(Part 2) Best creationism books according to redditors
We found 816 Reddit comments discussing the best creationism books. We ranked the 98 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Unclean by Richard Beck
The Language of God by Dr. Francis Collins
The Lost World of Genesis One by John H. Walton
Birth and Death: Bioethical Decision Making by Paul D. Simmons
The Authenticity of Faith by Richard Beck
Beyond The Firmament by Gordon J. Glover
All of these were required reads for me as I pursued a biology degree at a Christian university. I hope these help, and I wish you the best! If you have any questions about any of the books, please feel free to ask!!
Who's the author you're looking for?
EDIT: I can't give it to you free, but is this your author?
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Darwin-Matters-Against-Intelligent/dp/0805083065
Other books people might be interested in that deal with this reconciliation:
Finding Darwin's God, by Brown University cell biologist Kenneth Miller (for a scientific perspective)
Darwin's Pious Idea by Conor Cunningham (For a theological perspective)
FREE
(On The Origin Of Species)
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1228
KINDLE
(Why Evolution Is True (Jeffrey Coyne)
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-Is-True-ebook/dp/B001QEQRJW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368402079&sr=1-1&keywords=why+evolution+is+true
(Evolution: What the Fossils say)
http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-What-Fossils-Matters-ebook/dp/B007H9RGOK/ref=pd_sim_kstore_8
(Your Inner Fish)
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Fish-3-5-Billion-Year-ebook/dp/B0010SKTRA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368402391&sr=1-1&keywords=your+inner+fish
and there's a really good power point you can download here:
https://ssl.cbsd.org/sites/teachers/hs/jucollins/Pages/Evolution-Page.aspx
Who Designed the Designer, by Michael Augros, is a new, fairly short, clear, and un-intimidating exploration of the traditional Aristotelio-Thomistic arguments for God's existence. I find it more engaging and readable than Feser's Aquinas, which, though labeled "a beginner's guide," is still written as a textbook for students and so is a bit more dry and difficult.
Mr. Stallman has a reputation for brilliance elsewhere, but that doesn't necessarily carry over to this subject, as you no doubt know. If you think he would give the time to really try to consider and understand it, Feser's book is excellent and very exact and thorough. But if Mr. Stallman has the usual lack of knowledge of metaphysics and bias against it, then Augros' book might be a better place to start. It's certainly what I would recommend to a "normal" atheist. You can always graduate him to Feser afterwards, if he is interested.
I didn't do so well, but really enjoyed that. Thanks for posting.
I took a hit on Darwinism. I don't think simple Darwinism explains natural selection. But I don't think natural selection didn't happen either. Even Darwin had his doubts, as referenced by Stephen Meyer.
This is an excellent book that deals with the subject. Highly recommended.
LOL, no.
Micro Evolution is a fact, not Macro Evolution. Atheist love hiding Macro under Micro hoping layman dont looks deep into to find out con.
Stephen Meyers does a beautiful job debunking Darwinian Evolution.
The Cambrian Explosion completely debunks the mechanism of the Darwinian Evolution. Tell me how 20 different Phyla with completely different body plans, appear all of the sudden in the Fossil record during the geologically instant Cambrian Explosion with no transitional fossil from the Ediacaran (Late Pre-Cambrian) era.
With new bodyplans you need new novel functional proteins, and to get new novel functional proteins the odds of a Genetic Mutation(s) producing a new DNA sequence to produce a new novel functional protein is 1 in 10^77. For reference theirs only been 10^40 organisms that have ever lived on earth.
Darwinian Evolution is based on random mutations + natural selection over a very long period of time, not this explosion of new information.
Not only that Dr. James Tour one of the top 10 synthetic organic chemist in the world and only one of only a handful who can build nanorobots from scratch completely laughs at the idea of Abiogensis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sP1E1Jd_Y
I can recommend a few. Mark Smith's The Early History of God is a good resource for early Canaanite mythology. For ancient Hebrew cosmology, Gordon Glover's Beyond the Firmament is a good introduction. Glover is a Christian, but he doesn't shy away from the real meaning of the text. Paul Seely (also a Christian) has some really good articles on ancient cosmology. Some of them are online here.
Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism by Robert Pennock
I checked this book out from the local library a month or so back and would highly recommend it.
Pennock goes over multiple topics, including atheism, divisions within creationism, counters to creationism arguments, and how to deal with creationist fears of science undermining their faith. He was also an expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case that proved intelligent design was nothing more than creationism in fancy rhetoric, and not allowed in science classrooms of public schools.
The responses you've gotten here are not all terrible, but their tangental to what you're looking for at best. Luckily, there is a book, written by experts who were former creationists and specifically addressing this subject. It's called God's Word or Human Reason?: An Inside Perspective on Creationism. And here's a review of it by a palaeontologist.
I can't recall who, but someone did write a book on this type of idea. Reviews were meh, but several harsh reviews pointed out anecdotal / causation pseudo science.
Source: not a physicist.
Edit: www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Constructal-Technology-Organization/dp/0385534612
I agree that "Your Inner Fish" was an amazingly well done introduction to evolution. The series was based on Neil Shubin's book of the same name, though I haven't read it myself to recommend it personally.
The above user doesn't really know what he's talking about. If you want a nice introduction to the classical cosmological argument, I don't think you can do any better than Michael Augros' book. It's very easy to understand and the tone isn't at all polemical.
Here, read this:
http://www.amazon.com/Only-Theory-Evolution-Battle-Americas/dp/067001883X
The author is a devout Roman Catholic and evolutionary biologist who addresses claims made by various creationist and intelligent design advocates, including the claim that adapatation =/= evolution. It's a well written book, and includes a section on why evolution does not deny us our humanity or our unique place in the universe.
I think you'd appreciate it. You're wrong about splitting hairs over adaptation and evolution, as adaptations are simply the driving force behind evolution, but this book would help with that!
Regarding the 'finches': yes, they had adapted to have different beak shapes on different islands. Island populations are a classic case of evolution in action. These birds are, in fact, classified as different species, and their genetic similarity arose from a common ancestor.
What is your proposed alternative to evolution? If it's a supernatural power of some sort, why would that supernatural power go to so much trouble to make everything look like it occurred by evolution?
LeAgente answered things better than I could. Also I was thinking of checking out these books that relate to your first question:
Why Darwin matters: the case against intelligent design
why evolution is true
I haven't read them, but took note to maybe read them (probably through this subreddit I heard of one). It seems like they're geared towards people who were raised without much education on evolution or from YEC backgrounds. Reviews said they laid things out well. You may be interested.
Also...if anyone has read these...what'd you think? Any other recommendations?
I know this is a long shot for anybody looking at this picture but I just started reading this books regarding patterns and design in nature. figured someone else might be as interested as I was on the subject.
enjoy!
