Science and Creationism (Galaxy Book) [Paperback]

Ashley Montagu (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Galaxy Book | Publication Date: March 8, 1984

The essays collected here -- including those written by Stephen Jay Gould, Garrett Hardin and Isaac Asimov -- offer a powerful rebuttal to the claims of the so-called "Scientific Creationists", who have argued that evolution is an unsound explanation of the origins of life, and have sought to introduce their ideas into public school curriculums. Montague includes the full text of Judge William R. Overton's landmark decision, which struck down the Arkansas law permitting the teaching of "creation science" alongside evolution in the public schools.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Trade edition (March 8, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195032535
• ISBN-13: 978-0195032536
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,869,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Anthology Refuting Creationist Propaganda, May 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Science and Creationism (Galaxy Book) (Paperback)

This book, along with Douglas Futuyma's SCIENCE ON TRIAL and Richard Dawkins' THE BLIND WATCHMAKER, was one of my first books on creationism and evolution. Overall, I think the book is excellent; however, I found the individual essays to be of varying quality. In my opinion, Ken Miller's essay, "Scientific Creationism versus Evolution: The Mislabeled Debate," is probably the most useful essay in the entire volume. Ken Miller, a Catholic biologist, is arguably the best pro-evolution debater today. (See his recent book, FINDING DARWIN'S GOD.) Also of value were Robert Root-Bernstein's essay on demarcation criteria for distinguishing science from pseudoscience, both of Stephen Jay Gould's chapters, Isaac Asimov's illuminating chapter on the "threat" of creationism, and the text of Federal Judge William Overton's decision in the historic Arkansas case. However, other chapters were lass valuable. In particular, I think Roger Cuffey's bibliographic essay, "Paleontologic Evidence and Organic Evolution," will be worthless to almost everyone except specialists. Similarly, I was also disapppointed by the contributions of Sidney Fox and L. Beverly Halstead; I was left wishing they had each written essays more accessible to laymen. But despite these flaws I think the book is an important one. Creationists, evolutionists, and anyone else interested in the creation/evolution controversy will want to be familiar with this important book.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unlike people, fossils don't lie., December 31, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Science and Creationism (Galaxy Book) (Paperback)

This is a collection of 21 essays by various scientists, philosophers, historians, theologians, etc., about the relationships between science and creationism. A few of the essays are bad: Sidney W. Fox's essay, on research into the beginnings of life from inanimate material, is far too technical for this volume, and badly written--a fatal combination. And I have no idea what the point of Kenneth E. Boulding's "Toward an Evolutionary Theology" is supposed to be. There are other minor annoyances (mislabeled diagrams, etc.), attributable to the editing, or lack of it. But most of the essays are very fine, and thought-provoking. It is often pointed out, for example, that by any modern definition of Science, "Creation Science" isn't Science. But George M. Marsden, in "Understanding Fundamentalist Views of Science", argues that creationist thinking is similar to--and has its roots in--Baconian science of the 17th and 18th centuries. (Personally, I think that Francis Bacon would be horrified by the bungling of "Creation Scientists".) Included in the book is the "Decision of the Court", by Judge William R. Overton, who ruled in 1982 that Arkansas' "Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act" was unconstitutional. This is simply a spectacular piece of writing, which should be required reading for anyone on either side of the Creationism/Science debate. Creationist writers all promote some variation of the statement, "no transitional forms are found in the fossil record". False. In "Paleontologic Evidence and Organic Evolution", Roger J. Cuffey lists *hundreds* of examples of continuous sequences of transitional fossil forms, across species, genera, families, etc., referenced to over a hundred scientific papers. No one who has even glanced at paleontologic literature could make the "no transitional forms" mistake. (Similarly, no one who has read Brent Dalrymple's book, _The Age of the Earth_, could make the "10,000-year-old Earth" mistake.) This is a great book for anyone interested in the facts, but Creationists will not be interested. As Isaac Asimov writes in "The Threat of Creationism", his contribution to the book, "However much the creationist leaders might hammer away at their 'scientific' and 'philosophical' points, they would be helpless and a laughing stock if that were all they had. It is religion that recruits their squadrons. Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for--or even against--evolution, march in the army of the night with their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason." Amen.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spans the spectrum between technical, informative, and humor, December 27, 1995

By A Customer

This review is from: Science and Creationism (Galaxy Book) (Paperback)

This collection of essays concerning the scientific method (as it relates to biogenesis, evolution, and Evolutionary Theory) and the religion called "Creation Science" is perhaps the best out of nearly 100 similar books I have read. The essays at the start of the book explain in good detail why evolution is a fact, and why Evolutionary Theory, which describes that fact, is not a fact--- a distinction that few Creationists CHOOSE to understand. One essay discusses why young-Earth Creationists believe what they believe; another explains biogenesis (which is seperate and distinct from evolution--- biogenesis covers how life began, while evolution is the process of changes among that life afterwards); two essays discuss the latests "monkey trials" whereby Creationists attempted to bypass the rules of science and used politics instead to force their religion into public schools. All in all, an EXCELLENT book.