Evolution & Intelligent Design Books.

[jonks]

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor
By not aknowledging that creationism could even be possible, evolutionists are freeing themselves from having to prove evolution since, in their minds, there can be no other alternative. The only ones even considering both options are creationists.

Do you have an open mind about whether or not leprechauns or the tooth fairy or Santa or the Easter Bunny exist? Are you really open to that possibility? Or are you comfortable closing the book on things you have reasonably and logically decided do not exist?

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: ZzZGuy
Ok, went out and got 3 books on each side and one in the middle. I could not find all the books which where mentioned and left out some that i felt where covered by another book or not as relevant.

This is the list of books which I bought.
-The Case for Christ
-The Dawkins Delusion?
-The Edge of Evolution (same author of Darwin's Black Box)

-The origin of Species
-Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Desgin and Beyond (not recommended by anyone here but it seemed to fit the bill)
-The God Delusion

-Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World



This is the list of books which I looked for:
Chance or Purpose
The God Delusion
Origin of Consciuusness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Selfish Gene
The Dawkins Delusion
The Case for a Creator
The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design
The Demon Haunted World
The Origin of Species
Darwin's Black Box
Icons of Evolution
A Case for Christ


I would like to thank you all for your input and helpful suggestions, now i'm off to do some reading.

Without reading the entire thread, I think you'd be doing yourself a massive disservice without picking up an introductory college biology text. Older editions from even the mid 2000s can run as low as a few bucks, and they will be completely up to date on basic biology.

A peeve of mine is those who say "I believe in evolution". Evolution is not a wishy-washy concept that requires any suspension of disbelief. There has been over a century of progress in evolutionary biology since darwin's original theory, and during that time, the core concepts surrounding it have basically been proven beyond any measure of doubt. Evolution is not to be believed in, it is to be *understood*.

While the core concepts behind evolution are so simple that a 5-year old can understand it, application of those concepts to real biological science requires a very clear and detailed understanding of what is really going on in that mysterious cell. Thats where the real "problem" lies. Amongst those that I know that don't "believe" in evolution, it's not out of willful ignorance, but out of the completely understandable inability to connect the layman's theory of evolution to what they see around them and what little they understand about molecular biology.

For instance: A friend of mine thought it was ridiculous that anyone could believe that a string of DNA code could somehow be connected to physical biological things. It was quite difficult to explain the concept of transfer RNA to him without going way over his head.

You would be absolutely SHOCKED to find out how much you hear in your average evolution vs. ID debate, or even your average intro bio class is based upon *VAST* oversimplifications of molecular biology. Our understanding of modern biology reveals how disgustingly complicated it all really is. Whatever might seem like a counterpoint to evolution is often not so when you get down to the really dirty details, and it's in the finer points of genetics and biochemistry that you find how magnificent and necessary the concept of evolution is.

Without at least the basic fundamentals of genetics, cell biology and biochemistry under your belt, you're basically reading the books out of context. Reading layman's books will leave your mind filled with talking points. A good biology text will lay the foundations to really understand why evolution has absolutely nothing to do with belief, and is an absolute necessary truth to explain what we see around us.

 

[SparkyJJO]

taking a couple bits of this post that I had to respond to:

Originally posted by: zinfamous
1. of course creationism is possible; there are tons of people out there that subscribe to it. Creation, however is not possible. Well, the chances of it having happened are about 0.00000000000......000001%

And the chances of a species morphing into others is even slimmer. And the chances of stuff happening to form all the intricacies of nature today all by "chance" or randomness is pretty much nil as well. I honestly don't see how you can look at the world, all those mllions of little details and say that it happened by itself, whether by some cosmic cataclysm or whatever.

THERE IS NO DEBATE REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION. it works, that's it. there is debate within science about the details, from time to time, but not one shred of evidence has emerged to contradict the occurrence of evolution.

natural selection != evolution. There is no change of species from one into the other. Minor adaptations? Sure, to a point. But cross-species morphing? No.


Frustrating to see people go on and on about this stuff, saddening in other ways, and almost entertaining at the same time as well. It is like the guy with his fingers in his ears and eyes shut yelling, "la la la la I can't hear you!" trying to avoid reality.

Where did I put my popcorn?

 

[Martin]

Sadly, you seem to be horribly confused. The God Delusion isn't about evolution, its about religion and your large list of books is a comical mixture of religion and science.