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Constructal-Technology-Organization/dp/0385534612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330725112&sr=1-3
I guess that is rather the point of Behe's latest book (I'm just indicating it, I've not read it yet):
https://www.amazon.com.br/Edge-Evolution-Search-Limits-Darwinism/dp/0743296222
You do realize, I hope, that 'the full timeline' would mean fossil relics of every single thing...and that's not possible.
I think because people see a lot of fossils that were dug up in rich deposits, they think that everything fossilizes. In reality, fossil evidence of plants and animals is only very rarely formed. If you take a dead pet into the woods and bury it, it does not become a fossil. Birds that fall to ground from the trees in your yard do not become fossils.
If you lived near a dry ash volcano, every tens of thousands of years or so you might see a mass-fossilizing event. Or, on a coast, a once in a million year storm surge and freak tsunami might preserve the footprints of some land animals who wandered out onto a temporarily dry sandy flat beyond the beach. These are exceedingly rare things.
It's remarkable how complete the record is. As I always do, I highly recommend reading Neil Shubin's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Fish-discovery-375-million-year-old-ebook/dp/B0010SKTRA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421523406&sr=1-1&keywords=inner+fish
It will help explain fossilization, the record, how complete the record actually is, where humans fit in. Most importantly to this conversation, it details the process of finding a new species with a targeted fossil search.
Where to start, there is so much to choose from, so many books, videos, images, documentaries, interview testimony. This is your own journey, if you want to know the truth, you’ll find it. Maybe look up how our sciences have been controlled, corrupted, and suppressed to start, like the 5,002 classified patents. Maybe something easy like the book Darwin Devolves would be sufficient for you to understand that macro evolution is a failed and totally disproven theory, and science needs to catch up. Maybe Lloyd Pye's work. I don’t know how someone so entrenched in scientism dogma starts, but I hope you will.
I concur with /u/mr_takayamu about Aquinas' argument from motion and related arguments (e.g. Aristotle's unmoved mover, Avicenna's essence/existence argument, etc).
These arguments are good IF one takes the time to peel away the layers of misconception that have congealed on them in the popular sphere. It's very difficult to find accurate information with a simple Google search; better to read a book. This is a good start.
That's a very tortured reading of just one of the stories of a post-resurrection appearance.
I was thinking about what you said about us deserving more proof. Frankly, I think we've got far more than we have any right to when compared to previous generations.
In Jesus' day, only a few thousand people saw him work a miracle. Only a thousand at most saw him after the resurrection. In all of human history, seeing the supernatural has been confined to a relative handful of people.
Today, though, every single person in the developed world has access to
No, we don't get to see Jesus in the flesh -- walking on water or otherwise -- but we've got more than any generation since his has had. Far more. And we're going to be held responsible for what we did with that privilege.
To add to my other reply, here is a good book if you actually want to learn about it:
http://www.amazon.com/Only-Theory-Evolution-Battle-Americas/dp/067001883X
I just finished this one, it's also very good:
http://www.amazon.com/Genome-Matt-Ridley/dp/0060932902
If you want a 2 hour lecture by a Catholic Biologist on ID/Evolution, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg
I would check out this book from amazon. It sounds like exactly what your looking for. http://www.amazon.ca/Darwins-Pious-Idea-Ultra-Darwinists-Creationists/dp/0802848389 It's essentially about how God and evolution can make sense.
I for one struggle with contraction in that in Genesis, death did not exist before the fall of man. Yet God would have to have used death to use evolution as a tool for creating life on earth. I have not read the above book but would like to on my Kindle in the near future.
I would like to point you to the theory of intelligent design, and an excellent book by Stephen C Meyer. The origin of life, and how new body plans have arisen is not actually a problem that has been solved by the scientific community. There are excellent purely scientific reasons to doubt the theory of Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian evolution from the combinatorial inflation problem, to the absurd wait times to produce a single gene in idealized populations, to the fact that random mutations are practically guaranteed to either kill or seriously cripple an organism on the macro level, or seriously degrade and cause proteins to no longer work on the micro level. Another note is that the bible is very often not literal, especially in books like Genesis. Be conscious of what gene of book your are reading is, for this determines interpretation. Genesis is written as a saga, so it's non literal, while books like the gospels are historical accounts. On an even further note, understand that the presence of a natural mechanism or law does not disprove the existence or actions of God, for how did those mechanisms come to be and how did they come to function with such incredible specificity and regularity that the universe appears designed? Just as the programmer and engineer use laws and mechanical processes to design an engine or program, the existence of the processes and laws that the program and engine use do not disprove the existence of the engineer or programmer.
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edit: grammar
Well if you get in touch with him later, if you get a chance, ask him what else he reads besides the bible to find out if it's more like this or more like this. Finding out what he thinks about things besides the bible should give you an idea of where his head is. I guess in that sense, it isn't a very big deal what you ask, but if you can engage him in anything worldly (politics, science, less politicky current events, etc), you're likely to get a better idea of how he's doing.
Maybe I'm taking all of the weight out from what I'm saying by disclosing my Christianity (I have ingenious justifications :) ). But that being said, you're much more likely to feel like you're getting someplace if you're engaging him on specific issues, by talking about things such as negative aspects of social conservatism or the authority of the scientific community as far as describing the natural world is concerned, or even this or that about Christianity rather than attacking "theism". (Not because it's a 'sacred cow' that can't be questioned, but because he isn't likely to respect your views about theism in itself if that's most of what you guys talk about right off the bat),
I asked originally about what your expectations were because if you want to (and if he still likes to have such rangey, high-minded discussions), you guys can knock around on things like this and over time you'll be giving him a chance to see things the way that you do. I just worried seeing your original post all by itself that you might be tempted to make this make or break at the beginning and I was thinking that you might not make that much headway, and wanted to throw in my 2 cents.
Read this. You will be less confused.
Living in a fallen world not only affects our ability to make good decisions, but it has also affected our physical world. There are biological imperfections, such as infertility, that occur due to living in a fallen world. It sucks a ton. Adam brought these terrible sufferings upon us (often my husband says he can't wait to punch Adam in the face) but our good God has given us a way to use those sufferings for good and that we can take those challenges and become better people if we continue to trust in God through them.
If you feel like you need a more intellectual basis for a belief in God, there are really good books out there explaining why God exists.
One is The Last Superstition by Edward Feser. https://www.amazon.com/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314517/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Another is Who Designed the Designer by Michael Augros. https://www.amazon.com/Who-Designed-Designer-Rediscovered-Existence/dp/1586179691/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
If you would like a great book on how to keep peace of heart during trials, I would recommend Searching for and Maintaining Peace. https://www.amazon.com/Searching-Maintaining-Peace-Small-Treatise/dp/0818909064
I think if you can get to the point where you do acknowledge there is a God due to the logical basis for Him and that this God must be good due the logical basis for what kind of God He is, you might be able to trust Him more. We can't really trust someone we don't know too well.
