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A review by cosmith2015
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
3.0
Good:
I enjoyed several of the chapters, in particular the chapter involving islands and why intelligent design doesn't make sense. His writing was eloquent as always and I loved the examples he provided. I like the incorporations of the photos as well.
Bad:
I'm honestly not sure what he was doing with this book. He stated he wanted to lay out the evidence for evolution. It seemed like it was directed towards layman and those whom do not accept evolution. However, I don't think he reached his goal. While he provided some spectacular examples, I felt like he just skimmed the surface. He could've gone into much more detail with the fossils for example. He could have exampled just how difficult it was for fossilization to occur and that we probably won't even have fossils for all the current known species, much less a perfect record for every lineage. He also could've picked a lineage (maybe whales?) and gone further in depth with them, showing the evolution of it.
I was bothered by him calling creationist "history deniers" regardless of how accurate it is. It is an insulting and if I were a creationist trying to learn more about evolution, this would've been off putting and I'm not sure if I would've read the book at all.
I was annoyed by the footnotes he put in for random things. Some were needed, some were just snippets of a song or some random memory.
If I were a "history denier", I'm not sure if I would've been persuaded by his book. I think I would've been like "eh.. well god could've done that."
I enjoyed several of the chapters, in particular the chapter involving islands and why intelligent design doesn't make sense. His writing was eloquent as always and I loved the examples he provided. I like the incorporations of the photos as well.
Bad:
I'm honestly not sure what he was doing with this book. He stated he wanted to lay out the evidence for evolution. It seemed like it was directed towards layman and those whom do not accept evolution. However, I don't think he reached his goal. While he provided some spectacular examples, I felt like he just skimmed the surface. He could've gone into much more detail with the fossils for example. He could have exampled just how difficult it was for fossilization to occur and that we probably won't even have fossils for all the current known species, much less a perfect record for every lineage. He also could've picked a lineage (maybe whales?) and gone further in depth with them, showing the evolution of it.
I was bothered by him calling creationist "history deniers" regardless of how accurate it is. It is an insulting and if I were a creationist trying to learn more about evolution, this would've been off putting and I'm not sure if I would've read the book at all.
I was annoyed by the footnotes he put in for random things. Some were needed, some were just snippets of a song or some random memory.
If I were a "history denier", I'm not sure if I would've been persuaded by his book. I think I would've been like "eh.. well god could've done that."