Reddit mentions: The best books about evolution
We found 783 Reddit comments discussing the best books about evolution. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 273 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.
1. Why Evolution Is True
- Used Book in Good Condition
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Height | 9.26 Inches |
Length | 6.3 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | January 2009 |
Weight | 1 Pounds |
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2. The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
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Release date | September 2005 |
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3. The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- Vintage Books USA
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Release date | May 1995 |
Weight | 0.75 Pounds |
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4. Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
Anchor Books
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Color | Black |
Height | 8 Inches |
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Release date | April 2009 |
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5. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
- BLACK SWAN
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6. The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary Edition (Oxford Landmark Science)
- Oxford University Press, USA
- Great one for reading
- Comes with Proper Binding
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Weight | 0.94357848136 Pounds |
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7. Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball
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Height | 8.25 Inches |
Length | 5.51 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | June 2011 |
Weight | 0.75 Pounds |
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8. Why Evolution is True
Used Book in Good Condition
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Height | 7 Inches |
Length | 5 Inches |
Number of items | 9 |
Weight | 0.45 Pounds |
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9. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge
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Height | 8 Inches |
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Number of items | 1 |
Release date | July 1967 |
Weight | 0.3747858454 Pounds |
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10. Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
W W Norton Company
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Release date | June 2010 |
Weight | 0.62 Pounds |
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11. Why Evolution Is True
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12. DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA: EVOLUTION AND THE MEANINGS OF LIFE
Simon Schuster
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Number of items | 1 |
Release date | June 1996 |
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Width | 1.2 Inches |
13. The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
Used Book in Good Condition
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Height | 9 Inches |
Length | 6.25 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Weight | 1.95 Pounds |
Width | 1.75 Inches |
14. Darwin's Radio
- Ballantine Books
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Height | 6.81 Inches |
Length | 4.16 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | July 2000 |
Weight | 0.70106999316 Pounds |
Width | 1.14 Inches |
15. God Created The Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History
Used Book in Good Condition
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Height | 9.125 Inches |
Length | 6 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | October 2007 |
Weight | 3.85 Pounds |
Width | 2 Inches |
16. A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada
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Color | Cream |
Height | 8.3 Inches |
Length | 5.2 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | September 2009 |
Weight | 0.76941329438 Pounds |
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17. Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth
- Griffin
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Height | 8.19 Inches |
Length | 5.61 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | July 2013 |
Weight | 0.64 Pounds |
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18. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know
Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know
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Color | Cream |
Height | 7.98 Inches |
Length | 5.15 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | April 1988 |
Weight | 0.63052206932 Pounds |
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19. The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition (Oxford Landmark Science)
Specs:
Release date | June 2016 |
20. Easy Strength: How to Get a Lot Stronger Than Your Competition-And Dominate in Your Sport
- By Pavel and Dan John (world-recognized masters of strength)
- Emphasis on 4 quadrants to help you dominate in your sport
- Sports Conditioning to become stronger than your competition
- Learn to coax gains, not force them
- Numerous sample training regimens
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Weight | 2.15 Pounds |
🎓 Reddit experts on books about evolution
The comments and opinions expressed on this page are written exclusively by redditors. To provide you with the most relevant data, we sourced opinions from the most knowledgeable Reddit users based the total number of upvotes and downvotes received across comments on subreddits where books about evolution are discussed. For your reference and for the sake of transparency, here are the specialists whose opinions mattered the most in our ranking.
>Not familiar as I probably ought to be. I know that there were other homo species -possibly at the same time as humans. I think I heard something about interbreeding at some point, but maybe that was just speculation?
To be honest, I'm not exactly an expert on the specifics. However, Wikipedia provides as always - If the article and the numerous citations are to be believed, they're considered separate species as mitochondria genetic data (that I could explain further if you like) shows little significant breeding. However, there is indeed some evidence of limited interbreeding.
>This is fascinating stuff!
I'm glad you like it!
>To clarify: do all the primates share the same mutation which is different from the mutation in other creatures, ex. guinea pigs?'
Precisely! Mind you, I believe there are a few changes which have accumulated since divergence (since if they don't need the gene once it's "off", further mutations won't be selected against), but the crucial changes are indeed the same within primates - and those within guinea pigs are the same within guinea pigs and their nearby relatives (I believe), but different from those from simians. Amusingly, because mutations occur at a generally steady rate, the number of further divergences between the pseudogenes (no-longer-functional genes which resemble working copies in other organisms) in different species will give hints at how long ago those species had a common ancestor (this, and related calculations, are termed the "genetic clock").
Nifty, isn't it?
>I guess I don't see why it would be demeaning to be patterned after other homo species which were adapted to the environment we would inhabit. Maybe I'm way off here, but it seems like the case for common ancestry could also point to a common creator. (obviously it is outside the bounds of science to consider that possibility, but philosophically, it might have merit?)
I have indeed heard that before; the suggestion of a common creator as opposed to common descent is a fairly common suggestion, pardon the pun. The typical arguments against fall first to traits which can be considered "poor design" in pure engineering terms, even if they're traits that are now needed. I can point to the genetic baggage of the human eye compared to that of the cephelopod (nerve fibers over vs. under the retina), or the human back (not great for walking upright), or further traits along those lines which suggest that we're still closer to our origins. Indeed, we can also look at things like the pseudogene involved with vitamin C above as unnecessary addons; genetic artifacts which hint at our descent.
While this additional argument, I will grant, is better at addressing general creation then special human creation, we can also look at repeated motifs. For example, the same bones that form our hand also form a bird's wing, a whale's flipper, a dog's paw, a horse's hoof, and all the other mammalian, reptile, and avian forelimbs - though sometimes you need to go to the embryo before you see the similarity. When taken alone, that may suggest either evolution or design; it would make sense for a creator to reuse traits. It becomes more stark when you consider examples that should be similar - for example, the wings of the bat, bird, and pterodactyl, despite using the same bones, have vastly different structures, despite all being used for the same purpose (that is, flight).
The way that my evolutionary biology professor phrased this is that "design can explain this, but cannot predict it; evolution both explains and predicts." This idea - that natural observations may be explained or excused (begging your pardon) in a creation model, but are what are expected from an evolutionary model - is the major point I wish to make in this regard. And, I shall admit, perhaps as close as I can get to "disproving" special creation; it tends to approach unfalsifiability, if I understand it correctly.
>If I recall correctly, this is the position of Francis Collins / BioLogos. It's possible, but I have a few concerns. The first being that I think animals do have souls. If that's correct, ensoulment doesn't help make sense of the theology.
Yup; ensoulment as special is less compatible in that case.
>It would also mean that (at least at some point) there were other creatures who were genetically equal to human beings, but didn't have souls. Cue slave trade and nazi propaganda -they're human, but they aren't people. It would have been possible (probable?) that ensouled humans would breed with the soulless humans -and that just seems . . . squicky.
Point taken; even if you were to claim ensoulment for all humans existing at a specific point and thereafter, there can be...negative connotations.
>So, for now, it's a possibility, but it seems to be more problematic than special creation.
To be perfectly frank, I'm not really equipped to argue otherwise. As an atheist, my tendency is to end up arguing against ensoulment, as it's not something we can really draw a line at either. Still, I figured I'd put it out there; I'm a little delighted at your dissection of it honestly, as you brought up things I'd not yet considered.
