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Review of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Phil
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Phil posted a review at 2009-09-30 03:11:32.
(Language: English)
  
Put aside the fact that Richard Dawkins' biggest fan is Richard Dawkins and this is a very good, accessible and well-written book. That 40% of Americans reject evolution is tragic and a blot on that country's education system. The figure in Britain, while lower (28% from memory, the book isn't to hand) is scarcely anything to be complacent about. So, yes, it really is necessary and indeed useful to collect together the mass of evidence to support the statement that evolution by natural selection is a fact, in the way that the heliocentric model of the solar system is a fact, and not an idea or an opinion in the way that, say, 'the NHS is a good thing' is.What I take away is that evolution by natural selection is: - proved by many independent lines of evidence. - demonstrably true even if you completely ignore fossils. i.e. it doesn't need fossils to prove its veracity. And yet there is a significant number of people, otherwise intelligent people, who reject it. Why is easy: because they believe that their religious text trumps everything. How? That's what gets me. What is the mental process that says “you have proved x to be true beyond reasonable doubt and yet I choose not to believe it.' The same is true (as has been pointed out many times over) of Holocaust deniers, HIV causes AIDS deniers, climate change deniers and so on. There is a mental process at work here that allows the obviously crass untruth to conquer reality. Dawkins' section on plate tectonics – sorry, the theory of Plate Tectonics – caught my eye. Do creationists doubt this? Actually, strangely, they seem not to. All they ever go on about is fossils, always looking for the 'missing link.' Provide real, tangible evidence of such a link and, from their twisted point of view, there are now two missing links either side of what you just showed them. Dawkins sets out his stall in detail and is utterly compelling. But then, I never doubted the truth of what he was saying in the first place. I do, however, wish he would not deliberately up the ante. Yes, creationists are an irritation. Yes, they are dumb. Yes, they need to be told every day that they are wrong and stupid and need to grow up and generally fuck off 'cos they're just plain wrong at every opportunity. But you don't win friends by calling them history deniers. That might be your next book professor. How people maintain false belief in the face of overwhelming evidence. But please do it in a way that doesn't alienate them along the way. As an aside, I noted one particular sentence towards the end of the book that caught my eye for different reasons. See http://philarcher.org/diary/dawkins-timbl/ 
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