Category: Reviews

WEIT reviewed in Christian Science Monitor and Nature

March 16, 2009 • 1:39 pm

This past week two reviews of WEIT have appeared, one in the Christian Science Monitor, which includes an attached podcast (click under the cover icon), and one by Eugenie Scott in the scientific journal Nature. Both are pretty positive, I think, though, that the Nature review is quite tepid. I suspect that one reason for this is that I have angered the National Center for Science Education (Genie Scott is its executive director) by claiming that science and faith are largely incompatible. The purported compatibility of these areas is a keystone of the NCSE’s strategy for selling evolution in the public schools, and the organization has a history of being diffident towards scientists who question such religious accommodationism, either in principle or as a tactic for getting evolution into the schools. The NCSE even has a “faith project” for demonstrating that faith and religion are compatible. My own view is that an organization designed to defend the teaching evolution should do just that and only that, and should stay away from religion completely.

There is one issue Genie Scott brings up that I want to respond to. She says this in her review:

A book for the public must simplify, but there lurks the possibility of subsequent distortion. Many people misunderstand evolution as a great chain in which simple forms evolve into more complex ones, rather than the branching and extinction of lineages. Amphibians did not evolve into reptiles, and reptiles did not evolve into mammals and birds. Rather, a population of early tetrapods — four-legged vertebrates — gave rise to a diverse group of organisms that included ancestors of modern frogs and salamanders, and to a separate branch characterized by having an amniotic egg. A primitive amniote gave rise to reptiles and birds on one branch, and mammals on another. Given that the branch leading to mammals preceded that leading to reptiles, it is misleading for Coyne to use the outmoded term ‘mammal-like reptiles’ instead of ‘non-mammalian synapsids’.

Well, this is a dispute about whether the common ancestor of mammals and reptiles could be considered a reptile, which many cladists don’t since the group “reptiles” must include ALL the descendants of a common ancestor. But if the common ancestor has many diagnostic characters of a reptile, then why not call it one? If you followed Scott’s line of reasoning, you could not say that the ancestor of modern amphibians was a fish, since the category “fish” must include the ancestral fish and ALL of its descendants. But everybody calls early lobe-finned fish “fish.” This criticism, I think, is pretty trivial.

WEIT reviewed in The Bookbag

February 25, 2009 • 8:42 am

The Bookbag is a newish but (I think) fairly popular book-review site in the UK. It just reviewed WEIT and (to my delight) gave it a great review and five stars out of five. An excerpt:

The main gist is in fact remarkably similar (if very much developed in detail) to the evidence of evolution I learned at school twenty-five years ago. What makes Why Evolution Is True an instant classic is Jerry Coyne’s supremely lucid, graceful presentation and the fluency of argument informed by the variety of sources form Darwin himself to the cutting edge of modern research.

Coyne’s delivery is elegant but by no means a dry lecture: passionate and erudite, he maintains just the right balance between academic and accessible. He never talks down to his readers, but explains clearly pretty much anything that goes beyond the very basics of biology. . ..

This book should not be needed, and yet it seems necessary. It will not persuade the hard-line creationists, because creationism, as Coyne repeatedly (and rightly) states, is a matter of belief, not science. For those who are uncertain, or for whom the support of evolution theory is more a question of general ‘it makes sense’ acceptance, for those looking for arguments to enlighten the unconvinced and argue with the opposition, Jerry Coyne’s book is indispensable.

I get to brag here because it’s my blog!

Times of London reviews WEIT, and a Darwin MOVIE

February 15, 2009 • 7:30 pm

An alert reader has called my attention to a (very nice) review of my book in the Times of London on Feb. 12. It also reviews three other Darwin books (including Desmond & Morris’s book and one by the old man himself), and also calls attention to an upcoming Darwin movie that will be called “Creation”:

A fictionalised version of the great naturalist appeared in Tarsem Singh’s eccentric fantasy The Fall in 2006. Clad in a furry red coat and riding boots, Darwin found himself in the company of an African prince and Alexander The Great. But film fans will have to wait until later this year for a meaty, historically accurate exploration of his life. Adapted from Annie’s Box, an acclaimed book by Randall Keynes, Darwin’s great-great-grandson, Creation will link the death of Darwin’s daughter, Annie, to the writing of On the Origin of Species.