Pick up the Blind Watchmaker - its about evolution and nothing else. Its Readable, thorough and convincing.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
taking a couple bits of this post that I had to respond to:

Originally posted by: zinfamous
1. of course creationism is possible; there are tons of people out there that subscribe to it. Creation, however is not possible. Well, the chances of it having happened are about 0.00000000000......000001%

And the chances of a species morphing into others is even slimmer. And the chances of stuff happening to form all the intricacies of nature today all by "chance" or randomness is pretty much nil as well. I honestly don't see how you can look at the world, all those mllions of little details and say that it happened by itself, whether by some cosmic cataclysm or whatever.

THERE IS NO DEBATE REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION. it works, that's it. there is debate within science about the details, from time to time, but not one shred of evidence has emerged to contradict the occurrence of evolution.

natural selection != evolution. There is no change of species from one into the other. Minor adaptations? Sure, to a point. But cross-species morphing? No.


Frustrating to see people go on and on about this stuff, saddening in other ways, and almost entertaining at the same time as well. It is like the guy with his fingers in his ears and eyes shut yelling, "la la la la I can't hear you!" trying to avoid reality.

Where did I put my popcorn?

What's even more frustrating is your apparent lack of understanding of what a "species" actually is. In reality, it's a human convention designed for the sole purpose of being able to classify things and sort them into neat little boxes, and even then, it's messy. There is no hard and fast distinction between one species and another on a molecular/genetic level, it just so happens that the simplification scheme happens to be quite useful for a great number of purposes.

The reason why the ID vs. Evolution debate exists only between laymen, and not in the actual scientific community does not have to do with indoctrination into the cult of darwin. It's just that to get to the point of being a legitimate scientist requires years of education, throughout which one will be inundated with the finer details of the subject, the end result being a very clear and detailed understanding of the process from molecule to organism, and everything in between.

If you understood microevolution to the point where you could explain it in terms of biochemistry, and then applied that understanding up through the ecological level without any major breaks in your understanding, you'd know how incredibly stupid it sounds to hear someone say microevolution exists, but macroevolution does not.

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: BD2003
snip

If you understood microevolution to the point where you could explain it in terms of biochemistry, and then applied that understanding up through the ecological level without any major breaks in your understanding, you'd know how incredibly stupid it sounds to hear someone say microevolution exists, but macroevolution does not.

It's like believing in inches, but not in miles.

 

[CottonRabbit]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

natural selection != evolution. There is no change of species from one into the other. Minor adaptations? Sure, to a point. But cross-species morphing? No.

Natural selection is a mechanism by which evolution occurs, they are very much related to each other.

To those of you that don't believe in macroevolution, what happens when several "microevolutionary" events occur to a population? 6x COMBO microevolution BONUS!? Evolution is the change in allele frequencies over time. While you can make broad assignments for macro and microevolution, you can't make exact distinctions between the two. Is it macroevolution when allele frequencies for 2 traits change in a population over time? How about 6? Where do you draw the line between your acceptable microevolution and unacceptable macroevolution?

To address your quote denying speciation specifically, different stages of speciation by evolution have been observed many times within just our lifetimes. Here I will gives examples of speciation by the biological species concept, because that is easiest to apply, but the phylogentic species concept works too. Speciation occurs in 3 stages, 1) A barrier to gene exchange seperates 2 populations (be it allopatric or sympatric, ect) 2) Divergence of lineages (by the processes of selection, mutation, and genetic drift) 3) And ultimately, the 2 populations become reproductively incompatible.

1) Barriers to gene flow could be changes in the environment, the migration of a population to a distant island, the development of a new food source. In any case, populations become isolated, I doubt anyone can deny that.

2) Now the populations will diverge. It could be by evolution, even "microevolution", and the isolated populations adapt differently to the environment. But even if you don't believe in evolution, this divergence can still occur. It's called genetic drift or random chance. Simple statistics show that a small isolated population has a high chance of have certain alleles move to fixation by the random changes in inherited allele frequencies over time. Or mutations will introduce new alleles into the population, mutations are well documented occurrences.

