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Title: Defending Evolution: A Guide to the Evolution/Creation Controversy by Brian J. Alters, Sandra M. Alters, Alters, National Safety Council ISBN: 0-7637-1118-7 Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Pub Pub. Date: 30 October, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8
Rating: 2
Summary: Title should read "Naturalism rules, OK."
Comment: I was prompted to read the book because its title suggests a scientific defense of evolutionary theory. As a creationist, I am always interested to read any scientific defense of evolution by its advocates. Disappointingly, the book contains precious little scientific discussion. It contains an unqualified endorsement of the monopoly of metaphysical naturalism in education, with a detailed scheme of how to implement it effectively.
Metaphysical naturalism dictates that nature is all there is, and rules out the prior question about its own validity. It pursues exclusively naturalistic explanations of origins, regardless of the possibility of its leading down a blind alley.
The book handles the science at a very superficial level. Creationist views are contrasted against evolutionist views. The latter are implicitly assumed to be correct, and any disagreements put down to "creationist misconceptions". Apparently, only creationists generate misconceptions, never evolutionists! Many detailed scientific discussions are found in the technical creation science literature, but the book fails to address them.
Let me illustrate the book's superficiality with just a handful of examples (among many). Page 89 uses the homology argument as evidence for evolution, without mentioning the tautologous nature of the argument, or the fact that morphological and biochemical homologies yield contradictory family trees. Page 92 offers as evidence for human evolution the linear progression from A. africanus to H. sapiens via habilis and ergaster, even though this naïve linear model has been called in question by evolutionist palaeoanthropologists for years. Incredibly, the idea of embryonic recapitulation is still touted (p110)! These are precisely the kind of misinformation that is being foisted on unsuspecting students (and the public) in order to brainwash them into believing evolution. This is what creationists and other non-evolutionists oppose, and the book defends!
The authors naïvely echo the claim that finding human footprints in Cambrian strata would falsify evolution (p86). In reality, it would do nothing of the sort. Evolutionists would simply resort to one or more of the following strategies: (1) assign the strata to another age, (2) attribute the human footprints to some other kind of organism, or even some non-biological origin, (3) consign the phenomenon to that black box labelled "anomalies", which is bulging at the seams, and forget about it. In the evolutionist mindset, the occurrence of human footprints in Cambrian strata is simply an impossibility, period. The paradigm overrides the data, every time.
Various accolades by leading academics are printed on the first page. To my mind this simply demonstrates the emperor's new clothes mentality so deeply ingrained in evolution adherents.
Rating: 5
Summary: Good, Simple Teacher's Aid
Comment: Defending Evolution approaches the C/E dispute from a unique perspective, having been written as a handbook for teachers. DE explains why many students reject evolution, sometimes to the point of being openly confrontational toward its teaching, helps teachers understand their students' creationist beliefs, and provides suggestions on how to overcome students' anxieties and misconceptions. Additional resources and suggested teaching methods are listed in some chapters.
DE lists some of the most prominent creationist organizations and the substantial financial resources they have available to promote creationism. It also discusses how these organizations approach the debate with overtly militaristic and emotional appeals instead of with scientific research. Apparently they feel that singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" has more gut-level impact than analyzing gene sequences does, and so that's how professional creationists construct their arguments. DE does a good job, warning teachers that creationism is much more about emotion than about reason, and that even the most brilliant scientific arguments may not defuse the emotionalism that undergirds most creationist arguments.
DE goes into some detail about the varieties of creationism, from fundamentalist young-Earthers, to progressivist old-Earthers, to theist-deist creationists, to intelligent-design creationists, and warns that arguments that may be effective with one group may be unnecessary, unproductive, or even counter-productive with another group. (Interestingly, members of each group frequently accuse members of other groups of distorting the Bible and being "un-Christian," "accommodationists," "compromisers," etc!)
DE briefly discusses some of the most common "scientific" objections to evolution, such as the difference between "fact" and "theory", the difference between horizontal and vertical evolution (i.e., micro- and macro-evolution), missing links, punctuated equilibrium, the infamous, but still popular, creationist hoax regarding contemporaneous human and dino tracks at Paluxy River, radiometric dating, origin of life studies, and the ever popular Second Law of Thermodynamics.
These chapters are in an easy to follow, question-and-answer format, but the answers are often in the nature of broad, conceptual approaches to defusing student (or parent, or school administrator) misconceptions; there is only a general indication of what the specific scientific response might be in many of the answers.
I'm guessing that the lack of detailed specifics reflects the authors' opinion that defusing emotions should be the immediate response to confrontational creationists, and that the details can be discussed later, using materials from the course textbook. However, people expecting detailed science discussions in DE itself are probably going to be disappointed.
Other interesting tidbits include the following:
Creationists prefer to define "science" as "knowledge," and argue that if you can't see it, then it can't be scientific. But even creationists admit that dinosaurs once existed, even though they've never seen one, so they seem to apply this definition very inconsistently.
Creationists often argue that living organisms have structures that fit their environment very well, therefore they must have been designed for this purpose. But present utility is not necessarily the justification for origin. The authors used a fascinating analogy here, which I won't ruin by disclosing. Buy the book, and read it for yourselves!
