much detail, is how much more complicated is the system of biological taxonomy compared to what I learned in 9th grade Biology. The classes of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians are descriptively helpful, but taxonomically problematic. These categories are not all defined by the same criteria of similarities; mammals are a cohesive branch of the Tree of Life, and birds are, too, but this is where it gets tricky: birds can also be classified with reptiles. The most fascinating case is that of fish, and this is where I will let Prof. Dawkins do the talking:
...which has this nerdy little science groupie bouncing in her seat and squealing, "That's so cool! I never knew that! Tell me more!" And he does.
by Richard Dawkins
Free Press
2009
If I were involved in designing the book jacket for this tome, I would not have put "Bestselling author of THE GOD DELUSION" at the top of the front cover. Not because Prof. Dawkins should feel ashamed of having written that book--he shouldn't--but because it's not an appropriate comparison for TGSOE. He is also the author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and other biologically inclined works. In TGSOE, he honestly intends to speak to people who don't already agree with him, which means he doesn't touch the question of God's existence. He certainly doesn't pretend to be a believer, but he says, at the beginning, in so many words, that he is not writing as one of the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse: "This is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. Is is not intended as an anti-religious book. I've done that, it's another t-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again." With that in mind, I don't agree with the publisher's sticking "THE GOD DELUSION" on the front cover, and I hope it didn't scare away any readers who are ambivalent about the validity of evolutionary theory but would otherwise be curious about Prof. Dawkins's case for it, because it's an immensely helpful book and I would highly recommend that they read it.
The extent of the anti-religious content in TGSOE is the occasional contrast/critique of creationist theories as placed in opposition to various points of evolutionary theory. These critiques do not extend to arguing against religion itself, but rightly illuminate the hilarity of the evolutionary history-deniers' logical contortions. My favorite is the circumvention of radioactive isotope dating. The decay of certain isotopes, such as potassium-40, shows that the Earth is billions of years old, and in order to claim that our planet is actually much younger than that (the idea of Earth being more than 10,000 years old is deeply problematic to many creationists for some reason), the history-deniers claim that the half-lives of those radioactive isotopes were much shorter before Noah's flood.
Let's go over this argument, before I go any further: the creationists claim that the Earth is only thousands of years old, and not all that many thousand, and in order to square this with the evidence, they say that the radioactive isotopes' half-lives used to be very different. Then Noah's flood happened--and there's no evidence for the flood, either--and after the flood, the laws of physics changed to make the isotopes suddenly decay much more slowly and thus fool the scientists who figured out radioactive clocks in later centuries. The laws of physics changed, they say. This is, needless to say, an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary evidence, and creationists have none to offer.
All that said, it's not enough to poke fun at the scientifically ignorant, as Prof. Dawkins means to educate, not criticize. One of the things I didn't know before reading this, or at least didn't know in nearly as much detail, is how much more complicated is the system of biological taxonomy compared to what I learned in 9th grade Biology. The classes of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians are descriptively helpful, but taxonomically problematic. These categories are not all defined by the same criteria of similarities; mammals are a cohesive branch of the Tree of Life, and birds are, too, but this is where it gets tricky: birds can also be classified with reptiles. The most fascinating case is that of fish, and this is where I will let Prof. Dawkins do the talking:
When we say that 'fish' emerged on to the land, we have to remember that 'fish,' like 'reptiles,' do not constitute a natural group. Fish are defined by exclusion. Fish are all the vertebrates except those that moved on to the land. Because all the early evolution of vertebrates took place in water, it is not surprising that most of the surviving branches of the vertebrate tree are still in the sea. And we still call them 'fish' even when they are only distantly related to other 'fish.' Trout and tuna are closer cousins to humans than they are to sharks, but we call them all 'fish. And lungfish and coelacanths are closer cousins to humans than they are to trout and tuna (and of course sharks) but, again, we call them 'fish.' Even sharks are closer cousins to humans than they are to lampreys and hagfish (the only modern survivors of the once thriving and diverse group of jawless fishes) but again, we call them all fish. Vertebrates whose ancestors never ventured onto land all look like 'fish,' they all swim like fish (unlike dolphins, which swim with an up-and-down bending of the spine instead of side to side like a fish), and they all, I suspect, taste like fish.
To an evolutionist, as we just saw in the example of reptiles and birds, a 'natural' group of animals is a group all of whose members are closer cousins to each other than they are to all non-members of the group. 'Birds,' as we saw, are a natural group, since they share a most recent common ancestor that is not shared by any non-bird. By the same definition, 'fish' and 'reptiles' are not natural groups. The most recent common ancestor of all 'fish' is shared by many non-fish too. If we push our distant cousins the sharks to one side, we mammals belong to a natural group that includes all modern bony fish (bony as opposed to cartilaginous sharks). If we push to one side the bony 'ray-finned fishes' (salmon, trout, tuna, angel fish: just about all the fish you are likely to see that are not sharks), the natural group to which we belong includes all land vertebrates plus the so-called lobe-finned fishes. It is from the ranks of the lobe-finned fishes that we sprang, and we must now pay special attention to the lobefins.
...which has this nerdy little science groupie bouncing in her seat and squealing, "That's so cool! I never knew that! Tell me more!" And he does.