Prayers for you and your wife during this very stressful time. I hope you two try to find ways to relax amidst the stress.
Hi prophetofantman. I am one of the few creationists on this sub. I recommend you post your question to /r/Creation as well. If you message the mods I'm sure you'll be given access.
If you are interested in some more general books on this topic, I can recommend the following:
Three Views on Creation and Evolution.
Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism.
The Cell's Design - Fazale Rana
---------------
Some good Young Earth Creationist books:
Understanding the Pattern of Life - Todd Wood
Thousands, Not Billions, ed. Don DeYoung
Seraphim Hamilton, a young Eastern Orthodox commentator and YEC, wrote a good blog post here.
-----
A good book on theistic evolution is "Creation or Evolution: Do we have to choose?" by Denis Alexander
-----
A good Old Earth Creationist book is John Lennox's
"The Seven Days Which Divide the World".
You might also be interested in this Christianity Today article
"A Tale of Two Scientists"
> Yeah, I'd like to read it
Cool! Let me know if/when you start, maybe a few of us here can read it together and discuss.
> I'm going to see if it's on audio so can listen at work
You can! Amazon has it on Audible. :)
> What interview are you referring to?
I linked it here.
> I'm not dismissing eyewitness testimony completely, but to make an extraordinary claim, you should have extraordinary evidence,
This is both special pleading, AND self refuting. This is basically saying "well if I want to prove something I only have to get this much, but you have to do this much." It is also completely arbitrary on what crosses the line into "extraordinary claim". This claim is of itself a extraordinary claim, it holds to all claims ever held, which means you need extraordinary evidence. This is regurgitated to the point that I just want to vomit every time I hear it. Its a copout that people hear used by the popular neo atheists, and its high time its thrown out the window.
>There are many people throughout history who have claimed or have been claimed to do miracles. If you're going to tell me that they're all fake miracles but that Jesus' miracles were true, you need to provide extraordinary evidence of that.
Again, that assumes all the claims are equally backed, which they are not. There is no case such as the case of Christianity in the entire history of world in regards to historical reliability and support.
>But to start, if you want to list some supporting documents of Jesus' miracles, I'd love to see them. I was under the impression that he wasn't written about until a few decades after his death.
You have the 22 documents which have been complied into the new testaent, along with various others by people such as Tacitus, Pliny the younger, and other non christian sources.
>I was under the impression that he wasn't written about until a few decades after his death.
The earliest document we have is written 15-25 years after jesus's death, and that is a grand slam in ancient history. To have something that close to when it occured is absolutly remarkable. The earliest we have written on alexande the great is 400 or so years after his death. Plato, socrates, aristotle and many other historical figures have hundreds to thousands of years to the NT 15. Not to mention that due to the overwhelming amount of manuscripts the bible is LITERALLY the most accurate ancient historical document we have. It ranks at 99.5% accuracy with around 5000-6000 texts, the second best is the Iliad with 95% accuracy and 600 or so texts.
>Here's why "intelligent" design is bad: if someone designed us, he obviously didn't use his intelligence!
This is a ridiculous argument, EVEN IF the designer was just not capable of making us any better than we are, that doesn't refute intelligent design. Thats like saying " my car breaks down sometimes, therefor its not designed" But to throw out things such as sickness and disease as a argument on God not being able to make us better is to be ignorant of or just ignore basic christian theology.Basic christian theology is that in the beginning there where no problems, there was no pain or suffering, but because adam sinned pain and death entered the world. This is such a silly and flawed argument it takes every ounce of my being to not slam my head against the wall.
>ID is so obviously wrong that until you prove that God exists by some other method, it's not even worth considering.
Provide a argument.
>Whether you call it evolution or "things change over time", it's OBVIOUS that things change and adapt to their surroundings. The only things in question are those such as HOW, WHY, or HOW QUICKLY.
Nobody debates change over time, we debate if that change over time is capable of producing what we have today.
>The alternative, that God just zapped things into existence (which we seem to know from a book which is demonstratively NOT a reliable source for information)
Getting really tired of the bald assertions, stop just throwing out things and make a argument.
>If evolution is also part of certain types of intelligent design, then you've merely added a layer of complexity which is completely unnecessary. I see no need to fit God into the gaps of knowledge. Oh look, god of the gaps argument. Lovely, that showed up again.
People think that God used evolution to create us. I have already addressed the issue with this "God of the gaps nonsense"
>The problem with the whole ID thing is that it's NOT science. So, what makes you think it belongs in the realm of scientific discussion?
sigh Bald assertion, even atheists disagree with you.While not a subscriber to ID, atheist Bradley Monton wrote a book defending ID as valid science. source
Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel recently released a book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False[36] , writing in ch1: "In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture... by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair."
Its very irritating to try and have a discussion with somebody who is just copy pasting from the likes of Dawkins and Matt Dilahunty. Please try to do something more than bald assertions and snide remarks.
>Christianity has "felt a blow" by the fact that it's simply not a scientific theory/fact...well,
NOTHING IN HISTORY IS CONSIDERED A SCIENTIFIC FACT. Christianity is a historical claim. "The Persian war has felt a blow because its not a scientific fact" <---- Thats how ridicuouls you sound. History is outside the realm odf science, we can not test and observe the writing of declaration of independence or the wars fought be Alexander the great.Scientisism is a failed position, but apparently you didn't get the memo.
>Of course I think one of the more immediately vital things would be the question of whether you can define existence or necessary existence into an object.
God by definition is a necessarily existing being.
> If it's possible that God does exist, then by definition, it's possible that God doesn't exist, and by that logic, he would not exist in all possible worlds
But you already admitted that he is possible, and therefor exists. If he exists then its not possible for him to not exist. So you can either backslide in your position of him being possible (which would be very intellectually dishonest) or you can just own up and accept it.
>which we define as "necessarily existing",
Parody's of the argument have been address and drove into the ground. trying to say a necessarily existing tiger for example can't work, because by definition a tiger is reliant and composed of matter.
>nothing useful about that being
It would show us that he exists, which is what I am contending.
>If anything, it would actually disprove the possibility of the Christian God, but as to HOW it does that would depend greatly on the beliefs of the individual.
Bald assertion.
>By the way, when I said "logic", I didn't mean "any logic you choose". If you're curious, I was thinking of the cosmological argument. I don't know if a necessary being exists, or if one is indeed possible, or indeed if we can define that a being exists before we KNOW if one exists.