>Like I said, the genetics is fascinating, and I am naive to much of it. Short of becoming a geneticist, could you recommend a good book on the subject of human genetics and common descent? I took basic genetics in college, so I was able to follow the discussion about chromosomes, telomeres, etc. But I would like to know more about the discoveries that have been made.
Oooh, that's a rough question. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful question, but I rarely read books aimed at laymen dealing with my specialty; most of my information comes from text books, papers, and profs, if you take my meaning. Which in the end is a way for me to provide my disclaimer: I can provide recommendations, but I've generally not read them myself; sorry.
Having said that, I'm not about to discourage your curiosity - indeed, I cannot laud it highly enough! - and so I shall do what I can:
I think I'll hold off there for the moment. The latter two are focused more on humans, while the former is about evolution in general. I'm sure there are more books I could recommend - Dawkin's The Greatest Show on Earth has been lauded, for example. I tried to stick with texts which were at a slightly higher level, not merely addressing the basics but delving a little deeper, as you noted you have a measure of familiarity already, and those which were related to humans. I hope they help!
It's not an alternative to books, but Wikipedia does have a fair article on the topic (which I linked near the very top as well). And believe it or not, I do enjoy this sort of thing; you are more then welcome to ask more questions if and when they occur to you.
Alright I hope you get this. Sounds like you are a lot like I was growing up. I would read a book a week and listen to two. haha. these were books i had to grow into a lot of times. so don't get discouraged. some of these are tough but they'll help you in the long run. promise.
anyways.. here's my list.
Foreign Policy
-Dying to Win- Science and strategy behind suicide terrorism
-Imperial Hubris- good book by a CIA vet on what to expect because of US foreign policy
-Blowback- Same type of book as above, but better.
-The Looming Tower- a good history and account for Sept 11
Economics and Money
-Freakonomics- Ever wonder about he economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers? This book is fantastic.
-Outliers- Gladwell is a master of minute detail. This book helps you focus on the future.
-Blink-Great book on intuitive judgement
-The Age of Uncertainty- the best book I've ever read on the fight between Capitalism and Communism
Biology and Science
-Why Do Men Have Nipples- a general Q&A book. Good for info you can use at a party or to impress somebody. really random stuff.
-A Short History of Nearly Everything- Humorous take on some heavy heavy science. Easier to read than people think.
-The Ancestors Tale- It was hard picking just one Dawkins book, so I gave you two.
-The Greatest Show on Earth- Dawkins is the world-standard for books on biology and evolution in layman's terms.
Good Novels
-1984-Hopefully no explanation needed
-A Brave New World- a different type of dystopian universe compared to 1984. read both back to back.
-The Brothers Karamazov- My favorite piece of Russian Literature. It made me think more than any other book on this list honestly. I can't recommend it enough.
-Catch-22- There are so many layers to this book. So much symbolism, so much allusion. You must pay attention to get the full affect of this book. Great satire. Masterfully written.
-Alas Babylon- Yet another dystopian novel. This time about what would happen after a world wide nuclear war.
-Slaughterhouse-5 Vonnegut is a badass. And that's really all there is to know. I read this book in one day. It was that good. Satire on WW2.
Philosophy
-Sophies World- Good intro to a lot of basic principles of the major philosophers
-Beyond Good and Evil- Nietzche can get REALLY depressing because he is a nihilist but this book is extremely quotable and will give fresh perspective on a lot of things.
-Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand's masthead. Its a novel, but its also a commentary on her precious objectivism.
So there you have it. My short list of books to read. I can get deeper into certain subjects if you want me to. Just PM me.
I am not totally sure what you are asking for actually exists in book form...which is odd, now that I think about it.
If it were me, I would think about magazines instead. And if you really want to push him, think about the following options:
If you insist on books...
I see you already mentioned A Brief History of the Universe, which is an excellent book. However, I am not sure if you are going to get something that is more "in depth." Much of the "in depth" stuff is going to be pretty pop, without the rigorous foundation that are usually found in textbooks.
If I had to recommend some books, here is what I would say:
Hope that helps! OH AND GO WITH THE SUBSCRIPTION TO NATURE
edit: added the linksssss
>I want to create an alien planet and have life evolve on it. The problem is I am not a scientist and I want my aliens to be believable without going too deep into hard sci-fi territory.
Here's the thing: in writing, the rule is, write what you know. That's a general rule, but it's a good one. You want to write about subjects you're familiar with, because the confidence you have in this familiarity will show through in your writing. If you're really into Pokemon, you can write about Pokemon, and it sounds like you know what you're talking about. Readers have confidence in your authority.
I think the solution is that it's going to go to your benefit to do a bit of research, and actually study and learn a bit more about biology and evolution than you presently know.
A great primer might be Dawkins' The Selfish Gene.
You can find some great science fiction primer vids from Kurzgesagt and Artifexian. Be careful though, because it's easy to fall down the rabbit hole with both these channels...
You might also like r/worldbuilding
▬▬▬
>These aliens evolved on a carbon planet, and I want to know how that would impact life. I imagine life could develop without water or oxygen, but it would certainly be very different from earth.
Okay. The thing is, you want your planet to be in the Goldilocks zone, because water is liquid there. You want water to be liquid so you can have solutions with lots of dissolved stuff. Essentially, the cellular fluid in our own cells is a sort of replication of the solutions found in tide pools that first gave birth to living cells. It's probably a good idea to make your aliens composed of cells, or else they might all be ameboid in nature.
There's no such thing as a carbon planet, but you can have carbon-based lifeforms living on a rocky planet. Earth is a rocky planet, as opposed to a gas giant. Carbon is plentiful and is easy to work with, chemically. You can have photosynthetic organisms store sunlight energy as glucose, made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Glucose can also be used to make strong fibers, cellulose, which can be used as a structural material.
Beyond that, you've got a ton of leeway. To your advantage is the fact no one knows what alien life might be like. So as long as you don't break any physical laws and avoid pseudoscience, your aliens are probably going to be potentially believable.
> as I have no proof that we evolved from other animals/etc.
Such proof abounds. If you're going to debate these people, you need to know some of it.
I don't mean enough to ask a couple of questions, I mean enough to carry both sides of the conversation, because he'll make you do all the heavy lifting.
Start with talkorigins.org.
First, the FAQ
Maybe the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution next,
then the pieces on observed instances of speciation
See the extensive FAQs index
Here are their questions for creationsists - see both links there
and then read the index to creationist claims
That's just to start. Take a look at the Outline (which starts with an outline of the outline!)
If you're going to talk with a creationist, you either need to get some idea of the topography or you'll end up chasing in circles around the same tree again and again.
Yes, it looks like a major time investment, but once you start to become familiar with it, it gets easier quickly. Don't aim to learn it all by heart - but you should know when there is an answer to a question, and where to find it.
read books like Your Inner Fish and Why Evolution Is True and The Greatest Show on Earth
I list Your Inner Fish first because it tells a great story about how Shubin and his colleagues used evolutionary theory and geology to predict where they should look for an intermediate fossil linking ancient fish and amphibians (a "transitional form") - and they went to that location, and found just such a fossil. This makes a great question for your creationist - given fossils are kind of rare, how the heck did he manage that? If evolution by natural selection is false, why does that kind of scientific prediction WORK? Is God a deceiver, trying to make it look exactly like evolution happens?? Or maybe, just maybe, the simpler explanation is true - that evolution actually occurs. (Then point out that many major Christian churches officially endorse evolution. They understand that the evidence is clear)
It's a good idea to read blogs like Panda's Thumb, Why Evolution Is True, Pharyngula, erv (old posts here) and so on, which regularly blog on new research that relates to evolution.