3) Now it is natural to see, that after undergoing changes seen in 2), the 2 isolated populations, if they are ever brought together again, may no longer mate with each other. Perhaps their mating song changed by one note simply due to random chance. Perhaps one population developed protective spines, changing their appearance so that the other population is no longer attracted to it. Whatever the reason, speciation has now occured. This is an example of macroevolution.

People need to understand, evolution is the unifying theory of biology. Every process in biology can be explained in the context of evolution.

Anyways, I suggest to the OP to specifically read a textbook on evolutionary biology. I used Evolutionary Analysis by Scott Freeman and Jon C. Herron, and while it's not the msot exciting book, it presents a good amount of evidence and case studies detailing evolutionary processes, both macro and micro.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: CottonRabbit
3) Now it is natural to see, that after undergoing changes seen in 2), the 2 isolated populations, if they are ever brought together again, may no longer mate with each other. Perhaps their mating song changed by one note simply due to random chance. Perhaps one population developed protective spines, changing their appearance so that the other population is no longer attracted to it. Whatever the reason, speciation has now occured. This is an example of macroevolution.

Oh thats so silly. Speciation only occurs when someone gives it a new funny name. Stop making things so complicated, its so much easier to understand when I don't have to worry about the details.

Oversimplifications are so much easier, that way I can have no inner conflict while believing completely non-sensical platitudes like "one species cant morph into another" without actually understanding wtf I'm talking about.

Maybe if I'm lucky I'll convince others it's so simple, that way we can all sit around a campfire and toast to our common ignorance. Screw learning, that's too hard.

 

[ZzZGuy]

Hmm, looks like I have some extra reading to do. I do not have time at the moment to get any more books as my flight leaves tomorrow and I still haven't packed.

I will keep in mind what BD2003 and Martin said.

-Edit- Oh and yes, I was looking for a "quick fix", a few book that put in fairly easy to understand terms how each "concept" (or whatever you wish to call it) works. From what I can gather that is the case on the ID side, but for evolution I'll be at this for quite some time.

 

[hans030390]

Just for future reference, you may be interested in the book In Six Days by Chuck McGowen. It can be tough to find (even online), but I could point you to a link if needed.

Basically, it's another pro-ID book, but it's obviously based around a literal six-day creation and a young earth. It's relatively unheard of, but I found it to be an extremely interesting (reasonable and logical) read (despite any questions it did not answer and any apparent holes it had).

I think everyone suggested Lee Strobel's books. I've generally enjoyed those a good bit (especially The Case for Christ, though it doesn't really focus on ID). The same goes for Behe's books...which you listed already.

If you're interested, definitely check out Mere Christianityby C.S. Lewis and Evidence for Christianity by Josh McDowell. If you like The Case for Christ and the evidence it provides, you'll definitely like McDowell's book (it's HUGE). So, you have plenty of good ID books to choose, and Strobel's/McDowell's books will provide evidence to support the historical accuracy of the Bible/Christianity and such.

I haven't gotten to read many pro-evolution books yet, though I plan on it soon. I'm also trying to read up on both sides as best as I can.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: ZzZGuy
Hmm, looks like I have some extra reading to do. I do not have time at the moment to get any more books as my flight leaves tomorrow and I still haven't packed.

I will keep in mind what BD2003 and Martin said.

-Edit- Oh and yes, I was looking for a "quick fix", a few book that put in fairly easy to understand terms how each "concept" (or whatever you wish to call it) works. From what I can gather that is the case on the ID side, but for evolution I'll be at this for quite some time.

You can certainly get a "quick fix" from layman's books, but you'll probably be left with "belief in evolution" at best, and serious doubts at worst. For now you'll have to have faith that what youre being told is the "truth" on either side, and I'd be especially careful when reading the ID books. I can see you're trying to give both sides equal weight, but also try and keep in mind that while ID is discussed in laymans books and backed by a few pseudoscientists, thousands of evolutionary scientists are getting on with their jobs, publishing papers, doing research etc.

Also do try and keep in mind this isnt the middle ages, and no one is going to be branded as a heretic like galileo for having controversial views. Scientists will certainly disagree on many things, but if ID really was solid science, it would have been incorporated into modern theory before long. That kinda thing takes time, but ID has absolutely *zero* traction here.

Eventually, I do highly recommend you read "the selfish gene". The title is absolutely horrible and really undermines what is really being said by using such a loaded word as selifsh. But when read in context with a good background in genetics, it is quite an amazing theory.