Customer Reviews

The Top 10 Myths About Evolution

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First of all, those who believe in the power of science to understand the natural world should breathe a sigh of relief. This book is not an attack on the theory of evolution. Thankfully, it is an attempt to disabuse the pro-evolution layman of certain commonly-held misunderstandings about the way evolution works. "Survival of the fittest," for instance, does not require animals to war with each other. A woodpecker can be relatively unfit in comparison to another by dint of a tiny difference in hearing, allowing one bird to catch a few more bugs and have more baby woodpeckers. Human beings are not the pinnacle of creation, though we may be agents of its destruction! That we happen to be the top dog in many of the Earth's ecosystems today is happenstance; evolution has not been toiling for eons to produce us. A little change in the environment, and we would go the way of the dodo.

The final two chapters veer from the book's approach in order to attack both so-called Creation Science and Intelligent Design theory. In particular, the authors go after ID's theory of irreducible complexity -- the idea that certain biological structures -- the eye or the flagellum of of a bacterium -- are far too complicated to have been designed by anything but a divine Creator.

As a pro-evolutionist (and devout theist, I might add), I congratulate the authors on their intent. However, the volume serves more as a reminder to the layman of how evolution can be misunderstood. At only 200 pages, the book is far too sketchy to persuade the doubter that evolution is the best way to explain the disparate lifeforms we encounter on Earth today. From a personal perspective, I have been more persuaded by the books of Stephen Jay Gould, Jared Diamond, Matt Ridley and others. These authors tell the "back story" -- the analysis of the panda's thumb or junk DNA -- that leads the reader to the same conclusions as the author.

As a lay reader who has done a fair amount of reading about the topic, I found this book somewhat wanting. It will neither nourish the devotee of evolutionary science nor persuade the doubter. But it does a decent job of summarizing currently-accepted conclusions about what evolution is and what it is not. And the cover photo of a seemingly-shocked white-faced capuchin (I think!) is adorable.

Humorist Dave Barry remarked once:

"I constantly see evidence that Americans do not understand basic scientific principles. For example, the great mathematician and dead person Sir Isaac Newton (who also invented gravity) proved in 1853 that, no matter how hard you push, you cannot fit an object into an airplane storage compartment if the object is way bigger than the compartment. Americans still do not understand this."

Unfortunately, this is also true about the average American's knowledge about evolution.

Cameron Smith and Charles Sullivan clearly debunk the ten most common accusations made against evolution. Explaining it in layman's terms, Smith and Sullivan set the record straight on things like evolution is "just a theory", evolution is immoral, Intelligent Design is legitimate science, humans come from monkeys and six other claims made by opponents of scientific inquiry.

The book is very well written and researched and is an invaluable source for the average person who wants to read the facts about this topic. I am sure the authors had the fact that many people (my self included) do not remember what they were taught in school since people usually think of science as boring.

This book is sorely needed due to the lack of knowledge, misinformation in the media as well as supporters of creationism and un-Intelligent Design who deliberately lie about evolution and try to present their pseudo-science as fact.

I found this well written and thoroughly researched book to be an excellent treatment of the most common myths about evolution. Sullivan and Smith dissect the most common misconceptions and mischaracteriazations about evolution, exposing and correcting the sloppy phraseology used in the mass media and clearly explaining "what evolution is and how it happens." I found the chapter regarding the claims of "creation science" and "intelligent design" proponents to be especially illuminating. They expose the severe weaknesses and "deliberate obfuscations" in their arguments.

"Misconceptions" would be a better word in the title than "myths," but no matter. I give this very readable book five stars because of its educational value. Reading this book is an excellent introduction to the basis and the ideas of Darwinian evolution, as well as providing talking points to refute the specious argument of creationists and "intelligent designers."

