Read Why Darwin Matters Online
Authors: Michael Shermer
Why Darwin Matters
Also by Michael Shermer
Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown
The Science of Good and Evil
In Darwin’s Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace
The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience
(general editor)
The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense
Denying History
How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God
Why People Believe Weird Things
WHY DARWIN MATTERS
MICHAEL SHERMER
MATTERS
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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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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
Prologue:
Why Evolution Matters
2. Why People Do Not Accept Evolution
4. Debating Intelligent Design
7. Why Science Cannot Contradict Religion
8. Why Christians and Conservatives Should Accept Evolution
9. The Real Unsolved Problems in Evolution
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.
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