Make sure you know about the experiments by Lenski et al on evolution of new genes
Don't take "no proof" as an argument. The evidence is overwhelming.
Okay, the issue I have with reddit's recommendations of literature is that it's so limited. The community has a number of blind spots; literature is one of them. You'll get the best of the fantasy/sci-fi genres, the Orwell-Vonnegut group, some science books and little else. Nothing from before the 20th century, nothing by an author that didn't write in English. It's depressing, because it's ignoring the other 99% of great literature.
Here's what I did. I read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian author. It's short (just over 200 pages), but good. Then I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. That was harder to get through because I wasn't used to the length (over 400 pages), but the payoff was worth it.
But then there's the issue of how much you're interested in going into literature deeply. If you have any thoughts like "I wouldn't want to read something that wasn't written in English" or "I don't want to read anything ancient," that's fine; but don't go into these things with preconceptions, because more often than not when I decide to read an classic I'm satisfied that it deserved its classic status.
If you ever get interested in reading literature at very serious level, use this list. It's the top 100 books as recommended by authors. It's very good in that it's spread across every age, from almost every great nation. Every one is a classic in the truest sense of the word. You may not like one once you've read it, but you'll probably see why it's a classic.
For some non-fiction that's worth reading, two come to mind. There's The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky, the founder of the A.I. program at MIT. He essentially deconstructed the various mental processes that human beings use in their conscious and unconscious ways of thinking. It's invaluable to gaining insights into what sorts of ways your mind actually works. (And it was recommended by Asimov too, you fanboys.) It's subdivided into chapters, with each chapter composed of numerous essays no greater than a page in length. It's filled with useful diagrams and relevant quotes. It's great.
The other is The Social Construction of Reality by Berger and Luckmann, two sociologists. It's surprisingly short and readable for an academic book. Read some of the reviews for it.
Overviews of the evidence:
The greatest show on earth
Why evolution is true
Books on advanced evolution:
The selfish gene
The extended phenotype
Climbing mount improbable
The ancestors tale
It is hard to find a better author than Dawkins to explain evolutionary biology. Many other popular science books either don't cover the details or don't focus entirely on evolution.
I will hit one point though.
>I have a hard time simply jumping from natural adaption or mutation or addition of information to the genome, etc. to an entirely different species.
For this you should understand two very important concepts in evolution. The first is a reproductive barrier. Basically as two populations of a species remain apart from each other (in technical terms we say there is no gene flow between them) then repoductive barriers becomes established. These range in type. There are behavioral barriers, such as certain species of insects mating at different times of the day from other closely related species. If they both still mated at the same time then they could still produce viable offspring. Other examples of behavior would be songs in birds (females will only mate with males who sing a certain way). There can also be physical barriers to reproduction, such as producing infertile offspring (like a donkey and a horse do) or simply being unable to mate (many bees or flies have different arrangements of their genitalia which makes it difficult or impossible to mate with other closely related species. Once these barriers exist then the two populations are considered two different species. These two species can now further diverge from each other.
The second thing to understand is the locking in of important genes. Evolution does not really take place on the level of the individual as most first year biology courses will tell you. It makes far more sense to say that it takes place on the level of the gene (read the selfish gene and the extended phenotype for a better overview of this). Any given gene can have a mutation that is either positive, negative, of neutral. Most mutations are neutral or negative. Let's say that a certain gene has a 85% chance of having a negative mutation, a 10% chance of a neutral mutation, and a 5% chance of a positive mutation. This gene is doing pretty good, from it's viewpoint it has an 85% chance of 'surviving' a mutation. What is meant by this is that even though one of it's offspring may have mutated there is an 85% chance that the mutated gene will perform worse than it and so the mutation will not replace it in the gene pool. If a neutral mutation happens then this is trouble for the original gene, because now there is a gene that does just as good a job as it in the gene pool. At this point random fluctuations of gene frequency called genetic drift take over the fate of the mutated gene (I won't go into genetic drift here but you should understand it if you want to understand evolution).
The last type of mutation, a positive mutation is what natural selection acts on. This type of mutation would also change the negative/neutral/positive mutation possibilities. so the newly positively mutated gene might have frequencies of 90/7/3 Already it has much better odds than the original gene. OK, one more point before I explain how this all ties together. Once a gene has reached the 100/0/0 point it does not mean that gene wins forever, there can still be mutations in other genes that affect it. A gene making an ant really good at flying doesn't matter much when the ant lives in tunnels and bites off its own wings, so that gene now has altered percentages in ants. It is this very complex web that makes up the very basics of mutations and how they impact evolution (if you are wondering how common mutations are I believe they happen about once every billion base pairs, so every human at conception has on average 4 mutations that were not present in either parent)
This all ties back together by understanding that body plan genes (called hox genes) lock species into their current body plans, by reducing the number of possible positive or neutral mutations they become crucial to the organisms survival. As evolutionary time progresses these genes become more and more locked in, meaning that the body plans of individuals become more and more locked in. So it is no wonder that coming in so late to the game as we are we see such diversity in life and we never see large scale form mutations. Those type of mutations became less likely as the hox genes became locked in their comfy spots on the unimpeachable end of the mutation probability pool. That is why it is hard to imagine one species evolving into another, and why a creationist saying that they will believe evolution when a monkey gives birth to a human is so wrong.
Hopefully I explained that well, it is kind of a dense subject and I had to skip some things I would rather have covered.
I really really wish I could have gotten to this post earlier.
Faith
There are always different definitions for the word faith floating around. It appears that your definition of faith is actually pretty trivial. If I'm not mistaken, you would have to have faith to believe anything according to your definition. If that is the case, then sure I have faith. The fact that I believe anything implies that I have faith.
But this sort of faith doesn't tell us anything. If I ask, "Why do you believe in God?" Pointing out that you have faith doesn't tell me anything since I've already assumed you have faith by acknowledging the fact that you believe in something. The real question is:
> Why have faith in one belief, and not in another?
In other words, how do you distinguish between what is reality and what isn't? What makes you think God exists? "I have faith" is not an answer.
Evolution
Its common for theists to make arguments like, "If God doesn't exist, then why is the universe so well designed for us?" They will highlight many variables like the temperature of the earth, or the earths density and point out (rightly) that if they were much different, we wouldn't be able to live. If the earth was much more dense, then our bones would break under our own weight, etc.
This is the design argument. "If any of these things were any different, then we wouldn't be able to live. Therefore, the universe must have been designed with us in mind. The designer is God."
The key to understanding why this is wrong is evolution. They are making an assumption that the universe was designed for us when there is another very real possibility: that we are the ones that are designed. They observe this compatibility between us and our environment, and assume that it is our environment that is adapted to us while dismissing the possibility that we are the ones that are adapted to our environment.
"...any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it."
Evolution showed us that complex phenomena can bubble up on their own and don't require a more complex intelligent agent to design and create them.
This is absolutely damning for the hypothesis than an intelligence had to have created the universe. Since we know of no minds that occur without a brain, and we know that evolutionary-type processes occur all over the universe, the conclusion is pretty simple. We don't need God to explain the current state of things, and more then likely God doesn't actually exist.
There is a great book on this called Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett. The book is dense, so if you don't have the patience or the interest, you can check out some of his talks on youtube and TED.