A very strange review of WEIT on Huffington Post

February 12, 2009 • 9:38 pm

Stuart Whatley has reviewed the book on Huffington Post, here. It is favorable, but is strange in one respect: Whatley seems to require that if the fact of evolution dismantles some peoples’ consoling religious or spiritual beliefs, then the onus is on evolutionists to provide for those people a substitute belief system. Whatley get into this point by talking about creationist arguments:

Though a majority of biologists have refuted these arguments from a scientific standpoint, what matters to rejecters of Darwinism is not that it is bad science, but that it gets away with adopting the appellation of “science” at all–they require no further confirmation to be satisfied. It is for this reason that Coyne’s book may have little effect on those who hold such concrete beliefs.

Tragically, this is even admitted in his Preface, when Coyne writes that, “for those who oppose Darwinism purely as a matter of faith, no amount of evidence will do–theirs is a belief that is not based on reason.” And while Coyne and his colleagues have been forced to address Intelligent Design’s scientific claims head on, they are also obliged to offer commensurate psychological/spiritual rewards for accepting Darwinism over creationism. (My emphasis)

This is undoubtedly their most daunting challenge. Belief in a designer has all the appeal to mystery and security and lazy axiomatic explanation that gave rise to religion in the first place. Darwinism offers the beauty of nature and the pursuit of knowledge. But in the fight for many peoples’ visceral convictions, it is abjectly outgunned. Naturalists can attempt to substitute for their inherent metaphysical bankruptcy until they turn blue, it surely will not satisfy the truly faithful.

Nevertheless, Coyne concludes with a plea to his reader to not give in to the misconception that “accepting evolution will somehow sunder our society, wreck our morality, impel us to behave like beasts, and spawn a new generation of Hitlers and Stalins.” This may be demonstrably true on a broad societal basis, but it is difficult to see how most individual believers, who just aren’t satisfied by the beauty of nature alone, will ever embrace Darwinism entirely–even if it is an indisputable fact. This is unfortunate, but it is certainly no fault of Coyne’s.

This is a common reaction, but I really don’t get it. My job in that book was convincing people that evolution is a scientific fact, not to devise a way to make Darwinism itself satisfy peoples’ “psychological and spiritual needs”. I recognize that this may undermine or dispel peoples’ psychological comfort. But am I then obliged to tell people how Darwinism itself offers commensurate rewards? I can’t, because for those not caught up in the wonder and majesty of evolution, it won’t give much consolation. I hoped to offer a taste of this wonder, but I am not foolish enough to say that The Origin will replace the Bible. Were Galileo and Copernicus obliged to show people how accepting a heliocentric solar system would give them spiritual comfort?

We find our comfort where we may. All I aimed to do was tell people what is true. Presumably people would prefer to construct their ideology and psychology around the plain facts of the world, but maybe I am wrong.

Richard Dawkins reviews WEIT

February 11, 2009 • 1:30 pm

Well, I have to admit that I’m thrilled (or “chuffed”, as the Brits say). Richard Dawkins has reviewed Why Evolution is True in the Times Literary Supplement (here), and it’s a rave (and long–ca. 3000 words). I didn’t expect Richard to do a review at all (he rarely reviews books), much less to like the book so much. It’s really nice. And, as a bonus, Richard characteristically gives a discussion of what “truth” is in science, and how it is distorted by creationists and relativists.

Richard has now posted his review on  his website, and the comments are accumulating.   Nice original drawings there of the “bee ball” I talk about on WEIT and an amusing rendition of “God’s balls,” one of the more amusing parts of Richard’s review.