Richard Dawkins transformed our view of God in his blockbuster, The
God Delusion, which sold millions of copies in English alone. He
revolutionized the way we see natural selection in the seminal
bestseller The Selfish Gene. Now, he launches a fierce counterattack
against proponents of "Intelligent Design" in his New York Times
bestseller, The Greatest Show on Earth.
"Intelligent Design" is being taught in our schools; educators are being
asked to "teach the controversy" behind evolutionary theory. There is no
controversy. Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific
evidence--from living examples of natural selection to clues in the
fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein
evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from
plate tectonics to molecular genetics--to make the airtight case that
"we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming
and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct
consequence of evolution by non-random selection." His unjaded passion
for the natural world turns what might have been a negative argument,
exposing the absurdities of the creationist position, into a positive
offering to the reader: nothing less than a master's vision of life, in
all its splendor.