I am using logic, specifically I was using modal logic, which is a branch of logic that is used to deal with possibilities.
>I don't see how I'm being hypocritical. I agree that we cannot prove those things with 100% certainty but at least for the sake of discussion there are some things that we just have to assume are true.
But yet you want the Christians to provide certainty, thus the hypocrisy.
>I don't recall asking for 100% proof anywhere.
You asked for certainty
> But no, haha, special pleading for Christianity? No, I would hold any religious beliefs to the same standards.
The issue is that you hold Christianity to a different standard then your other worldviews. Its funny actually, you won't apply Christianity to the same level of scrutiny as you do other historical claims, because that would mean you would have no excuse for rejecting it.
When reading the profiles of ID'ers creation scientists, I frequently find conversions from atheism, deism, and theistic evolution, often only after years of research in their fields. Conversely, the deconversions I read occur at the beginning years of university, after young students reject the sham Hovind-style creationism being taught by people who know nothing about science. Senior NASA climatologist Roy Spencer described the trend:
> Twenty years ago, as a PhD scientist, I intensely studied the evolution versus intelligent design controversy for about two years. And finally, despite my previous acceptance of evolutionary theory as 'fact,' I came to the realization that intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism. ... In the scientific community, I am not alone. There are many fine books out there on the subject. Curiously, most of the books are written by scientists who lost faith in evolution as adults, after they learned how to apply the analytical tools they were taught in college.
Conversely, TalkOrigin's list of creationist deconversions is all high school and college kids. Seemingly because they encountered the tree of life, junk dna, and haeckel's embryology diagrams in the texbooks and were convinced by such "overwhelming evidence".
Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design
> When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue, but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the “Cambrian explosion,” many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock.
I found this book to help line up the views of Young, Old and Theistic Evolution theories. Easy to read and worth the dollars if you are interested. I used it as a stepping stone in helping develop my own POV on this issue.
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Creation-Evolution-Porter-Moreland/dp/0310220173/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1333403052&amp;sr=1-5
If you're struggling with evolution:
From the Christian perspective: Beyond the Firmament
Better evidential book by a non-christian: Why Evolution Is True
I think the best book about the Old Testament is by an archaeologist: The Bible Unearthed. It's written by a Jewish scholar who would be biased towards over claiming for reliability if anything.
Otherwise, wikipedia has a really good overview. Once you get through wikipedia, if you have questions on good resources for a particular part of it, post here and in /r/christianity or message me and we'll help you out on the specifics.
>Was this philosopher a chemist? A biologist? Did he write any papers advancing either of these fields? I'm genuinely curious. If not, then I'm afraid he is not on solid ground to be refuting the advances made.
Does he need to be? Does everyone need to be in order to even question the experts? Maybe you are comfortable with giving up your critical thinking process, but I am not. Certainly give them a bit of deference but they need the data to back up their claims.
Look, Science is a uniquely potent method for discovering how nature works but the history of science suggests scientists often make claims that turn out to be erroneous or exaggerated.
And as you write: it's unlikely we'll ever completely unearth solid evidence even if it is true.
Then why believe to be true? How is the proposition that the information in DNA arose naturally falsified if it is to be believed when without "solid evidence"?
You seem to be more of an adherent to naturalism then an adherent to critical thinking.
>Present his best argument and I'll dispute that.
Present his best argument and you'll dispute it? Really? not examine it and see if it has merit? Just go straight to disputing it. That's what i meant by not being a critical thinker.
But anyhow
Flew’s argument in part is that if one tries to produce a 488 letter sonnet by chance it would be take one to the ~10^690 chances to get it right [that is 1 with 690 zeros after it]
For comparison the number of particles in the universe is only ~10^80.
If you took the entire universe and converted it to computer chips each one weighing a millionth of a gram and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, a million times a second; if you turn the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second producing random letters, the number of trials you would get since the beginning of time would be 10 to the 90th trials.
It would be off again by a factor of 10 to the 600th. You will never get a that paragraph by chance. The universe would have to be 10 to the 600th times larger. Yet atheists/naturalists say the info in DNA just happened by "chance". And remember the 10^690 chance is just for a 488 letter sonnet, not the much more complex 3 million base pair of DNA.
But we don’t have since the beginning of time [~13.8 billion years] for life to come about naturally, Earth was formed ~4.5 billion years ago and life first appeared ~3.5 billion years ago. So “chance” had only 1 billion years to bring about life naturally. Which seems like a lot of time until one considers the numbers above. Only if one is wedded to naturalistic philosophy is this not a problem but that is because they simply are not open to any other explanation; the answer must be in line with naturalistic philosophy. That's been decided a priori.
Additionally “chance” has no causal powers, there must be some mechanism. And as you admit there isn't one.
The comeback for naturalists is usually "we don't know" or, “well, it’s not zero so it still possible” so my question would be, how is naturalism falsified? If it can’t be then it is simply dogma.
So it seems the only way to solve the information problem is via an intelligent designer.
Physicist Fred Hoyle agrees: "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.*" source
But wait ID isn't science! But let's not be so hasty
Bradley Monton in [Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1551118637?psc=1&amp;redirect=true&amp;ref_=ox_sc_sfl_title_44&amp;smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER) argues that He argues effectively that opponents' most frequently-stated dismissals of ID ("it's purely religion," for example, or "it isn't science") fail when subjected to thoughtful analysis.
Edit: Of course you are not going to buy the book but read this paper by Monton to get an idea of where he is coming from.
>And lastly, what do you mean there is no evidence for genetic code coming from natural means?
Exactly that; no evidence for genetic code coming from natural means
>Perhaps you'd like to propose an alternative method?
Flew did. It's Intelligent Design. But that's not "science" the critics will say; but what they really mean is it's not "naturalism" - the philosophy that underlies science. It isn't science that is failing to but naturalism. Or perhaps it's better to say that science wedded to naturalism is failing to explain due to the unwarranted limits that is imposed upon it
And this is another reason why Flew doesn't have to be a chemist nor biologist; he is critiquing the philosophy of naturalism not science.
Science can work perfectly well without the presumption of naturalism; all it needs is an orderly universe if it was designed that way [instead of coming about naturally] doesn't matter one wit.
He's being interviewed by Eric Hovind so I doubt it's a spoof. And, you know, the book is real, unfortunately.
> .....is it?
Yes.
> Or is it "intelligent design".
Nope. Just evolution by artificial selection, as everyone has already explained.
I'd like to encourage you to read up on the topic. A good place to start might be Evolution for Everyone by David Wilson. It would at least give you a working knowledge of the topic so that you might be better equipped to dispute it (or alternately, have you not want to dispute it).