And if living organisms are supposedly so well designed, then the extinction rate of animal species is hard to explain! The average duration of mammal species is just 2 million years!
Creationists often argue that the information in DNA displays evidence of intelligent design the same way that signals from SETI research would. That's simply wrong. SETI involves the search for signals communicating information from one sentient being to another sentient being. DNA is completely different from that.
The "science" curriculum taught in schools is a human construct. Teaching "science" basically means teaching what the scientific community is doing, and right now, that community is doing evolution, not creationism. Since creationists do no professional research whatsoever, publish no professional articles whatsoever, and don't seem to have any intention of ever doing so in the foreseeable future, they are not really members of the professional scientific community, and there's simply nothing to teach about creation "science." Singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" may be emotionally satisfying, but it is not a substitute for research!
Creationists often argue that creationism and evolution are equivalent, since neither can be proved. That's a red herring, since the issue in all science theories is not "proof," but "confirmation," and on that issue it is clear that evolution has been confirmed over and over and over. Creationism essentially has never even attempted to seek confirmation.
Creationists frequently argue that evolution and salvation are mutually exclusive concepts, but polls show that the number of scientists believing in a personal God held steady at about 40% from 1916 to 1996, even though the percentage of evolution scientists presumably has increased dramatically. So even the creationists' religious arguments are shaky.
Appendix A lists 25 professional science organizations that support evolution education.
Appendix B lists and briefly discusses 8 significant court decisions in C/E cases (1968 to the present).
Appendix C lists 25 ways suggested by the National Center for Science Education for laymen to help support the teaching of evolution.
Appendices D and E are detailed statements supporting teaching evolution by the National Association of Biology Teachers, the largest organization of its kind in the world, and by the National Science Teachers Association.
Finally, I can't resist pointing out that a creationist reviewer blasted this book and recommended reading "Shattering the Myths of Darwinism" instead. That happens to be one of the most pathetically stupid books ever written, so before you go out and buy it, save yourself 20 bucks and read my review first!
Rating: 5
Summary: Best non-technical guide to Darwin for biology teachers
Comment: This is probably the single best guide for helping biology teachers deal practically and realistically with the annoying anti-evolution politics that have been waged against their job.
While Moore's "From Genesis to Genetics" does a good job presenting the case for evolution to non-scientists, this book, Defending Evolution, does a far better job pointing out that anti-evolutonists are not all Bible thumping fundamentalists or even anti-scientists. This book also does a somewhat better job explaining why evolutionary theory is useful in biology, rather than just stating the case.
It is a deplorable fact that history has made the teaching of evolutionary science a "separation of Church and State" issue, almost as if evolutionary science were inherently atheistic, or anti-relgious. Some evolution writers have played right into this by linking their own anti-religious views to the defense of Darwin. One of the wonderful things about this book is that it manages to defend evolutionary theory science without attacking religion or the basis of most people's religious beliefs. This is far from an easy task, as many other authors have discovered.
Defending Evolution takes the confusions over evolution seriously rather than just discounting them as wrong, and patiently explains how biological science has resolved each of them. That makes this a very helpful teachers' guide, rather than just another polemic about how science is being abused.
Most importantly, this book does not make the mistake made by many others, equating anti-evolutionism with religion and then going off on an anti-religion argument. People have both religious and logical reasons for failing to understand concepts of evolutionary biology, and it is important not to lump then together, but to recognize the nuances.
Yes, in a sense, this book is "preaching to the choir" meaning that it will probably not itself be likely to go very far in convincing a hardcore anti-evolutionist that Darwin was right. For example, it explains that eyes and wings do not have to simply appear in their current form to be useful, addressing a common creationist misconception, but it does not illustrate the process in a visual way, and so probably would be be very convincing.
As a previous review demonstrated, people who find "macroevolution" implausible, whether on religious or non-relgious grounds, will probably not be tempted to change their mind reading the excellent explanations in this book. Big scientific ideas like natural selection that require inductive reasoning over a web of interlocking data are not going to suddenly make sense to someone opposed to them simply because they are explained patiently and logically. However, this approach probably goes a lot farther than anything previously written on the subject, because it avoids many of the polemics, unites scientists and educators against anti-science, and avoids associating anti-science with religion.
This book is a treasure for teachers facing the challenge of basic education in evolutionary theory in today's cultural climate, and one of the few relatively positive things to come out of the political controversies over teaching evolution in the U.S..
I highly recommend that everyone who teaches biology at least read this book, and perhaps use it to help identify supplementary materials that will address important areas of confusion that this book identifies.
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Title: Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science by Massimo Pigliucci ISBN: 0878936599 Publisher: Sinauer Associates, Inc. Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Triumph of Evolution: And the Failure of Creationism by Niles Eldredge ISBN: 0805071474 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: December, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Missing Links: Evolutionary Concepts and Transitions Through Time by Robert A. Martin ISBN: 0763721964 Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Pub Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives by Robert T. Pennock ISBN: 0262661241 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $47.95 |
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Title: Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism by Robert T. Pennock ISBN: 0262661659 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 28 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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