I've read so many books that I honestly cannot say that any particular one is the most important. However, here's a list of really good ones:
I've read so many more books than that. Since these are the only ones that I can think of off the top of my head, I'd say that they are the ones that have made the biggest impression from reading them.
The other commenters have already explained this very well, but I'm going to try putting it in my own words anyway.
There are two things to talk about: sex and gender. Sex is the biological aspect while gender is the behavioral aspect. But wait, can't behavior have a biological influence? Everything points out that yes, it can, but it can also have environmental influences such as culture.
So how did sex arise? Some animals have only one sex, and some are even able to make babies with themselves. The reason some animals evolved away from this suggests an advantage to having multiple sexes in multiple people. The multiple people part is easy, genetic variability. If you only make sex with yourself, you're going to have very little change in your genes, and any new hazard, like viruses and changes in temperature could wipe your genome out.
What about different sexes? In this case, it is all about specialization. Having someone specialize in nurturing and someone specialize in proliferating might have given advantage to our predecessors. This specialization starts in our germ cells, with one producing small, motile, and ever proliferating spermatozoan and the other producing large, immobile, once in a lifetime eggs. Males make millions of spermatozoan during most of their lifetime while females make eggs only in an early age.
Now, what does that have to do with gender? It is possible that the different costs on the different types of sex cells could have led animals to behave differently. The female invests a lot on a single egg, so maybe she needs to be really picky about whom she mates with; the male can just throw his stuff around. It would also be dangerous if males started mating with males instead of females. That would be just wasted energy that could have been used in effective reproduction.
Note that this behavior isn't always observed in animals. The ultimate goal is gene survival, and there are many factors that help genes survive. Maybe a male fish will find that having a male lover while procreating with a female will cause this lover to protect his offspring for some reason. This would reinforce the behavior of keeping male lovers in this species.
Now, to humans. What makes humans complex is the hypothesis that we have this consciouness that can govern our lower impulses and perhaps even act against them. This area is still growing, and there are many theories. One could say that gene influence is still what matters most. Maybe by choosing not to have children and instead focusing on my career, I am helping my genes survive through other people (all humans have some similar genes, and if my career helps the world, it also helps my genes). On the other hand, I could argue that there is something in humans that really allows them to outrule their survival insticts, or that there are new powerful forces such as culture that can govern our actions more than our genes and our own will together.
So, is there such a thing as gender? Yes, but in humans it could go much beyond simple inherited "instincts". I recommend you read the chapter on sex of this book and maybe take a look at the selfish gene.
> It was good feedback, thank you sir.
And your response was quite appropriate as well, so thank you too.
>Why does evolution disprove God? It doesn't by any means nor do I think common ancestor does.
I agree that finding natural explanations for natural phenomena does not disprove some god concepts. However, it does seem that the more we come to understand how the world works, the less need there is for an active, participating ("personal") supernatural agency. For me, at this point, it seems that supernatural agents such as gods are worse than useless at providing answers - they are at best a distraction from the search for actual (naturalistic) answers.
>As I said before, Creationists say the earth is 8000 years old or so, but that's just the observed time of man, not the unobserved time.
I'm really not sure what you mean by this. Are you agreeing or disagreeing that the Universe is truly ancient. I'm not a theoretical physicist or cosmologist, but I don't know the phrase "unobserved time". Could you explain your thought on it further?
>The only problem I have is the initial state of the formulation of single celled organisms, but that's beside the point.
Yes, abiogenesis is a complex topic on which there is no clear scientific consensus at present. However, there are several excellent, overlapping theories which make the arising of life by natural forces more than plausible on the time scales involved. Nick Lane's book Life Ascending: the Ten Great Inventions of Evolution has a really great chapter summarizing some of the recent research into the topic. But, unless you're adamantly interested in the topic and/or have a pretty strong biology/biochemistry background, it may be a bit dry. We may never know exactly how life did arise, but we have several really good ideas. One (or some combination) of these may well have been what occurred. In any case, there certainly is no need to take recourse to supernatural agencies as explanations. As your statement on it indicates you understand, lack of knowledge of details of ancient history on our parts does not supply anything like sufficient reason to suspect that the answer is a willful supernatural agency.
Have a blast!
> If you have any other books that would help me understand the origin of life or where we came from please let me know.
This is a huge topic. Human evolution alone in the last 5 million years would fill a large book, not to mention the other 400 million years of vertebrate evolution.
You might enjoy Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne it explains what evolution is, how it works, and piles on the evidence. A great introductory book for lay persons.
You might also check out /r/evolution's wiki pages:
Plenty of great books, documentaries and short videos on various topics. I don't have any book or documentary suggestions for abiogenesis, but I will recommend you check out
Lastly, there's one website I always suggest to people like yourself coming out of a general science-drought: The Big History Project. It's a series of videos and articles funded in part by the Gates Foundation that gives an excellent "big picture" overview of the entire history of the universe. If you want to know how stars are born and die, how elements are made, how star systems form, and so on, it's a great place to get a general picture of that.
> I'm becoming open to rational explanations of the creation of our physical world rather than purely faith based ones.
The universe is awesome. I hope you enjoy exploring!
Here's something that usually gets shared with people like yourself - it's called Science Saved My Soul.
That's one of my favorite popular science books, so it's wonderful to hear you're getting so much out of it. It really is a fascinating topic, and it's sad that so many Christians close themselves off to it solely to protect their religious beliefs (though as you discovered, it's good for those religious beliefs that they do).
As a companion to the book you might enjoy the Stated Clearly series of videos, which break down evolution very simply (and they're made by an ex-Christian whose education about evolution was part of his reason for leaving the religion). You might also like Coyne's blog, though these days it's more about his personal views than it is about evolution (but some searching on the site will bring up interesting things he's written on a whole host of religious topics from Adam and Eve to "ground of being" theology). He does also have another book you might like (Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible), though I only read part of it since I was familiar with much of it from his blog.
> If you guys have any other book recommendations along these lines, I'm all ears!
You should definitely read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, if only because it's a classic (and widely misrepresented/misunderstood). A little farther afield, one of my favorite popular science books of all time is The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, which looks at human language as an evolved ability. Pinker's primary area of academic expertise is child language acquisition, so he's the most in his element in that book.
If you're interested in neuroscience and the brain you could read How the Mind Works (also by Pinker) or The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, both of which are wide-ranging and accessibly written. I'd also recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Evolution gets a lot of attention in ex-Christian circles, but books like these are highly underrated as antidotes to Christian indoctrination -- nothing cures magical thinking about the "soul", consciousness and so on as much as learning how the brain and the mind actually work.
If you're interested in more general/philosophical works that touch on similar themes, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach made a huge impression on me (years ago). You might also like The Mind's I by Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, which is a collection of philosophical essays along with commentaries. Books like these will get you thinking about the true mysteries of life, the universe and everything -- the kind of mysteries that have such sterile and unsatisfying "answers" within Christianity and other mythologies.
Don't worry about the past -- just be happy you're learning about all of this now. You've got plenty of life ahead of you to make up for any lost time. Have fun!
I'm not a professional in the field, but my favorite free-time science books are usually focused on evolutionary biology, so here goes. One of the best discussions on this particular topic I've read is in The Ancestor's Tale by Dawkins. It's an excellent 3-page discussion you can read in full by accessing the "Look Inside!" preview of the book on Amazon (link to book page) and scrolling to the bottom of page 430. Do this by searching for "Maynard Smith" and clicking on the result on page 430. You'll need to sign in in order to search.
