As many of you may know, ISSA has created its own freethought library to help educate members with the wisdom of some of skepticism's brightest minds. The latest book I hope to soon add to our collection is
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True by Richard Dawkins, which was published only a few months ago.
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| You know a book is good when it has a sexy cover like this one! |
While this book is written for older children, adults will find it just as engaging. As a lifelong atheist, I was impressed at the amount I learned from it. Possibly its greatest strength is the clarity with which it explains concepts like evolution: Why there are no “in between” species, as creationists are so fond of pointing to as “checkmate, atheists!” Dawkins asks us to imagine a stack of pictures—one of us, one of our father, one of his father, so on and so forth until we hit our 185 millionth great grandfather - a fish.
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| The resemblance is striking...I think I have his eyes. |
Dawkins then directs us to the first hundred or so pictures…they are all clearly human, but each is a little different. He then explains that this is the idea behind evolution—gradual change, each child being the same species as its parents, but a little bit different, and eventually the 50,000th or so great grandchild would be unable to create viable offspring with the original. That is when we consider it a different species.
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| Not quite. |
When creationist friends of mine brought up the “in-between” argument, I was always awful at explaining why exactly they were wrong. The argument was there in my head, but expressing it in clear, concise terms was always difficult for me, But in Dawkins' book, I have found foundational scientific concepts explained in a straightforward manner, helping me articulate the evidence for unduly controversial science. Not only atheists looking for a great way to express concepts, but religious people wondering what science has to offer, will find this book fascinating.
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