Alternately, if you have no desire to learn about what you're disputing, you might be interested in checking out these Christian anti-evolution websites on why your argument is
fucking retardedinvalid:A link to the book Darwin's Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong for anyone who might be interested in reviews of the book.
Sorry, here the link to Signature in the Cell
https://www.amazon.com/Signature-Cell-Evidence-Intelligent-Design-ebook/dp/B002C949BI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1485726016&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=signature+in+the+cell
Some of them certainly are. William Dembski, a prominent Discovery Institute fellow and writer, is a young earth creationist.
Paul Nelson, another DI fellow and writer, is also a young earth creationist.
There's no shortage of them, in fact, if you look through the DI Institute's membership list. It should be of little surprise that most of their speaking engagements and fundraising take place in churches.
Well gee, you just made me see the light. I shouldn't have wasted the first half of my twenties studying philosophy in university; I could just have read those Wikipedia pages my professors wouldn't even allow me to use as sources!
Of course, the downside of that would be that I would have ended up talking out of my ass, the way you are doing now.
> Natural philosophy is a small subset. It is less than 1/10th of all philosophy. Sources below, including definitions to help you out.
Natural philosophy doesn't fall under the contemporary main branches of philosophy at all, since the natural sciences split off a few centuries ago and became academic fields in themselves. However, we are talking about the time before that happened.
From the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy in the entry on medieval philosophy:
"The philosophical disciplines narrowly construed – logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics and ethics – occupied the centre of the curriculum leading to the basic university degrees, the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts." [1]
> For all your writing, you fail to address the issue. A philosophy is the study of the knowledge of an area. Astrology is a philosophy, as garbage as it is. In other words, you can have philosophy of almost any topic.
You are conflating two separate things, namely the academic discipline "philosophy", and the informal phrase "a philosophy". It's comparable to arguing that "playing beerpong well is an art, therefore beerpong is art".
Even the Wikipedia article you quoted should make it obvious why astrology isn't philosophy: "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument."
Read that second sentence carefully. Do you notice how it describes the complete opposite of pseudosciences like astrology?
You can have philosophy of astrology, of course, but that would fall under philosophy of science and consist mainly of demonstrating how astrology is not science. Likewise, you can have philosophers who analyze other pseudosciences like creationism, which leads to books like Tower of Babel: The evidence against the new creationism.
> "Many thinkers, philosophers and scientists, such as Galen, Paracelsus, Girolamo Cardan, Taqi al-Din, Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Carl Jung and others, practiced or significantly contributed to astrology.[27][28]"
Yes. I'm pretty sure I mentioned the exact same thing in this post, so I'm not quite sure what you're trying to argue.
However, you seem to have done a pretty good job at debunking your own earlier statement:
> The philosophy of celestial bodies led to astrology. Do we think astrology is correct today? Hardly. Science led us to breaking the religious idea that the earth moved around the sun.
As your own Wikipedia quote shows, that view of philosophy leading to astrology and science leading to astronomy is entirely incorrect. In the days of Kepler and Galileo, there was little distinction between both astronomy/astrology and science/philosophy.
Instead, scientist-philosophers pursued an understanding of the stars and planets, and eventually ended up ditching the astrological parts as knowledge or the world around us grew.
Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives by David Sloan Wilson.
Evolution 2.0 by Perry Marshall
Evolution 2.0 by Perry Marshall
---
Posted by: j***d
> Evolution does not necessarily predict useless organs (although some do exist that are nearly so)
Yes it did. It seems you aren't well versed in the history of your theory. Like I said earlier, the evidence of this mistake is found in all the missing appendixes from surgeries not dealing with the appendix at all. If you really want me to I can find biology books that define vestigial as useless. That's neither here nor there. Why neo-darwin evolution is harmful because it first assumes things are left over evolutionary artifacts when it first appears so. It takes convincing to think otherwise. This train of thought has not only been consistently wrong, but also very harmful.
> If this is the case, then this is a rather poor example of falsifiability.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you don't have a phd in the philosophy of science. Therefore I'm going to point you to an authority on the matter.
Dr. Bradley Monton wrote a book on this subject Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design
> Can you elaborate on the first bit about distinguishing living from non-living?
ID infers design by detecting CSI. From the FAQ: Living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity. [ L.E. Orgel, 1973. The Origins of Life. New York: John Wiley, p. 189. Emphases added.]
> Can you point out any single adjustment ID has undergone based on observations?
Why does an adjustment need to be made? There is room for adjustments, for example we may need to refine the algorithm we use to calculate CSI. Just because one may or may not have happened is inconsequential.
> As far as I can tell, front loading is an absolutely unproven hypothesis that in no way refines previous theory.
It's progressive.I thought that's what you asked for?
> If ID were open to experimental checking, then it would have admitted to being incorrect a long time ago. Whether by the fossil record that clearly shows numerous transitional species
First of all, ID is not incompatible with common descent. You mis-understand these very simple things because you, like most are unfamiliar with ID. Good news is it's in the FAQ which you and everyone else pretty much refuses to read. ID is a theory about the cause of complex biological information. Common descent (CD) is a theory about the modalities of implementation of that information. They are two separate theories about two different aspects of the problem, totally independent and totally compatible. In other words, one can affirm CD and ID, CD and Darwinian Evolution, or ID and not CD. However, if one believes in Darwinian Evolution, CD is a necessary implication.
Aside from that, if we went from bacteria, plankton, and algae to trilobite and brachiopods then new body plans and organs would have had to been created. These transitions should be evident in the fossil record. The darwinian model of evolution requires small and gradual changes thus demands an abundance of transitional forms between species. Yet the fossil record remains silent on this, rather than an abundance we have a dearth. The fossil record shows what happened -- an abrupt appearance of distinct and novel body plans. This supports the notion that quantum level programming was behind it all. Also classifying the so called transitional fossils may say more about our classification system than it does about any apparent lineage.
> or by vestigial traits such as the detached, minuscule, and useless leg bones found in many species of whales
Again, an evolution of the gaps type argument. Just like cave dwelling fish, there is most likely DNA in whales that's waiting to be turned back on when selection demands it. Vestigial? Maybe so, but probably only temporarily.
> This is a pretty weak assertion. By contrast, it is easy to point to internal leaked documents that show the outright religious objective of groups like the Discovery Institute, as well as the simple cut/paste manner in which certain ID documents were lifted from creationist texts.
ID and Creationism share some things in common, no doubt. They both start with the premise of a designer. However, where they branch off is ID doesn't base it's science off the bible but empirical evidence. It doesn't try to fit the bible into what it observes. This is evident by concepts such as front loading.
Darwin's Pious Idea by Conor Cunningham is very good, although it approaches the topic through biology, not physics.