Anyways, I'll try to summarize the discussion here (although I'm a huge fan of Dawkins' eloquence in this book so I'm afraid I won't do it much justice). At a fairly naive level, sex is an evolutionary paradox. Modern Darwinism says that every organism strives to pass on as many of its genes as possible to its offspring. If this is true, however, why does sex, which is basically throwing away half of your own genes and mixing them with half of those of some other stranger, make any sense? An asexual organism can pass on 100% of its genes to its offspring. A sexual organism can only pass on 50%.
And yet, sexual reproduction is pretty much the norm for multi-cellular organisms. This suggests that the "twofold" cost of sex is somehow "cancelled out" by some other advantage of having two parents. One possibility is if the male commits to the child (instead of just running off to have sex with some other female), the couple can, as a group, produce at least twice as many offspring as the asexual alternative. While it is true that the male puts as much effort into child-rearing as the female in a few species, (emperor penguins, for instance), it is by no means the norm. So there must be something else going on.
Genetic recombination Dawkins hesitates to say that it alone is sufficient to counteract the massive twofold cost of sex, but it is definitely a factor.
----------------------
After this Dawkins makes some points that are very interesting but not totally relevant to your question, so I'll just summarize it very quickly. High school biology teaches us that genetic recombination introduces diversity and variety to the gene pool. Dawkins makes the point that sexual reproduction simultaneously has the opposing effect as well because it introduces the very concept of a gene pool. Think about it: an asexual organism shares none of its genes with its brethren. The very idea of a gene pool is nonsensical. In fact, you could say every new creature is a separate species because from that moment on, it's evolutionary path is completely different from that of its brother or sister. Yes, sexual reproduction, through the process of genetic recombination potentially allows for greater diversity and variety. But sexual reproduction introduces a gene pool that tends to diffuse the effects of genetic recombination. Gene pools have a massive "inertia" that a single wayward member cannot easily change. Dawkins forwards this not necessarily as a benefit of sex, but rather a consequence of it.
I second the reading idea! Ask your history or science teachers for suggestions of accessible books. I'm going to list some that I found interesting or want to read, and add more as I think of them.
A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson. Title explains it all. It is very beginner friendly, and has some very entertaining stories. Bryson is very heavy on the history and it's rather long but you should definitely make every effort to finish it.
Lies my teacher told me
The greatest stories never told (This is a whole series, there are books on Presidents, science, and war as well).
There's a series by Edward Rutherfurd that tells history stories that are loosely based on fact. There are books on London and ancient England, Ireland, Russia, and one on New York
I read this book a while ago and loved it- Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk It's about a monk who was imprisoned for 30 years by the Chinese.
The Grapes of Wrath.
Les Misérables. I linked to the unabridged one on purpose. It's SO WORTH IT. One of my favorite books of all time, and there's a lot of French history in it. It's also the first book that made me bawl at the end.
You'll also want the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Federalist Papers.
I'm not sure what you have covered in history, but you'll definitely want to find stuff on all the major wars, slavery, the Bubonic Plague, the French Revolution, & ancient Greek and Roman history.
As for science, find these two if you have any interest in how the brain works (and they're pretty approachable).
Phantoms in the brain
The man who mistook his wife for a hat
Alex and Me The story of a scientist and the incredibly intelligent parrot she studied.
For a background in evolution, you could go with The ancestor's tale
A biography of Marie Curie
The Wild Trees by Richard Preston is a quick and easy read, and very heavy on the adventure. You'll also want to read his other book The Hot Zone about Ebola. Absolutely fascinating, I couldn't put this one down.
The Devil's Teeth About sharks and the scientists who study them. What's not to like?
Ernst Mayer, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins have written some decent books broadly covering the evidence for evolution. Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters fits into that general category, and does a good job of outlining the evidence for evolution as well, in particular from a paleontological perspective.
Astrobiologist / Paleontologist Peter Ward has written a ton of fantastic books. I'd start with Rare Earth, which outlines the Rare Earth hypothesis, ie complex life is likely rare in the universe. If you read Rare Earth, you'll come away with a better understanding of the abiotic factors which influence the evolution of life on Earth. If you end up enjoying Rare Earth, I'd highly recommend Ward's other books.
Terra, by paleontologist Michael Novacek describes the evolution of the modern biosphere, in particular from the Cretaceous onwards, and then discusses environmental change on a geological scale to modern environmental challenges facing humanity. It's one of those books which will change the way you think about the modern biosphere, and the evolution in the context ecosystems, as opposed to individual species.
Another book by a paleontologist is When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, looking at the Permian mass extinction, which was the most catastrophic mass extinction of the Phanerozoic wiping out 95%+ of all species. More focused on the geology than the other books I mentioned, so if you're not into geology you probably wont enjoy it so much.
Biochemist Nick Lane has written some great books. Life ascending would be a good one to start off with. Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life is really excellent as well.
The Origins of Life and the Universe is written by molecular biologist Paul Lurquin. It mostly focuses on the origin of life. It's pretty accessible for what it covers.
Another couple of books I would recommend to people looking for something more advanced are: Michael Lynch's Origins of Genome Architecture, which covers similar stuff to much of his research, although takes a much broader perspective. Genes in conflict is a pretty comprehensive treatment of selfish genetic elements. Fascinating read, although probably a bit heavy for most laypeople.
Things I've read, or reread, recently that might be interesting:
[Echopraxia] (https://www.amazon.com/Echopraxia-Peter-Watts/dp/0765328038) by Peter Watts.
"Sequel" to Blindsight, but it doesn't really matter if they're read in order or not. Echopraxia is full of interesting ideas - Vampires (cloned pre-stone age apex predators with superhuman intelligence), technology-enabled hive intelligences, military zombie soldiers, amidst the backdrop of civilization cannibalizes itself in a battle between post-human factions.
It's also difficult to follow, with it's perspective being that of an unmodified human who is functionally incapable of understanding the motivations and actions of the various super-human intelligences that are the driving forces of the story.
The author's background as a biologist add a level of veracity to the story, and the research is near-peerless.
If you like complex hard-science fiction, with a side order of philosophy of mind, you may love this book. If you don't, it might be a huge miss.
[The Fifth Ward: First Watch] (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_1?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Athe+fifth+ward%3A+first+watch&keywords=the+fifth+ward%3A+first+watch&triggered-weblabs=SEARCH_SPELLING_122845%3AT1&ie=UTF8&qid=1509561625) by Dale Lucas
Pure escapism. One part detective story, one part middle-earth style fantasy. Elfs, dwarves, orcs and murder.
The writing was solid enough to carry the book, and it was a fun read.
[Easy Strength] (https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Strength-Stronger-Competition-Dominate/dp/0938045806/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1509561859&sr=1-1&keywords=easy+strength) by Dan John & Pavel Tsatsouline
An easy enjoyable read, with a lot of useful information and anecdotes if you're interested in coaching.
This rekindled my interest in kettle bells for GPP, and has given me a bit to think about regarding programming and athletic development.
It's also made me interested in reading more of Pavels stuff - Pavels writing style made me basically discount him the when I glanced at one of his books in the past, and I suspect I need to re-evaluate that impression.
I've never read Games People Play, and psychology is not my area of expertise. But, to answer your question, that is not it.
You could read a number of different pop-psych books and each will give you a different perspective. The human psyche is extremely complex, and social interaction is even more complex. It can/should never be boiled down to one idea that supposedly explains the majority of human interaction. Be sure not to take books like this too seriously: Most people do not consider themselves to be "playing a game" whenever they are interacting with others.