The first misconception is in the common interpretation of the phrase "the survival of the fittest." The Darwinian jungle is indeed a jungle (and a savannah, an ocean, a river, a desert, etc.), but the key to survival--being "fit" and successfully reproducing--usually has a lot less to do with how sharp your claws or how great your physical strength. Rather it has to do with how well you can make a living in the environment you find yourself in. Fitness implies such things as a good immune system, the ability to co-operate with other living things, perhaps the ability to eat a wide variety of foods, or an abundant food that will not disappear, and so on. Being able to kick butt big time is probably not a good example of fitness.

Second misconception: "It's just a theory." Yes, and a tiger is just a cat. Or, would you believe that it is very remotely possible that the earth is not round. Or, yes it is possible that only I exist and I am just dreaming up all this stuff. Actually, evolution is as much of an established fact as any theory can be. A theory, by the way, as used by scientists, isn't just an unproven idea. It is "a logical, tested, well-supported explanation for a great variety of facts." The "theory" of evolution is supported by the fossil record and the analysis of the DNA of living organisms. It is demonstrated in our lifetimes by the adaptation of microorganism such as disease bacteria. And perhaps even more importantly, its three main processes of replication, variation, and selection, remain the basis of biological understanding in a host of sciences from medicine to ecology.

Third: There is a ladder of progress (the "great chain of being") from the most primitive to the most advanced organisms (from microbes to us!). Actually the idea of progress is purely an anthropomorphic one; and the idea that evolution has some goal, ditto. Evolution is eternally a phenomenon of the here and now without any concern for the future. True, organisms have become more complex, but that is only because they couldn't have gone in the other direction! A random walk away from a wall will show, as time passes, footsteps at a greater and greater distance from the wall.

Fourth: there is a missing link that is missing. There are intermediate forms that have been discovered; and more will be discovered in the future. The fossil record is necessarily limited since very, very few of the organisms that have ever existed are fossilized. Furthermore, the transformation from one species to the other is not from one fixed type to another but from the observation of a living thing at one moment in time to the observation of another very similar living thing at another moment in time.

Fifth: Evolution is random. Mutations are random, but changes in species are anything but random. The changes are sculptured by the environment.

Sixth: People come from monkeys. We had a common ancestor with chimpanzees some six million years ago, and millions of years before that we and modern monkeys had a common ancestor. Actually if you go back far enough we are descended from pond scum. And so what if we were descended from monkeys? Some people seem to think that our close relationship with other animals is somehow demeaning. Silly.

Seventh: Nature is in perfect balance. Truth is nature is in constant flux. Balance is in the eyes of the beholder. The earth's ecological balance is an ever changing, temporary thing. At one time the "balance" was characterized by most of life finding oxygen poisonous. At another time the balance was a "snowball" earth. Who knows what the future balance will be?

Eighth: Creationism disproves evolution. Creationism is really just a kind of fairy tale, a mythology that appeals to the need of some people to feel close to their idea of God. It's a way of giving a spurious meaning to life.

Ninth: Intelligent Design is science. Actually that would be unintelligent design, and it is not science at all. Instead, ID is creationism in a tux, as some wag put it. The key misconception of ID is that we or any organism was designed. Organisms grow; they evolve. If they were designed by an intelligent designer, one imagines that they would not have as many flaws. ID is a political movement that attempts to acquire the power and prestige of science. It's a yearning for the authoritarian rule of the Dark Ages.

Ten: Evolution is immoral. Evolution is of course amoral or non-moral. What is, is from a moralistic point of view, not necessarily what ought to be. Is does not imply ought. Morality is a human idea. By the way, people who understand evolution are just as moral, or even more so, than the followers of e.g., Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and George W. Bush.

Easy to digest, and a good survey of the most important points

Also, nicely quite short as far as these kind of popular science books go. This is good, because the reader will be able to finish "Myths" in a couple short sittings or so. There is not as much detail as the more serious reader will crave, but more writing would obviously make the book longer to get through. The authors clearly are writing this work as a bulwark against religious criticism of the science of evolution and natural selection. This is reasonable, because all the criticism seems to be religiously based. It would probably be helpful if they also pointed out more often that this bulwarking is only needed when opposing schemes try to get foisted onto public schools. If you are reading this book, be aware that the authors do indeed say this, but this message sometimes gets lost in bursts of enthusiasm.