On evolution:
I urge you to read some books on the issue that aren't written with a fundamentalist Christian slant. The science is decisive, and the distinction between "macro" and "micro" is itself a religious confusion. (as others have already pointed out).
On the Big Bang: The biggest problem with the Big Bang is that we don't know how it happened. That is a problem, and scientists are working obsessively to solve it. But saying "God did it" buys you a whole host of new problems. How did God happen? Who created God? Why did he create the universe? You haven't answered anything by saying "God did it": you've just kicked the can down the road and added an additional unfalsifiable and unsupported assumption.
Also, the evidence for the Big Bang is all around you: look up background microwave radiation,distribution and evolution of galaxies, the abundance of light elements, and the expansion of space.
On the supernatural:
Any thinking that starts with "Do you think it's possible that..." is a HUGE RED FLAG. Almost anything is possible, but usually the sort of logic that must be defended with a "Well, it's possible..." is absurdly improbable. This is a good example. Yeah, it's possible that an entire other world could be layered on our own - but it's more improbable than winning the lottery, and I don't buy lottery tickets.
If I had to explain the fundamental difference between the way I think about the spiritual and the way you think about the spiritual, it would be this. You ask "Is it possible that..." and "Do you think that maybe..."
I ask "Is there empirical support for..." and "Does the evidence support the assertion that..."
As for the hope that human consciousness continues on....
Nope. This is it. That sucks, and I'm sorry. It's among the hardest pills to swallow about being an atheist - but it's true whether you believe it or not.
An earlier version of this diagram appears in this volume about creationism vs. evolutionary theory: https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Word-Human-Reason-Perspective/dp/1629013722
The author was by no means a creationist or a science denier. He did not deny that horizontal gene transfer and other factors were not at play. In fact, the main point of the book was that those factors were key components of evolution and could explain things that natural selection could not. He used these mechanisms to rebut the creationist view that these “irreducibly complex” features could not evolve. I’m not sure where you got “science denier” from this post.
Yes, as you suspect, the author is a Christian. But again, he rejects creationist views multiple times. The main point of the evolution part of the book is that natural selection and random mutation are not the all-powerful mechanisms like many people believe, rather, their are other evolutionary mechanisms that assist these and in many cases surpass them as evolutionary forces.
The second half of the book is more about DNA and less about evolution. The author is an electrical/computer engineer and feels that he can talk about the “data” aspect of DNA with some authority. This part of the book is where his own opinions and theology are more prevalent. He claims that DNA is literally a “code” by every definition of the word. Following this, he claims that there is no such thing as a naturally occurring code. Natural chemical processes will never produce a code. DNA or other genetic material has never been observed being generated from natural chemical reactions. To create a code, some sort of consciousness must be involved. I realize that this part of the book is controversial and heavily influenced by his own beliefs. But at the same time, I don’t know if any scientific papers that can disprove this, so he is not denying science, rather he is speculating about things that science cannot yet explain. I am not really interested in debating this part of the book but if you could provide me with scientific sources countering his argument that would be much appreciated.
If you want to call this creationism, then go for it. But it is not “science denialism.” Again, I am only interested in the part of the book where he supports evolution theory and denies creationism. If you think he is using valid science to validate his religious opinions then yes, that may be what he is doing. But I am only interested in the validity of his science claims not his other ones. I am simply trying to find other sources that explain what he talking about without the religious bias.
EDIT: the book is Evolution 2.0 by Perry Marshall.
Slightly above grade-school level, but God's Word or Human Reason explicitly sets out to debunk the creationist narrative from both christian and non-christian perspectives, both by laying out the evidence and by emphasizing a scientific way of thinking.
Edit: Formatting
Dr. Wilson has a few books out that you might enjoy, I'd suggest this one for starters!
You may be interested in the constructal law, as explained in this book (a science book, not a religious book). There is some relationship there. When Jesus says "Apart from me you can do nothing", and John says that all things were made through him (John 1:3), I think it's being quite clear that God is present in all of creation. The problem is how we disconnect from this process through sin.
> If anything, more people working on a theory that's wrong would not do anything but expose it as wrong that much faster.
Agreed, however this is not the only possibility.
> Take, for example, the distribution of fossils in the geological strata...
I've always found the concept of index fossils to lead to rather circular evidence for the arrangement of fossils in the geological column.
> Of all the mountains upon mountains of evidence we have, 99% of it supports evolution.
I can't argue about this because I think this is largely perceptual. For instance, my perception of this mountain seems to be rather different to yours. Actually, the more I look, the less obvious the mountain becomes (which was unexpected for me personally).
> Just out of curiosity, what are some of these "holes" you speak of?
I don't buy into a lot of the necessary assumptions, like uniformitarianism or progressionism. They're not unreasonable but I think they limit the scope of potential discovery.
I'm also bothered by the tendency to conveniently sweep away outliers which appear more surprising than could be explained by experimental error alone. As a result they never accrue a significant enough mass to stand in the path of established theory.
The latter BTW is not a problem I think is unique to evolutionary biology, but I do think established theory tends to be guarded with greater fervor here by supporters (and attacked more strongly by detractors) because of the non scientific implications the theories have for all involved parties.
If you are interested in specific examples of things that bother me I highly recommend the 2nd edition of Bones of Contention. It deals with homonid evolution and compares a lot of established papers on the topic (by scientists even you will respect ;).
It also has a refreshingly low amount of Creationist propaganda (I mean the stuff that tends to distract away from the science, thought not entirely absent of course).
It's pretty much all around you. Whether or not you choose to except that or don't is up to you. If you like science and are not really biased to the point of willful ignorance, read some of these:
Etc...
As said by another user in this thread, the "why' is a philosophical question. I will do my best to answer the implied "how."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_theory
I am just a layman and all I know is from an extensive reading habit and curiosity about science. I just finished this book: http://www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Constructal-Technology-Organization/dp/0385534612 , and I think that the Constructal Theory has an interesting take on how animate cells came to exist on earth. I'm going to do my best to summarise the ideas covered by Bejan. Take everything that follows with a grain of salt because -- as I said before -- I have no formal schooling on the matter
In "Design in Nature," Bejan posits that the rise of animate matter on earth is neither a question of biology or chemistry, but a question of physics that is answered by the Constructal Theory (For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.)
Take the example of a flow of water moving across the earth, from a mountain spring to the seashore. For a distance, the water would move in a laminar flow from the spring, however, this is not the most efficient way to move the mass of the water to the seashore. Over time, the flow of water would evolve to move more efficiently, by moving from laminar to a more turbulent flow, excavating deeper riverbeds and moving more water farther with less energy expended. As more time passes, the flow system will inevitably vascularize itself into a river delta, creating the most efficient flow system to move the current from the spring to the ocean permitted by the brakes present in the environment (brakes in river systems commonly include temperature, geology of the mountain and river valley, and of course friction.)