My education is not in psychology, but if you are looking for further reading I can recommend some of my favorite books from my undergrad sociology education: (IMO any understanding of human interaction must have both a sociological and psychological component)
Invitation to Sociology by Peter L Berger
Sociological Insight by Randall Collins
The Social Construction of Reality by Berger and Luckmann
These were required reading in a 4000-level class, but this particular professor also assigns them to his 1000-level intro-soc class (which is why he doesn't teach intro soc often). They can be dense, but they are very interesting and definitely worth reading if you are at all interested in sociology.
edit: I don't want to hate on a book I have never read too much, so I will say this: Whenever you read a psych/soc book, especially if it is written for a wide audience, remember to take everything you read with a grain of salt. You may find truth, but you may also find a very smart author who is too caught up in his own work to see the limitations of his theories.
I don't know what you're specifically interested in, but here of a couple books I liked:
Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown. He's a semi-famous magician/mentalist in the UK, and this book has a ton of really interesting stuff in it like hypnosis and memory hacks. The only issue is the NLP stuff, which is pseudo-science, but the rest is good.
100 Deadly Skills was interesting, although I'm not sure how useful it is.
The Selfish Gene is a more famous book than those two, but if you're interested in evolution at all it's an awesome book.
I'm not much of a science fiction reader, but I really liked the Foundation Series. Also most Michael Crichton books are good, although in particular I liked Sphere, Jurassic Park and the Lost World, Congo, Timeline, and Prey.
Your best bet is to contact the instructor(s) for any classes you're interested in to see if there will be lectures covering material you are uncomfortable with; it would be helpful to be specific (for example, if you're okay with diagrams of organs and tissues but aren't comfortable with images of the actual thing).
That being said, in my experience (4th year graduate student in molecular biology) few classes have been especially graphic. Off the top of my head, the only ones to be careful of are anatomy/physiology (duh :) ) and general bio as there is usually at least one dissection in the lab section (which you might be able to opt out of).
Another option is to explore your interest in biology and evolution outside of coursework. There are quite a few great books out there that discuss the field without being gory. I personally recommend “The Beak of the Finch”, which discusses the decades-long research project tracking finch evolution in the Galapagos. http://www.amazon.com/The-Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution/dp/067973337X
Good luck!
Evan Currie's Odyssey One series is more military than pure space opera, but it is awesome.
The Golden Oecumene series by John C Wright is a Transhuman Space Opera of epic proportions. I highly recommend it.
Rachel Bach has a great series called Fortunes Pawn. Also a lil closer to military sci-fi but it has some nice Space Opera themes.
Joshua Dalzelle has a great series called the Black Fleet, again more military sci-fi than true space opera, but very good none the less.
The Reality Dysfunction series though, if you are looking for a meaty Space opera to lose yourself in is a must read series.
____
I almost forgot about the Manifold Series by Stephen Baxter and the Darwin's Radio series by Greg Bear. Both are phenomenal reads, and while technically they are set in the near future and aren't space opera per say, they are must reads for anyone into Sci-Fi.
Take lots of classes and keep learning. When I was in high school, things like ecology and wildlife biology were appealing to me because I understood what plants, animals, and ecosystems were, but I had no idea what a ribosome or a micro-RNA really were. I found that the more I learned about molecular and cell biology, the more fascinated I became by these tiny little machines that power every living thing. I started taking neuroscience classes because brains are cool; I ended up getting a PhD in neuroscience with a very cellular/molecular focus to my research (my whole dissertation was on one gene/protein that can cause a rare human genetic disorder).
Get some experience working in a lab. Until you've spent time in that environment it's hard to know whether you'll like it. And as others have mentioned, population biology and evolutionary genetics can combine some aspects of field work and molecular lab work, so those might be areas to investigate.
Want some books? Try The Beak of the Finch and Time, Love, Memory. The first is focused on experimental validation of evolutionary theory (involving lots of field work), the second is about the history of behavioral genetics in fruit flies. Both were assigned or suggested reading in my college biology classes.
Good luck, and stay curious!
> If you could share it with the scientific community and it was valid evidence, you would become extremely famous.
This. Everyone who looks down on science severely underestimates the penchant of scientists to tear each others theories apart for fame and money. Heck, most would do it even if that wasn't the expected consequence: that's what they live for.
Science is institutionalized doubt. Everything comes with error bars and confidence intervals. At the end of the day, the most important thing in science isn't what you think you know, but how sure of it you are.
And on evolution:
> The evidence is overwhelming. And it is becoming more and more robust down to the details almost by the day, especially because we have this ability now to use the study of DNA as a digital record of the way Darwin’s theory has played out over the course of long periods of time.
> Darwin could hardly have imagined that there would turn out to be such strong proof of his theory because he didn’t know about DNA - but we have that information. I would say we are as solid in claiming the truth of evolution as we are in claiming the truth of the germ theory. It is so profoundly well-documented in multiple different perspectives, all of which give you a consistent view with enormous explanatory power that make it the central core of biology. Trying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics.
--Francis Collins, once head of the Human Genome Project, evangelical Christain
About 40% of college biology professors believe in a god of some sort, and another ~33% are agnostics. It boggles my mind that people think over 99% of them would accept evolution if there wasn't overwhelming evidence.
It's a gradual ramp of tiny little improvements over millions/billions of years.
Because all living things compete for finite resources like sunlight and/or food, the organisms with the optimal traits (perhaps it's a cheetah with enough speed to chase down prey) get to live and pass on their genes. These genes are inherited by offspring. With each generation there are subtle changes in the genetic information being passed on — in response to the environment. This is called epigenetics. With massive amounts of geological time, all these subtle little response modifications eventually add up to something really substantial like human beings with a complex immune system.
An easy way to convince yourself of it is to look at artificial selection and how animal breeders "play god". Take pigeon breeders: They decide what kind of bird they want — perhaps it's one with a long beak — and out of the hundreds of pigeons they have they select two with the most prominent beaks and mate them. They continue doing this over the generations. Several years later, you would already see the massive difference in the beak length of the youngest experiment pigeon when compared with the other normal pigeons.
Natural selection works in a very similar way to this.
Edit: As for book recommendations? Dawkins is the best at explaining it if you ask me:
Richard Dawkins' Greatest Show on Earth
Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmarker
You might try here: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/search?q=fact&restrict_sr=on
and then ctr+F for "evolution" for a few previous instances of this question, or here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/search?q=evolution+fact&sort=top&restrict_sr=on
or other variations thereupon.
Anyways, we don't make a habit of letting these questions out all that often, as they never really do well, and when they do attract attention it's mostly people who don't really understand evolution all that well, trying to explain evolution to people who definitely don't understand it that well, and it just never really winds up being productive (while those of us who do know something about evolution squirm in agony at even attempting to undue all the damage this whole "fact vs theory" thing in a somewhat concise manner).
I'm keeping it spammed (you could also try searching in /r/evolution), but my honest suggestion would be to have her read something like Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, if she's willing to (and perhaps you could sit down and read it yourself first, to be able to give it an honest recommendation). Alternatively Dawkins's The Greatest Show on Earth is supposed to be good (I haven't read it myself), although Coyne's writing style might be more appealing for the non-academic, and some people are allergic to Richard Dawkins, for obvious reasons if you know who he is.
What's her angle. Presumably she is of the faithful? If that's really her angle, then you might be hard pressed to convince her with a short paragraph or two that I could provide.
