The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
Richard Dawkins transformed our view of God in his blockbuster, The God Delusion, which sold more than 2 million copies in English alone. He revolutionized the way we see natural selection in the seminal bestseller The Selfish Gene. Now, he launches a fierce counterattack against proponents of...
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Richard Dawkins transformed our view of God in his blockbuster, The God Delusion, which sold more than 2 million copies in English alone. He revolutionized the way we see natural selection in the seminal bestseller The Selfish Gene. Now, he launches a fierce counterattack against proponents of "Intelligent Design" in his latest New York Times bestseller, The Greatest Show on Earth. "Intelligent Design" is being taught in our schools; educators are being asked to "teach the controversy" behind evolutionary theory. There is no controversy. Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence—from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics—to make the airtight case that "we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random selection." His unjaded passion for the natural world turns what might have been a negative argument, exposing the absurdities of the creationist position, into a positive offering to the reader: nothing less than a master’s vision of life, in all its splendor.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9781416594796 (1416594795)
ASIN: 1416594795
Publish date: August 24th 2010
Publisher: Free Press
Pages no: 472
Edition language: English
I read it in January 2014. Some chapters are interesting, others are boring or even childish. I never expected anyone to compare creationists to holocaust deniers, but apparently Godwin's law started to span books too, this time in the introduction! Dawkins overuses analogies to explain things, whic...
This book was also on my to-read list for a long while before I got around to reading it because I feared that the subject matter would go right over my head, it didn't. It wasn't a particularly quick read but that had more to do with my taking my time over certain sections. It was a very readable,...
Most of what Dawkins explains in this book was not yet known when I went to school.My jaw was dropping several times during this most pleasurable trip through the physical evidence of evolution. In 4 billion years we went from a single cell to a fully developed human, and now each of us has repreate...
Een wijd pallet aan argumenten, inzichten en voorbeelden om de religieuze medemens die niet gelooft in de evolutie mee om de oren te slaan.Nee ! Wetenschap is niet ook een geloof! De zon is groter dan de maan, maar dat kan ik niet zomaar bewijzen. Toch weet iedereen dat het zo is!. Mooi voorbeeld is...
Hearing that there are people who still don't believe in evolution makes me want to cry a little. And that these people are reproducing and passing on their ignorance is terrifying.