Why Darwin Matters_ The Case Against Intelligent Design - Michael Shermer [0]
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WHY DARWIN MATTERS
MICHAEL SHERMER
WHY DARWIN
MATTERS
Times Books
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Copyright © 2006 by Michael Shermer
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shermer, Michael.
Why Darwin matters: the case against intelligent design / Michael Shermer.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8121-3
ISBN-10: 0-8050-8121-6
1. Evolution (Biology) 2. Intelligent design (Teleology) I. Title.
QH366.2.S54 2006 2006041243
576.8—dc22
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First Edition 2006
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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To Frank J. Sulloway
“There ain’t naught a man can’t bear if he’ll only be dogged.
It’s dogged as does it.”
In Darwin’s footsteps in all ways
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
—Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859
CONTENTS
Prologue: Why Evolution Matters
1. The Facts of Evolution
2. Why People Do Not Accept Evolution
3. In Search of the Designer
4. Debating Intelligent Design
5. Science under Attack
6. The Real Agenda
7. Why Science Cannot Contradict Religion
8. Why Christians and Conservatives Should Accept Evolution
9. The Real Unsolved Problems in Evolution
Epilogue: Why Science Matters
Coda: Genesis Revisited
Appendix: Equal Time for Whom?
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
PROLOGUE
Why Evolution Matters
Hence both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth.
—Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches, 1845
In June 2004, the science historian Frank Sulloway and I began a month-long expedition to retrace Charles Darwin’s footsteps in the Galápagos Islands. It turned out to be one of the most physically grueling experiences of my life, and as I have raced a bicycle across America five times, that is saying something special about what the young British naturalist was able to accomplish in 1835. Charles Darwin was not only one sagacious scientist; he was also one tenacious explorer.1
I fully appreciated Darwin’s doggedness when we hit the stark and barren lava fields on the island of San Cristóbal, the first place Darwin explored in the archipelago. With a sweltering equatorial sun and almost no fresh water, it is not long before water-loaded seventy-pound packs begin to buckle your knees and strain your back. Add hours of daily bushwhacking through dense, scratchy vegetation, and the romance of fieldwork quickly fades. At the end of one three-day excursion my water supply was so dangerously low that Frank and I collected the dew that had accumulated on the tents the night before. One day I sliced my left shin on a chunk of a’a lava. Another day I was stung by a wasp and one side