A Better Treatment of Evolution

[cookmg]

Is there a book written by a highly credible author that accurately spells out the current evidence for evolution theory but avoids a theist bashing bias and explains where the problems with evolution theory are? I get the feeling that if I read Dawkins, Gould, and Johnson I'm going to have to sift through so much rhetoric that I won't get an accurate picture of current facts. Maybe that's not true. Can anybody help?

[Rduke55]

"What Evolution is" by Ernst Mayr is a pretty good book by a giant in the field. He downplays a couple of the more recent mechanisms but unless you're in the field it doesn't take much away from it.
Also, it's pretty inspirational considering he wrote this in his late friggin 90's (it was published when he was 97).

I also love that he is said to have eaten more birds of paradise than any other biologist. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[benkahuna]

I think you're mistaking the trends in this forum or elsewhere with what you should expect in a book on evolution. Typically, it's the evolutionary theorists that are comfortable in their position and theists that are uncomfortable and aggressive in refutation as they feel threatened by evolutionary theory and its apparent disagreement with religious doctrine. I don't get the sense that most evolutionary theorists feel there is a debate, so I don't think they really bother with debasing religion. There's also the fact that any scientific writingthat gets into highly biased or colorful text instantly loses credibility. Science, in its most honest, pure form is about a search for truth about the nature of reality, not about steadfast support of one position.

Most of the reading I've done on evolution didn't address the religious position for more than a few sentences in hundreds of pages. And mostly, it was a tactful "the theory you are about to read is not mutually exclusive from monotheistic notions of creationism" type of comment. Any decent scientist would not bother debasing religion. It's petty, unnecessary and kind of stupid because it might turn people off to their work, yourself for instance.

I should admit that I've mostly read about evolution from a science course perspective and not a popular writing sort of perspective.

[Rduke55]

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I should admit that I've mostly read about evolution from a science course perspective and not a popular writing sort of perspective.

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I was going to make this distinction. Sometimes colorful or highly biased text is in popular science readings.

[maurile]

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"What Evolution is" by Ernst Mayr is a pretty good book by a giant in the field.

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I was going to recommend the exact same book when I read the original post.

Another excellent choice would be The Selfish Gene. Sure, Dawkins is an unabashed theist-hater, and many of his other writings reflect that bias. But that particular book has nothing to do with philosophy or theism -- it's just pure evolutionary biology, and it is excellent.

[malorum]

"Science, in its most honest, pure form is about a search for truth about the nature of reality"

"truth about the nature of reality" Oh you mean they are trying to find the esoteric forms plato was going on about???

And I thought science was about finding effective predictive models. Silly me.

[Rduke55]

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Silly me.

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Yep. There's about 232947286 posts in this forum talking about what science is and isn't.

[luckyme]

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Dawkins is an unabashed theist-hater

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Are you sure? He is an bulldog opponent of theism , and although no doubt Falwell and Robertson make a person toss their cookies, I'm not so sure he is a theist-hater in general. I suspect he'd rather like my mom.

luckyme

[maurile]

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Dawkins is an unabashed theist-hater

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Are you sure?

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Theism-hater would have been more accurate, but there's no question that Dawkins will not suffer theistic nonsense gladly.

[MidGe]

Dawkins, "The Ancestor's Tale" is current, points out the areas that are week, but is an engrossing read.

It was recommended to me by chezlaw on this forum. The last time I had really looked in-depth at evolution was 13 or so years ago. This book really lets you catch up in a relatively quick way. I could not put the book down after I started (against my original intentions). The first 170 pages of it are available free on the net at the publisher's site.