The shortness of details, mentioned above, does have the shortcoming that the points of argument supporting the ten myths do not give much fuel for a debater. It is doubtful that the authors want their readers to become skilled formal debaters from their material, but rather to be confident of the proved value of evolution-based biology. They also would prefer to have more buyers of their book instead! And buy the book indeed is this recommendation, or maybe check out from the local library.

The footnoting is extensive, and to some tastes, a little too many of these notes contain explanation which might better have been put into the main part of the book. Nevertheless, simply get two bookmarks, and this should not be a problem.

Simple and concise. This little book explains a lot of common myths that are circulating thanks to ignorant pastors and priest and their brainwashed followers. So if you're a christian or some other faith and you have only the basic attention span , and you really want to know what the evidence says then I highly reccomend this book.

While this book's purpose is to deal with various myths about Evolution, it is actually the best introduction to the subject that I have found. If you don't know much about Evolution, you will get a good basic understanding. The book is fairly short and an easy read. I read it in a few days. Of the approximately 200 pages, maybe one third are notes. This is good for further reading but I felt that some information in the notes would have been better placed in the main text. I got this from the library but I enjoyed it so much, I plan to purchase a copy.

I was surprised that some of the information I knew as fact, was really a myth! I learned a lot about myself as well as humanity.

The authors have done a poor job representing aspects of both sides in the Creation/Evolution debate.

"Myth One: Survival of the Fittest" demolishes a myth about natural selection ("nature red in tooth and claw") that no informed Creationist believes about Evolution. Is the problem that too many Evolutionists still believe this?

"Myth Two: It's Just a Theory" built and burnt several straw men. A scientific theory, by definition, must be testable by repeatable observations and must be capable of being falsified if indeed it were false. A scientific theory can only attempt to explain processes and events that are presently occurring repeatedly within our observations. Creation and Evolution are attempts to explain the origin of the universe and its inhabitants. There were no human observers to the origin of the universe, the origin of life, or, as a matter of fact, to the origin of a single type of living organism. Neither Creation nor Evolution is a scientific theory - they are inferences based on circumstantial evidence.

"Myth Three: The Ladder of Progress" dispelled the myth that the Great Chain of Being indicates an overall direction for the advancement of evolution. If anyone believes this concept I would place most of the blame for that on those pictures that evolutionists draw to show supposed intermediate forms between one kind and another. The authors also spent time discussing the arms race between predator and prey, conflating the natural selection of advantageous genes with macroevolution.

"Myth Four: The Missing Link" again attacks Creationists for something they don't believe - that species are fixed and unchanging. Have the authors ever bothered to read Genesis where it states very clearly that creatures reproduce after their kind? Speciation is a testable and repeatable observation - changing from one kind into another is not.

"Myth Five: Evolution Is Random" may be the best of the "myth busters". They break Evolution down into its constituent parts: replication, variation and selection, and show that selection is not random. Regardless, none of these aspects can account for specific complexity and thus fail as evidence that an initial state of disorder can lead to ever increasing information content - contrary to their assertion that "the forces of evolution shape randomly varying populations into enormously complex and diverse ecosystems."

"Myth Six: People Come from Monkeys" takes a very long and winding road to show that humans are closer to apes than monkeys. Whoa, really? Glad they cleared that up!

"Myth Seven: Nature's Perfect Balance" attempts to show that there is no grand design keeping nature in perfect balance. Is this even an issue? Creationists might argue that there used to be perfect balance in nature for a brief time - before sin and decay entered the world - but there can be no defense of that position now other than to say that God is still in control of nature and guides it for His purposes.

