Exploring the Evidence of Evolutionary Theory with Jerry A. Coyne's 'Why Evolution Is True'

jordan: As above

Canada on Nov 26, 2023

Md Sharif Hossain Sourav: Very nice quality !

Germany on Aug 02, 2023

F. LaGard Smith: Coyne’s “blockbuster” Why Evolution is True lives up more to the origin of the word (meaning destructive bomb) than its more current, positive usage. The only praise it deserves is the foreshadowing of that part of Coyne’s more recent Faith vs. Fact, in which he does a masterful job exploding the foolish attempt of religionists to accommodate evolution to special creation through classic theistic evolution or today’s more contemporary “evolutionary creation.” As Coyne rightly argues, it is illogical in the extreme to argue that an intelligent Creator acting purposely to bring about human existence used a random, purposeless natural process (conveniently biased to achieve the intended result!).

Otherwise, Coyne’s book is elegant rubbish, packed wall to wall with circular arguments assuming the very conclusions he is claiming to prove; straw-man arguments superciliously destroying supposed creationist positions they would never affirm; and other breathtaking logical fallacies more expected of a college freshman. Nor would the uncritical reader be alerted to Coyne’s disingenuous assertions of undeniable proof where there are gaps wide enough to drive...

United Kingdom on Aug 26, 2016

Glen R. Bleak: Excellent Book and here are some of my comments:

Evolution is a chance game, but it's a chance game with advantages. If gambling was a random chance game, Las Vegas would be a small train depot with a few farmers in the vicinity. As Evolution produces a new species, then a new set of variations more refined than the previous will follow by pure mutation making it possible for future changes to be made. As chance causes the fine tuning of a species, also variations will be fine tuned. If you take advantages along with the refinement of variations at each step, then it's not difficult to envision the evolution of the complexity of a wing or eye or bacterial flagellum or blood clotting. In my opinion, fine tuning the variations has the key roll in Natural Selection.

However, I'm confused about Intelligent Design. If the most workable philosophy of science means to study natural phenomena's through there natural process excluding the gods or intelligence within the process. Then how can ID claim scientific status by this definition? There title rules them out. Why did it take a court decision to rule them out of the science classes and why was the philosophy not...

United States on May 14, 2011

F Henwood: That loudmouth Daily Mail journalist Melanie Philips once opined that evolution is a theory, not a fact. She meant presumably that evolution is 'speculation': that the evidence as it stands does not lean toward creationism or Darwinism. Hence, on the evidence there is, it is equally reasonable to opt to `believe' in either.

There are a lot of people out there who would agree with her. They need read Jerry A. Coyne's book which tackles the misunderstandings about Darwinian theory head-on. Evolution is indeed a theory, but that does not make it speculation. As Coyne explains, in science a 'theory' is much more than speculation about how things are: it is `a well thought-out group of propositions meant to explain facts about the real world.' Second, for a theory to be scientific, as opposed to mere speculation, it must be `testable and able to make verifiable predictions' and, third, `the scientific theories can be tested against other theories (pp 15-17).

What facts, then, support the theory of evolution - what predictions does it make that have been confirmed? Here are a few salient examples Coyle offers.

First of all there is the movement from simplicity to...

United Kingdom on Apr 30, 2011

Adam Shomsky: I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested to see the evidence on which evolution is based. You can judge for yourself if it is "a theory in crisis," as creationists like to claim. I have been waiting for a book like this; like many others, I have read quite a few books about evolution but there was not a good book I could recommend that summarized the evidence for skeptics. I was very excited when I heard about Why Evolution is True and I was not disappointed when I read it.

Most of the evidence that is useful for convincing skeptics of evolution's truth is presented in chapters 2, 3, 4, and 8. I'll just say that it's a great book and very accessible to the general reader, and then I'd like to sum up a few of the major lines of evidence.

Chapter 2: The fossil record
First, radioactive dating is accurate despite creationist claims: many samples contain multiple radioisotopes, so "dates can be cross-checked, and the ages invariably agree." Other methods of cross-checking radioactive dating also show it to be accurate.
>> "The appearance of species through time, as seen in fossils, is far from random. Simple organisms evolved before...

United States on Apr 27, 2009

Dr. Peter Davies: Jerry Coyne is a bit annoyed that it was necessary to write this book. I am glad he got annoyed enough to write it. In part he is writing against the intelligent design movement, and against creationism and he shows the flaws in these viewpoints not with rhetoric, but with well chosen evidence.

The book is a powerful and straightforward account of evolution showing the strength of the theory, its ability to make predictions, and giving many examples of the evidence on which evolution is based. After reading the book you have a good idea of what evolution is about, and what fields of study it applies in. Coyne is clear that evolution is a theory in biology of great explanatory power. The key idea is that of descent with modification.

He is also clear (in his final chapter evolution redux) of the limits to evolutionary thinking. Good scientists know what they know, and also have some idea where their knowledge stops. Coyne demonstrates this ability well. By doing this he becomes a far better advocate for evolution than Dawkins.

Evolution is not an ontological or moral theory. You can derive no moral lesson from evolution- it just is (p253). David Hume pointed...

United Kingdom on Jan 25, 2009