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Loading... The Greatest Show on Earth (2009)by Richard Dawkins
great book, Dawkins has a witty style and the ability to walk the reader through the most complex scientific concepts with ease, making them clear, easy to grasp and enjoyable. There is a lot of stress on anti-creationism but the book states from the beginning that one of its aims is to refute the absurd creationist point of view. Another necessary book in the battle against ignorance and the religious fundamentalism that is growing in the US and elsewhere. Mi è piaciuto, molto bello e interessante! L'unica cosa che mi ha dato fastidio è anche il motivo per cui questo saggio è stato scritto, cioè: "creazionisti, avete capito adesso com'è che funziona? Ignoranti di merda vi rendete conto che con la vostra testona fate solo la figura dei coglionazzi?" Richie, quella gente lì non ammetterà mai di essere stupida (SI PARLA DI UN 40% DI AMERICANI CONVINTISSIMI CHE LA TERRA SIA PUF, APPARSA 10.000 ANNI FA E CHE GLI UOMINI UNA VOLTA ANDASSERO A CAVALLO DI DINOSAURI... E gli americani hanno dominato il mondo per secoli, 'ste capre... Non ci resta che sperare nei cinesi e negli indiani, i prossimi dominatori...), io e tanta altra gente seria abbiamo apprezzato il tuo lavoro ma non sprecare più altro tempo con loroaltri. Confidiamo che la selezione naturale faccia pulizia al più presto di questi geni pagliacci. Personalmente, farò la mia parte evitando accuratamente di figliare con una di Quelli Là. Beautifully written. More poetry than polemic. Intricately educational without being lecturing. One of Dawkins best and all the better for being accessible to all. Hardback version also has tremendous illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography. Basic coverage of some of the fields of evidence that support modern biology. Creationists have nowhere left to hide, which anyway won't stop them of course.
This brings me to the intellectual flaw, or maybe it’s a fault just of tone, in Dawkins’s otherwise eloquent paean to evolution: he has let himself slip into being as dogmatic as his opponents. He has become the Savonarola of science, condemning the doubters of evolution as “history-deniers” who are “worse than ignorant” and “deluded to the point of perversity.” This is not the language of science, or civility. Creationists insist evolution is only a theory, Dawkins that it’s only a fact. Neither claim is correct. The Greatest Show on Earth is Dawkins on top form: unambiguous, beautifully argued, with prose flowing like quicksilver. Though he looses a shock-and-awe flurry of evidentiary darts (natural selection, fossil records, molecular biology, and much more), he also mutes some of the shriller tendencies that have unhinged—or at least made hectoring and unlovely—his previous works. The result is a sweeping, wryly joyous case for rationality, empiricism, and no God on this green Earth.
References to this work on external resources.
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My jaw was dropping several times during this most pleasurable trip through the physical evidence of evolution.
In 4 billion years we went from a single cell to a fully developed human, and now each of us has repreated it in the 9 months we are in the womb of our mother. The wonder of epigenisis without a blueprint!
But the funniest part in it was his quote of Monty Pythons 'All things dull and ugly':
All things dull and ugly
All creatures short and squat
All things rude and nasty
The Lord God made the lot
Each little snake that poisons
Each little wasp that stings
He made their brutish venom
He made their horrid wings
All things sick and cancerous
All evil great and small
All things foul and dangerous
The Lord God made them all
Each nasty little hornet
Each beastly little squid
Who made the spiky urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did
All things scabbed and cancerous
All pox great and small
Putrid, foul and gangrenous
The Lord God made them all.
And if you ever want to marvel at nature, look at this virus, that looks like a lunar lander.
http://www.armageddononline.org/image/virus2.JPG
And this is just a single cell?
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSF9klvBdcjl-P7E6SsFU9cyeCih1NbIa_9tbXytHqI-k-OefCpPQ
I did not know that the skeleton of all mammals is identical in the structure and sequence of bones. Just the size and shape differs.
What an eye-opening book.
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