Now this next part may take a bit of a conceptual stretch. Imagine the entire earth as a flow system, driven by the heat energy given to it by radiation from the sun. Due to this energy, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics), the elements on the earths surface boil and move in a constant quest for equilibrium in the system. If the earth were a closed system, its oceans and rivers would freeze and its landmasses would dry up due the achievement of said equilibrium. (This will happen inevitably as the sun dies out billions of years from now.)
However, our planet is not a closed system, so the movement of water and other elements across its surface (according to the Constructal Theory) must find better and more efficient ways of moving through its environment as long as the system keeps being affected by outside forces. Bejan theorizes that the rise of a diverse and thriving biosphere on the earth's surface is natures way of facilitating flows of matter (mostly water) across through the environment. After all, what is a fish but a pouch of water able to move under its on impetus?
Thank you for reading my wall of text, and please feel free to criticize and correct, as I have no idea how well accepted the constructal law is in the community.
[This book] (https://www.amazon.com/Bones-Contention-Creationist-Assessment-Fossils/dp/0801065232) might be worth a look.
Why don't they call it the evolution fact? It's a flawed theory and Gravity itself is a theory that's why it's called so. There are still many mysterious surrounding Gravity.
This is what theory means:
A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
aka "Darwin's theory of evolution"
Digging further, supposition means:
A belief held without proof or certain knowledge; an assumption or hypothesis.
---
I recommend reading Dr Behe's work. He proves unanimously and scientifically that evolution is totally wrong :
https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0743290313
https://www.amazon.com/Edge-Evolution-Search-Limits-Darwinism/dp/0743296222
If your current stance on evolution really bothers you, I recommend Stephen Meyers', "Signature in the Cell."
Many references are to dragons which would be the equivalent to the generic term of many varying types of creatures resembling the came characteristics that we now label as dinosaurs... a term which was coined less than 200 years ago to describe the same creatures.
There are at least two dinosaurs referenced by name, "behemoth" and "leviathan"
Though there are many more, here's a handful of references:
Job 40:15
Job 41:1-34
Isaiah 27:1
Psalm 104:26
Job 41:1-34
Isaiah 51:9
Ezekiel 29:3
Jeremiah 51:37
Isaiah 34:13
Psalms 91:13
I actually just recently finished a great book on this subject. If you're interested I would definitely recommend it.
I don't think you're going to get too far with this one.
This person literally thinks that legendary tales of dragons is proof man and dinosaurs walked the earth together and is proof of Young Earth Creationism.
Here is their recommended reading on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Dinosaurs-Darek-Isaacs/dp/088270477X
Hijacked is too strong a word, but I think two points are notable. First, arguably most of the really popular and notable books on evolution released in the last twenty years were penned by New Atheists proper or by authors who basically fit the New Atheist mold but aren't one of the four specific authors. A big part of the reason for that is simply Richard Dawkins. He's a popular writer and a biologist, so it was almost inevitable that he'd pen books about Darwin and that they'd hit the bestsellers lists. And if it were limited to Dawkins, I'd think nothing of it, but there's Dennett and Shermer, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Harris release one before long. Another part of the reason is that a number of the other books about Darwinian evolution that have sold well in past decades were penned by creationists like Michael Behe, so a certain measure of response is, from my perspective at least, welcome. At that point, it's about market share, and we don't want creationists having too big a piece of the market share. Their point of view is, after all, problematic to say the least. If it weren't for my second point, it wouldn't even be problematic that a) popular books on evolution are basically split between creationists and New Atheists, and b) that New Atheists make up such a large share of that market.
But my second point is this: New Atheists aren't just popularizing or "standing up for" Darwinian evolution; they're attaching a political and ideological agenda to that effort, and that runs several risks, the most obvious being that it can polarize people against evolution, as some commentators have warned it might do in Muslim countries. To my mind, the more insidious risk is that, once you've connected a scientific theory to a political or ideological effort, it becomes all to easy for its patrons to see it in those terms even when it has nothing to do with that effort. Without much noticing it, pro-Darwinians may start seeing barely articulated associations as part and parcel of evolution, until evolution is something more than a scientific model. Dawkins, for example, has turned evolution into a theological disproof with the subtitle of "The Blind Watchmaker". The title of Shermer's "Why Darwin Matters" sums up the achievement of evolutionary theory as a form of polemic against intelligent design theory. Dawkins, at least, is close enough to the professional practice of biology that he probably doesn't need reminding that evolution isn't really about atheism, but all of these guys are writing books for people who don't have the continual reminder of working in the field where evolutionary theory is most functional.
I say none of this in defense of the Guardian article, but I do think there's something to be said for the idea that our society stands to lose by leaving it up to the New Atheists to give evolution its popularly received meaning.
I suggest you vary your reading. Odd Jackdaw has just given you are reading list of extremely biased sources (wikipedia editors in particular are extremely hostile to anything not in keeping with atheism or evolution. )
For balance you can begin with these sites
https://evolutionnews.org
https://uncommondescent.com
https://blog.drwile.com (one of the few YEC sites I read)
For Books
Stephen Meyer's books are pretty good ( and hated by adherents of Darwinism)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002C949BI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin-Intelligent-ebook/dp/B0089LOM5G
and the ever loved Michael Behe
https://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Devolves-Science-Challenges-Evolution/dp/0062842617/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=michael+behe&qid=1562441940&s=gateway&sr=8-3
I've thought and read about Evolution and the Big Bang for years, and struggled as a Christian to understand how these ideas interact with my Christianity. For me, I reject the claim that the universe and life came into existence through natural causes (I think both were supernatural events).
Evolution is such a big term that I have to clarify myself a lot to people. Sure I think Animals can adapt to their environment and that random mutations are preserved or eliminated due to survival of the fittest. Those are observable facts.
Science ends, however, when what is being discussed cannot be observed or experimented upon. I can honestly say, having examined the evidence, that there is very little cosmological, paleontological, or geological evidence that urges me to accept the grand narrative of Evolution. A lot of it is (good) speculation and hypothesis, but it's not impossible for me to reject because I have an alternative narrative that is just as plausible.
