A book that explains some of the evidence for evolution while sucking up to the know-nothing bible-thumping assholes who have thrown out two centuries of scientific progress.

God's Word or Human Reason?: An Inside Perspective on Creationism

While much space was wasted writing about idiotic religious fantasies which are obviously wrong, not to mention childish and ridiculous, there is a lot of good science in this book. I recommend it.

One thing missing from the book: The human race is one of the great ape species. The Magic Jeebus Man was an ape. Christians worship a dead ape.

This fact, we are apes, is probably the most important fact of science because people should know what they are. It's ridiculous to write a book about evolution and say nothing about this obvious fact.

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"Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes."

"No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes."

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics

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What someone else wrote: "All humans are a member of the family Hominoidea whether they want to acknowledge it or not, making them apes and close cousins to bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans."

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A quote from page 264:

The next time you visit a zoo, go see the great apes. Recall the histories told by our bodies, by the earth, and by our DNA. These beings are not mere beasts, separated from humanity by an absolute gulf. They are our distant kin, our living link to all other life.

Now consider what those histories suggest about the future. Look at the past diversity of hominids, and how all that variety has been winnowed down to a single species: Homo sapiens. We have caused many extinctions in the past. We continue to do so on an ever greater scale. Will we do the same to the apes? Will we lose this precious link? Or can we employ our mental powers, acquired through millions of years of evolution, to turn the tide?

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There is one thing I noticed about the stupid fucking assholes who deny scientific facts, they don't care about the environment and they don't care about species threatened with extinction. They think their Magic Man magically created the entire universe just for them and they can do what they want with it.

I never met a Christian who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.

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I found this at Amazon:

God gave humans the ability to reason, but the Bible commands that we have faith in Him. According to Answers in Genesis, the largest and most influential creationist organization in the United States, the conclusions of human reason must be rejected if they contradict our understanding of the Bible. What are the implications of this worldview, and is it the best one for a Christian to live by?

In God's Word or Human Reason?, five former young-Earth creationists explore the topics of science and Biblical exegesis with the goal of showing that the scientific method does more to glorify God than to denigrate Him. Instead of providing a broad-level overview of the evidence for evolution and an old Earth, this book takes a new approach that considers the detailed expanse of creationist technical literature. The six main chapters provide an in­ depth examination of these arguments in a few key areas, including stratigraphy, radiometric dating, the origins of birds and of humans, and the meaning of the book of Genesis.

Although all five authors once were young-Earth creationists, today they represent a diversity of beliefs: two atheists, two Christians, and one deist. Each has included a personal account of their experiences growing up or participating in the creationist community, as well as the factors that played into their eventually leaving. As an interfaith project, God's Word or Human Reason? represents the common ground that people of many religious affiliations can find in their appreciation of reason as a means to understand the world.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"God's Word or Human Reason? might be one of the most important popular science books yet written. Highly readable and fantastically well designed and illustrated, it contains detailed, informed responses to a huge number of creationist claims and arguments, a substantial amount of its content not previously being covered outside of the technical literature. The book contains a unique blend of both personal experience and extensive scientific discussion. The latter will definitely make it of interest and value to those already persuaded by, or interested in, a view of Earth history consistent with 'mainstream science'. But what makes the book especially significant is that it comes from the perspective of former young-Earth creationists who explain why and what it was that caused them to change their views. As such, God's Word or Human Reason? should be required reading for those with a faith-based view of the world." Darren Naish, author of Dinosaurs, How they Lived and Evolved and All Yesterdays

"The chapter on dinosaurs and the evolution of birds is engaging, clear, and beautifully illustrated. It should make anyone stop and think about the richness of the evolutionary process as explained here." Pat Shipman, author of Taking Wing and The Invaders

"Evolution is one of the most singularly powerful ideas that has ever occurred to our species. Through science, history, and philosophy, this book provides powerful evidence of humanity's ability to understand and explain the reality of evolutionary change while simultaneously undercutting the pernicious myths of modern creationism. Cogently-argued and beautifully-illustrated, this book belongs on the shelf of anyone who has grappled with the big questions of how we know what we know about nature." Brian Switek, author of My Beloved Brontosaurus and Written in Stone

"Too many people who don't accept the reality of evolution do so with a major misunderstanding. They think that evolutionary theory is rooted in belief rather than data. This book gathers the evidence of the truth of descent with modification in clearly explained case studies, to help set the record straight." Thomas Holtz, vertebrate paleontologist, University of Maryland

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This was my customer review of the book:

Every creationist and everyone else should buy and read this excellent book about the overwhelming evidence for evolution. May 12, 2018
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase

The science in this book is excellent including for example what they wrote about ERVs:

"Common ancestry of humans and apes can be inferred from the other lines of evidences described in this chapter, but the way that shared ERVs reinforce this pattern is perhaps the strongest single indication of it, a truly powerful and decisive smoking gun."

What makes this book about the evidence for evolution unique is the authors have done everything they can to politely explain to the evolution deniers why evolution is true. It seems like half the book is about creationist ideas and the other half explains why the creationist ideas are wrong, while being extremely nice to the creationists.

I recommend this book for creationists (who unfortunately are not likely to buy it) and for everyone else who thinks evolution is the most interesting branch of science.

I suggest this book and "Why Evolution Is True" by Jerry Coyne are the two best books about evolution for people who are not biologists.