One of my best memories of visiting the Philippines (my dad lives there half the year and I try to visit every other year or so) is playing pick up ball with the locals. Pick up culture there is completely different from pick up games here, it was a trip having games just continue on and on and having people just sub in instead of calling next or anything like that. Also playing in a gym built inside a shopping mall.
And they play a lot more zone defense and a lot less defense in general! People looked at me like a fucking mad man when I was crashing the boards hard and running the break, like some sort of Kenneth Faried/Dennis Rodman hybrid (in the States I'm much more Jason Terry). It helps at 5-8 I was one of the taller players in a lot of these games.
Rafe Bartholomew of Grantland fame has a pretty excellent book on Philippine basketball culture, I definitely recommend it!
On evolution:
I urge you to read some books on the issue that aren't written with a fundamentalist Christian slant. The science is decisive, and the distinction between "macro" and "micro" is itself a religious confusion. (as others have already pointed out).
On the Big Bang: The biggest problem with the Big Bang is that we don't know how it happened. That is a problem, and scientists are working obsessively to solve it. But saying "God did it" buys you a whole host of new problems. How did God happen? Who created God? Why did he create the universe? You haven't answered anything by saying "God did it": you've just kicked the can down the road and added an additional unfalsifiable and unsupported assumption.
Also, the evidence for the Big Bang is all around you: look up background microwave radiation,distribution and evolution of galaxies, the abundance of light elements, and the expansion of space.
On the supernatural:
Any thinking that starts with "Do you think it's possible that..." is a HUGE RED FLAG. Almost anything is possible, but usually the sort of logic that must be defended with a "Well, it's possible..." is absurdly improbable. This is a good example. Yeah, it's possible that an entire other world could be layered on our own - but it's more improbable than winning the lottery, and I don't buy lottery tickets.
If I had to explain the fundamental difference between the way I think about the spiritual and the way you think about the spiritual, it would be this. You ask "Is it possible that..." and "Do you think that maybe..."
I ask "Is there empirical support for..." and "Does the evidence support the assertion that..."
As for the hope that human consciousness continues on....
Nope. This is it. That sucks, and I'm sorry. It's among the hardest pills to swallow about being an atheist - but it's true whether you believe it or not.
Read/watch more Sagan. He really wanted to talk more about science than superstition. Even the social/political situation about it.
https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469
Also, have you read any of Dawkins' books about biology, rather than superstition? He really didn't start directly attacking religion until he realized that anti-reality stuff was so prevalent in society.
I have to admit, first time I read this one..I had to have a dictionary open alongside it. :D
https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Landmark-Science-ebook/dp/B01GI5F2FS/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=richard+dawkins&qid=1554875427&s=books&sr=1-2
> Although, I'm struggling with the point to existence
I have to be honest. I really don't understand why so many people have this concern. I do understand that they feel it's legitimate, I just don't understand why.
I suspect my personal experience is behind that..I grew up Southern Baptist, and my first realization was full-tilt "I'M FREE!"
I don't care if there's no 'greater celestial reason' for my existence. I exist. I might as well do the most I can with it.
I love good food. I love sportscars. I love a woman's company. I love my daughter. I love soccer.
> and why the universe is the way it is.
I really don't know..but only the religious people in my life act as if that's some great crime. Personally..I'll just read the works of the people who are actually looking for it, instead of performing mental fellatio upon the pack of lying shamans who claim they actually know.
> I simply don't want to believe that I'm just an accident
Well, you're not! Go study more biology. That old Christian whine about "..the Earth is perfectly tuned for life!!" is pathetic.
The Earth came first. We're here because we come from it. Of course it's 'perfect' for us. It's our mommy.
> I'm done being force-fed information. I want to find out for myself.
And you can, if you just get past the fear. And I know that the fear can really blow around your mind for awhile. Wishing you well with it.
Yes. I've read a lot of popular creationist books. I've also read a lot of popular evolution books. Please understand, I accept evolution not because I haven't considered creationism (heck I've practically studied it with all the papers and books I've read), but because the evidence is there. It's true. But don't take my word for it. Out of all the books I've read, Why Evolution is True is definitely the best book for the creation/evolution so-called debate. Please, read it.
My favorite author, and this is his most fun book even if he has a couple better received books
Bukowski is an amazing author regardless of what succs say.
Great book. Brought the term grok into existence
Really cool graphic novel series
David sedaris is probably the best comedic novelist i've ever read/heard. I recommend audio though because he has great delivery, which is what made him such a popular guest on NPR
selfish gene by dawkins. I know Dawkins is a meme, but this book is actually really good along with a lot of his earlier books.
I've never studied Physics beyond high school but I have the same interest as you. A few of the books I've read that might interest you include:
You Are Here - Christopher Potter
Physics of the Impossible - Michio Kaku
A Briefer History of Time - Hawking, really easy to read version
There was another one along the same lines I read recently that was pretty good too. If I remember it I'll list it later.
Kaufmann is fairly well respected in the community of complexity researchers, but his work is veeery abstract. You might find the stuff you read there interesting, but I doubt you'll find anything to sway someone skeptical of the plausibility of non-God-initiated abiogenesis that their skepticism is mainly based on bias.
With that goal in mind, I'm not sure that pursuing the math angle directly is really the best route either (if there actually are any best routes towards that sort of goal). The appeal to mere mathematical plausibility is abstract enough that it's for a person to dismiss that and still maintain that it isn't plausible physically. It would maybe be better instead or in addition to approach the topic of known environmental contexts that make abiogenesis seem like a physically plausible thing to have happened.
From that perspective, I'd say the first couple chapters of Lane's Life Ascending is still one of the better sources out there. It's a very approachable text.
If you like reading you could check out this book by Chris Stringer, I think it has a different title in the US. He is one of the anthropologists that feature in that video, it is a good read, really easy to get into(if you like reading). It is really fairly balanced and looks at competing theories pretty objectively. It is a good modern look our recent evolution. Pick it up from the library if they have it!
https://www.amazon.com/Lone-Survivors-Came-Humans-Earth/dp/1250023300
I really like this sort of stuff, to me it is one of the most interesting and epic of journeys.
Hijacked is too strong a word, but I think two points are notable. First, arguably most of the really popular and notable books on evolution released in the last twenty years were penned by New Atheists proper or by authors who basically fit the New Atheist mold but aren't one of the four specific authors. A big part of the reason for that is simply Richard Dawkins. He's a popular writer and a biologist, so it was almost inevitable that he'd pen books about Darwin and that they'd hit the bestsellers lists. And if it were limited to Dawkins, I'd think nothing of it, but there's Dennett and Shermer, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Harris release one before long. Another part of the reason is that a number of the other books about Darwinian evolution that have sold well in past decades were penned by creationists like Michael Behe, so a certain measure of response is, from my perspective at least, welcome. At that point, it's about market share, and we don't want creationists having too big a piece of the market share. Their point of view is, after all, problematic to say the least. If it weren't for my second point, it wouldn't even be problematic that a) popular books on evolution are basically split between creationists and New Atheists, and b) that New Atheists make up such a large share of that market.
