By SIMON PARKER - BOOKGEEKS
Added: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:00 UTC

http://www.bookgeeks.co.uk/2009/11/24/simon-ps-review-the-greatest-show-on-earth-the-evidence-for-evolution-by-richard-dawkins/

One of the great shames of modern life is that Richard Dawkins is, for the time being, lost to the noise of the intense argument surrounding him. To be fair, he does more than his bit to generate this noise and to some, persuasion has long since given way to antagonism. To these people, even to some liberal agnostics, he is no longer Britain’s communicator in chief of natural wonder but AN Other zealot occupying an entrenched position.

So much so, it may just be that he is now only preaching to the converted, while the other lot have a finger firmly inserted in each ear singing “la la la”. What a pity, because at his fluent best Richard Dawkins is the greatest communicator of complex scientific ideas in living memory.

If he carked it tomorrow, Dawkins’ reputation would probably not rest on this massive contribution to the public understanding of wonder, but on the anti God stuff. It is true he doesn’t subscribe to the notion religion should be respected merely because lots of people believe in it and his waspishness does not seek accommodation with faith because, according to him, when it comes to how the world came into being and how we came to be what we are, there simply isn’t one. But his real life’s work is dedicated to promoting an evidentially orientated view of the beauty and grandeur of life on Earth.

Some argue that this is “Scientism”, i.e. an alternative belief system. I’ve never thought this fair due to one crucial difference: scientists cheerfully abandon their own theories all the time when faced with contrary evidence. For example no scientist “believes” in gravity, they accept the current theory that explains it, but if that theory should fail it will be discarded and a new one developed. In Dawkins’ world, which greatly resembles the real one, hypotheses are continuously tested, disproved, discarded and replaced in a gradual accretion of knowledge of the world as it really is, instead of how some would wish it to be.
...
Continue reading
http://www.bookgeeks.co.uk/2009/11/24/simon-ps-review-the-greatest-show-on-earth-the-evidence-for-evolution-by-richard-dawkins/

TAGGED: BOOKS, REVIEWS, RICHARD DAWKINS