Book Review #4

I have been working on this book for probably about 6 months now and finally decided that if I was ever going to finish another book I wanted to read it was going to have to be by reading a chapter or so a night right before I go to bed. The book that I read for this review was Why Darwin Matters by Dr. Michael Shermer.

This book is very much a dismantling of the intelligent design community saying that what they practice is science, the fact that the subtitle is "The case against Intelligent Design" should have been a dead give away for that. While many people have written books about it (see Only a Theory here). Dr Shermer takes on ID by not just showing what they believe is a religion and how all of their main claims are wrong, but he also shows how evolution is the correct theory. The back cover reads:

In Why Darwin Matters, Michael Shermer, the bestselling author of Why People Believe Weird Things and the publisher of Skeptic magazine, decodes the facts of evolution and shows how natural selection achieves the elegant design of life. Shermer, once an evangelical Christian and a creationist, argues that Intelligent Design proponents invoke a combination of bad, science, political antipathy, and flawed theology in their new brand of creationism. He refutes their pseudoscientific arguments and then demonstrates why conservatives and people of faith can and should embrace evolution. Why Darwin Matters is an incisive examination of what is at stake in the debate over evolution.

I really did enjoy this book it was an easy read and when I set myself too it I got through it very quickly. The data he presents is well supported and he handles the situation including the victory in Dover very humbly. He also shows why those who present themselves as Christians and Conservatives should really accept evolution. The book tends to strive away from the technical and lays out the case in a way everyone should be able to understand it.

Dr. Shermer is a very strong Atheist but it did not come off in this book. In fact if you were just a casual reader you might even be inclined to think that he is a Christian, although this might come from his devout Christian up bringing. I would recommend this book to anyone who might be questioning evolution, I only limit because those devoutly religious who already outright deny evolution probably won't read this at all. Read it see why science is important, the real questions in evolutionary theory currently (and how they are being solved), and how science and religion tackle very separate questions.

Book Citation
Shermer, Michael. Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. 2006. Holt: New York

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