"Myth Eight: Creationism Disproves Evolution" is probably the most disappointing chapter because it references several Creationist arguments that are decades old and have long since been supplanted. The authors also rely on evidence from the mythical geologic column (found uniform in only a handful of places on earth), archaeopteryx (since shown to be more recent than some fully formed bird species), and explain away huge discrepancies in radiometric dating methods by claiming unique environmental conditions when they have no certainty of any environment that supposedly existed millions of years ago.

"Myth Nine: Intelligent Design Is Science" puts forth a possible solution for irreducible complexity but without any evidence that the suggested mechanism has ever been observed. The authors falsely claim that there is no scientific controversy over evolution. They discuss some real philosophical problems for those in ID that arise from an attempt to find design without arguing for the Designer.

"Myth Ten: Evolution is Immoral" makes an excellent point that "natural" is not necessarily "good" but it does so without ever defining "good". Who's "good" is the right "good"? If "good" (as a moral judgment) is relative only to one's point of view, then the term is meaningless for conveying truth.

The authors have an obvious bias throughout the book that substantially detracts from what might otherwise have been a useful primer on some past and present myths about Evolution.

This book clarifies a number of possible amateur misconceptions about the biological theory of evolution with well documented notes, adds a few comments to the evolution/creation debate, and goes outside of science to promote evolution based on an ideology that excludes the possibility of design. Thus, while clarifying misconceptions about evolution, this book harms the public's understanding of the theory by presenting information from a philosophical bias that would render the theory true regardless of the evidence.

The book clarifies nine myths about evolution. The title claims ten myths, but "Myth Nine: Intelligent Design is Science", is not about evolution at all, but is a promotion of the philosophy that makes evolutionary theory true by default by excluding the possibility of design. Such an argument would make evolutionary theory unfalsifiable.

Some of what the book labels "myths" are not misconceptions, but simply differences in philosophy. The authors state that investigating biology via "methodological naturalism" will provide the best explanation for life. Such a belief is based on the assumption that either life is not designed or such is not determinable. "Methodological naturalism" makes evolution the "best explanation" by arbitrarily making it the only possible consideration. Ironically, the ability to scientifically distinguish that which is designed from that which is evolved is precisely what is needed in order to scientifically show that species evolved from a common ancestor.

While explaining current evolutionary theory well, the book is also a treatise for a world view based on the evolutionary paradigm. The introduction implies that people reject evolution only out of ignorance, and says that evolution is central to making moral and political decisions about such things as endangered species, stem cell research, and genetic engineering. To the authors, ignorance of evolution is ignorance of not only a biological theory, but ignorance of the correct world view.

Though claiming evolution as the scientific foundation of modern biology, the book does not adequately explain how rejecting the theory would hinder further biological study. Instead, the authors criticize Intelligent Design theory by saying ID prematurely stops scientific inquiry. The fact that physical phenomenon remain open to scrutiny regardless of their method of production (e.g., the intelligently designed Antikythera mechanism is as open to scientific investigation as the bacterial flagella) shows that the authors' critique concerns a historical world view, not threats to scientific analysis.

"Myth Three: The Ladder of progress" posits no teleology, design, or purpose in biological systems. Such a metaphysical assertion is out of place in a book about science, but fits well into the ideology the book promotes. The authors do not recognize that their definition of science excludes teleology a priori; hence anyone investigating reality using the authors' version of science would be unable to recognize design even in a computer.

In spite of a concise description of evolutionary theory, the authors appear disingenuous in comparing biological evolution to a parody of the creationist argument that changes within a species can produce only sub-species. The authors misinform the reader by commenting throughout the book that creationists believe that all organisms are "unchangeable over time" and remain genetically the same today as when they were originally created. The book uses no quotation to back these statements; a testament to the fact that no creationist believes such.

All in all, while this book does a good job explaining modern evolutionary theory, be aware it also perpetuates misinformation about creationism, and promotes a philosophy of science that would make evolutionary theory true on philosophical, rather than empirical, grounds.