|
Esinn -> Richard Dawkins (8/27/2009 8:21:30 PM)
|
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416594787?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwfriendlyat-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1416594787
This is going to be a great book. The chart topping sales will demonstrate even the faithful see obvious flaws in their faith.
The Evidence of Evolution by Richard Dawkins. I ordered mine go get yours.
Watch out religion. The facts of evolution pushing your "God Delusion" back into the ancient shadows coming soon. It is not out until 9/22 but already selected to be a best seller. I am always amazed when books by Hitchens, Harris, Dawking, Dennet, D Miller which do absolutely nothing but talk about how delusional religion is climb to the top and stay at #1 for weeks at a time. Always topping the new releases of King or whomever. I think it clearly demonstrates how much even faithful people doubt or question their faith. Of course they would not admit in the company of their church goers they fell slightly irrational. But in the privacy of your own home who will know - just god.
-Yes, yes I know they are just buying it for a good laugh. To know the absurdities of his arguments or to simply know the enemy. I do not think that is the case. Go to the public library, download it, borrow it from your hell bound non-theist friend, the local college campus, wait a few weeks buy it 10 - 50% off on Ebay. Go to 1/2 Priced Books(I bet one is in your town) and buy it used for 1/2 the price or go to any used book store - these do not impact the numbers(BTW). There are multiple options free or 1/2 or half price options. He literally earns a million or few from his more recent book sales. He calls faith absurd, childish, silly and delusion - why support him if this is your position. I just can not imagine god being pleased you are supporting him regardless of your motive I am sure this makes her angry when there are other options.
SignatureReviewed by Jonah LehrerRichard Dawkins begins The Greatest Show on Earth with a short history of his writing career. He explains that all of his previous books have naïvely assumed the fact of evolution, which meant that he never got around to laying out the evidence that it [evolution] is true. This shouldn't be too surprising: science is an edifice of tested assumptions, and just as physicists must assume the truth of gravity before moving on to quantum mechanics, so do biologists depend on the reality of evolution. It's the theory that makes every other theory possible.Yet Dawkins also came to realize that a disturbingly large percentage of the American and British public didn't share his enthusiasm for evolution. In fact, they actively abhorred the idea, since it seemed to contradict the Bible and diminish the role of God. So Dawkins decided to write a book for these history-deniers, in which he would dispassionately demonstrate the truth of evolution beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt.After only a few pages of The Greatest Show on Earth, however, it becomes clear that Dawkins doesn't do dispassionate, and that he's not particularly interested in convincing believers to believe in evolution. He repeatedly compares creationists and Holocaust deniers, which is a peculiar way of reaching out to the other side. Elsewhere, Dawkins calls those who don't subscribe to evolution ignorant, fatuously ignorant and ridiculous. All of which raises the point: who, exactly, is supposed to read this book? Is Dawkins preaching to the choir or trying to convert the uninformed? While The Greatest Show on Earth might fail as a work of persuasive rhetoric—Dawkins is too angry and acerbic to convince his opponents—it succeeds as an encyclopedic summary of evolutionary biology. If Charles Darwin walked into a 21st-century bookstore and wanted to know how his theory had fared, this is the book he should pick up.Dawkins remains a superb translator of complex scientific concepts. It doesn't matter if he's spinning metaphors for the fossil record (like a spy camera in a murder trial) or deftly explaining the method by which scientists measure the genetic difference between distinct species: he has a way of making the drollest details feel like a revelation. Even if one already believes in the survival of the fittest, there is something thrilling about learning that the hoof of a horse is homologous to the fingernail of the human middle finger, or that some dinosaurs had a second brain of ganglion cells in their pelvis, which helped compensate for the tiny brain in their head. As Darwin famously noted, There is grandeur in this view of life. What Dawkins demonstrates is that this view of life isn't just grand: it's also undeniably true. Color illus. (Sept. 29)Jonah Lehrer is the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist.
|
|
|
|