Here are some of the books that influenced me:
http://www.amazon.com/Bones-Contention-Creationist-Assessment-Fossils/dp/0801065232
http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0743290313/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1368641836&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Darwin%27s+black+box
Stephen C. Meyer, It's called Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design.
http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin-Intelligent/dp/0062071475
From the reviews:
>“It’s hard for us paleontologists to admit that neo-Darwinian explanations for the Cambrian explosion have failed miserably....Meyer describes the dimensions of the problem with clarity and precision. His book is a game changer.” (Dr. Mark McMenamin, paleontologist at Mt. Holyoke College and coauthor of The Emergence of Animals)
>“Darwin’s Doubt represents an opportunity for bridge-building rather than dismissive polarization—bridges across cultural divides in great need of professional, respectful dialogue—and bridges to span evolutionary gaps.” (Dr. George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and author of Regenesis)
>“Meyer writes beautifully. He marshals complex information as well as any writer I’ve read....a wonderful, most compelling read.” (Dean Koontz, New York Times bestselling author)
>“Darwin’s Doubt is by far the most up-to-date, accurate, and comprehensive review of the evidence from all relevant scientific fields that I have encountered in more than forty years of studying the Cambrian explosion.” (Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig, senior scientist emeritus (biologist) at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research)
>“Meyer demonstrates, based on cutting-edge molecular biology, why explaining the origin of animals is now not just a problem of missing fossils, but an even greater engineering problem at the molecular level....An excellent book and a must read.” (Dr. Russell Carlson, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Georgia and technical director of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center)
>“Darwin’s Doubt is an intriguing exploration of one of the most remarkable periods in the evolutionary history of life.... No matter what convictions one holds about evolution, Darwinism, or intelligent design, Darwin’s Doubt is a book that should be read, engaged and discussed.” (Dr. Scott Turner, professor of biology at the State University of New York and author of The Tinkerer's Accomplice)
>“It is a tour de force…This book is well informed, carefully researched, up–to–date and powerfully argued. It confronts Darwin’s doubt and deals with the assumptions of Neo–Darwinism. This book is much needed and I recommend it to students of all levels, to professionals and to laypeople.” (Dr. Norman C. Nevin OBE, BSc, MD, FRCPath, FFPH, FRCPE, FRCP; Professor Emeritus in Medical Genetics, Queen's University, Belfast)
>“Darwin’s Doubt is another excellent book by Stephen Meyer. Stephen Meyer has clearly listened to the arguments of those who are sceptical about intelligent design and has addressed them thoroughly. It is really important that Darwinists read this book carefully and give a response.” (Dr. Stuart Burgess, Professor of Design and Nature, Head of Mechanical Engineering at Bristol University)
>“I spend my life reading science books. I’ve ready many hundreds of them over the years, and in my judgment Darwin’s Doubt is the best science book ever written. It is a magnificent work, a true masterpiece that will be read for hundreds of years.” (George GilderTechnologist, economist, and New York Times bestselling authorGeorge GilderTechnologist, economist, and New York Times bestselling authorGeorge GilderTechnologist, economist, and New York Times bestselling authorGeorge GilderTec)
>“The issue on the table is the mechanism of evolution—is it blind and undirected or is it under the control of an intelligence with a goal in mind? In Darwin’s Doubt, Stephen Meyer has masterfully laid out one of the most compelling lines of evidence for the latter.” (Dr. William S. Harris, Professor, Sanford School of Medicine, University of South Dakota)
>“Dr. Meyer has written a comprehensive and up–to–date analysis on the massive scientific evidence revealing the total failure of the neo–Darwinian explanation for life’s history. Darwin’s Doubt is important, clearly written with sound arguments, excellent illustrations and examples that make the topic easily understandable even for non–specialists” (Dr. Matti Leisola, Professor, Bioprocess Engineering, Aalto University, Finland (emeritus); Editor-in-chief, Bio-Complexity)
>“Meyer makes a case for intelligent design as the only viable scientific theory for the origin of biological novelty. Meyer’s challenge to naturalism will no doubt be strongly resisted by those committed to a materialist worldview, but provide food for refection for those who are searching for truth.” (Dr. Donald L. Ewert, Molecular Biologist, Associate Member (retired), Wistar Institute)
>“Stephen C. Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt is a truly remarkable book. Within its 413 pages of text are four tightly woven interrelated arguments. Using 753 references, he presents evidence associated with the serious weaknesses of materialistic theories of biological evolution, and positive evidence for the theory of intelligent design.” (Dr. Mark C. Biedebach, Professor Emeritus, Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, Long Beach)
>“A great book on the origin of animal life and crises of Darwin evolution; very clear, factual, comprehensive, logical, and informative. An enjoyable reading for both non–expert and expert.” (Dr. Change Tan, Molecular biologist/developmental biologist, Associate Professor, University of Missouri-Columbia)
>Steven Meyer gives an insightful and thoughtful treatment to the history of life. Justice Louis Brandies taught us that, ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant,’ and Dr. Meyer lets the sun shine in. (Dr. Stephen A. BatzerP.E., forensic engineerDr. Stephen A. Batzer, P.E., forensic engineer)
>“Steve Meyer’s book is a much–anticipated bombshell that details the swarm of problems of Darwinian evolution and also presents the case for intelligent design. Ask yourself: how often does a book of this kind receive a warm welcome from leading geneticists and paleontologists? Never, until now! ” (Dr. Tom Woodward, Research Professor, Trinity College, Tampa Bay, Author of Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design)
>“Stephen Meyer’s new book, Darwin’s Doubt, is a fascinating and rigorous study demonstrating not only that biologists and paleontologists do not have an adequate explanation for the Cambrian Explosion, but that there is an alternative view that makes more sense.” (Dr. Richard Weikart, Professor of History at California State University, Stanislaus; Author of From Darwin to Hitler)
>“Meyer is a talented writer with an easygoing voice who has blended interesting history with clear explanations in what may come to be seen as a classic presentation of this most fundamental of all debates.” (Terry Scambray, New Oxford Review)
http://www.amazon.com/Signature-Cell-Evidence-Intelligent-Design/dp/0061472794/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415097955&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Signature+in+the+Cell%3A+DNA+and+the+Evidence+for+Intelligent+Design
From the reviews:
>“Signature in the Cell is a defining work in the discussion of life’s origins and the question of whether life is a product of unthinking matter or of an intelligent mind. For those who disagree with ID, the powerful case Meyer presents cannot be ignored in any honest debate. For those who may be sympathetic to ID, on the fence, or merely curious, this book is an engaging, eye-opening, and often eye-popping read” — American Spectator
>Named one of the top books of 2009 by the Times Literary Supplement (London), this controversial and compelling book from Dr. Stephen C. Meyer presents a convincing new case for intelligent design (ID), based on revolutionary discoveries in science and DNA. Along the way, Meyer argues that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as expounded in The Origin of Species did not, in fact, refute ID. If you enjoyed Francis Collins’s The Language of God, you’ll find much to ponder—about evolution, DNA, and intelligent design—in Signature in the Cell.
I have looked at the evidence specifically Darwinism.
If you are genuinely interested to see both sides of the debate, I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin-Intelligent/dp/0062071475