But my second point is this: New Atheists aren't just popularizing or "standing up for" Darwinian evolution; they're attaching a political and ideological agenda to that effort, and that runs several risks, the most obvious being that it can polarize people against evolution, as some commentators have warned it might do in Muslim countries. To my mind, the more insidious risk is that, once you've connected a scientific theory to a political or ideological effort, it becomes all to easy for its patrons to see it in those terms even when it has nothing to do with that effort. Without much noticing it, pro-Darwinians may start seeing barely articulated associations as part and parcel of evolution, until evolution is something more than a scientific model. Dawkins, for example, has turned evolution into a theological disproof with the subtitle of "The Blind Watchmaker". The title of Shermer's "Why Darwin Matters" sums up the achievement of evolutionary theory as a form of polemic against intelligent design theory. Dawkins, at least, is close enough to the professional practice of biology that he probably doesn't need reminding that evolution isn't really about atheism, but all of these guys are writing books for people who don't have the continual reminder of working in the field where evolutionary theory is most functional.
I say none of this in defense of the Guardian article, but I do think there's something to be said for the idea that our society stands to lose by leaving it up to the New Atheists to give evolution its popularly received meaning.
A good book that would help you answer this question is God Created the Integers which is a book on the history of mathematics by Stephen Hawking (yes, him). Each chapter has a short introduction and history of a mathematician written by Hawking, and then the rest of the chapter is the paper or excerpt from their works that Hawking felt was most important to mathematical progress.
The first chapter is on Euclid, and includes his basic postulates on geometry, theory of proportion, and his proof of infinite prime numbers.
The second chapter is on Archimedes, and includes his proofs on the surface area of a sphere and cylinder, his estimation for pi, his "sand reckoner" where he defines a method of denoting very large numbers and uses that to estimate the number of sand grains that would fill up the entire known universe and show that it is still finite, and then his fulcrum/lever method that he derived that was an early analogue to integral calculus.
So the rest of the book goes on through Diophantus, Descartes, Newton, Euler, Laplace, Fourier, Gauss, Cauchy, Lobachevsky, Bolyai, Galois, Boole, Reimann, Weierstrass, Dedekind, Cantor, Lebesque, Godel, and Turing.
It's a pretty heady book and I'm only going through it very slowly, but one thing that was clear to me from the first few chapters is that even without the tools we have like symbolic notation, cartesian algebra, imaginary (or even negative!) numbers, etc., the early Greek mathematicians (more accurate to call them 'geometers') were able to do some really advanced things.
If you were to go back into their time and were able to communicate with them, the hardest part would be teaching them to understand and use the symbolic notation for mathematics that we now take for granted. For them everything was geometry, and if it couldn't be expressed as such it wasn't seriously regarded.
I understand what you're saying, but I feel like you're intentionally trying to not understand what I'm saying.
To tell me that all cars look the same because "function dictates form" is very near sighted. Of course, function does dictate form, but that doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about. If you were to show Ford a picture of a 2016 Ford Explorer and he said, "Nah, function dictates form, this is the way they should look because function dictates form." You'd laugh at him. Just like if someone from 200 years in the future came and said "Your car is nice, but why don't you think about doing it this way?" You wouldn't tell that person "Function dictates form." You'd say, "Holy shit, I didn't know you could do that!"
You should check out Michio Kaku's book: Physics of the Impossible.
It basically talks about how the laws of physics don't change, but our understanding of them does. What we're able to do now, if you would have shown someone 300 years ago, they would have told you it was magic. Because to them, and their current understanding of physics it would have been magic. We know now that it is simply reasonable that you could have moving pictures on a hunk of metal in your pocket, or whatever.
"Our technology is getting closer and closer to an organic merger." And it is. What I meant by that is not that we've used technology to be better at raising crops, but that the electronics and circuits will become merged with organic things. I wasn't as clear as I could have been there. I'm thinking about how close we are to hooking our nervous system up with a fully functioning prosthetic limb and have your brain signals control the limb. We're practically already there, but only in infancy. "Once we're able to grow our circuits and such" so then as we're able to grow circuitry and meld the biological with the technological soon we'll be able to record video with our eyes as the lens, or any number of "magical" things. To us now, it seems like magic, but in the future it will be standard issue. This is what I meant, not that biological things would be faster than, or smaller than, but the two can come together and create things we have yet to dream up.
""Manipulate matter on an atomic scale" is, again, technology is magic - even worse, really." I have to believe you've heard about nano-technology. Its only the biggest explosion in scientific research in the modern age. We already are building things at the atomic scale. This is really the future, and if it sounds like magic to you then you're holding yourself back. Once we get the control of building things at the atomic scale, all bets are off on how things will look.
And you know I didn't mean that everything will look different.
There are certain elements to anything that if changed would change the item itself, that is obvious. A knife needs to have a sharp edge. That's the only defining part of a knife. You can make it look a million different ways, but if you take away the sharp edge it obviously is no longer a knife. But if I have a micro-blade embedded in my thumb that I can extend or retract by just thinking about it because I grew circuits and had a motor built out of several atoms you'd probably call that magic. Doesn't look like a knife that you know of, but by gawd it's still a knife, and I'm a magician.
I've read a lot of nonfiction sports books. When a decent writer covers a fascinating sports topic they can be pretty hard to beat. Some of my absolute favorites:
Play Their Hearts Out by George Dohrmann Phenomenal story that shows the insanity of elite high school basketball and the recruiting machine.
Bringing the Heat by Mark Bowden Fly on the wall account of the Philadelphia Eagles' 1992. Some great insights into players like Jerome Brown, Randall Cunningham, and Reggie White and Bowden (who also wrote Black Hawk Down) describes on and off-field action very well.
Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski A mix between Freakonomics and Moneyball as it relates to international soccer. If you have any interest in soccer or international sports/business its definitely worth a read.
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby Reflections on intense fandom from a novelist. Soccer-related (and unfortunately this book is the reason why I am now stuck supporting Arsenal) but Hornby's musings definitely apply across sports.
Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer Journalist returns to his Alabama roots to follow the Tide's football season in an RV amongst die hard fans. Great book about fandom and a chronicle of a season.
Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew Just finished this one. Filipinos are obsessed with basketball and this book describes the depths of the national obsession as well as covering the 2007 season of the Alaska Aces in the Philippines Basketball Association. Asian professional basketball is a bit different than its NBA cousin and I found the book to be incredibly interesting.
I suggest you read a couple of books that present the evidence for evolution very clearly:
Why Evolution Is True
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
Evolution itself is a simple concept, but the evidence for it is broad and detailed across many scientific disciplines, and it all fits together.
Regarding the existence of God, one can't prove that your God doesn't exist, or that any of the other thousands of gods that have been worshiped through the ages don't exist. The real question is whether there is enough evidence to positively prove the existence of any one of those gods.
It sounds like you now want an education in the whole process of science. The best way to get that is to read material directly on that topic. I suggest starting with Beak of the Finch but Jonathan Weiner. It is an account of a long term research project on Galapagos, but along the way Weiner does a very good job in showing the reader how science actually works. It is a Pulitzer Prize winner and very accessible. After than if you want something in depth, read, as I suggested, Science as a Process by David Hull. A deeper, much deeper, exploration into how science works and the philosophical underpinnings.
I don't see me as jumping the gun, I keep trying to get back to the topic.
OK, folks may call me a nut, but you might want to try Evolution by Loxton. It's for younger readers, but you could literally jumpstart yourself in an hour.
Then, read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne as well as The Greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins.
Honorable mention goes to Dawkins' An Ancestor's Tale.
I'm in no way qualified enough to talk about it myself but since nobody else has said anything particularly helpful, Richard Dawkins does a great job covering this stuff in a clear and easy to understand way in Ancestor's Tale
Atheism is spreading and seems to be getting more socially acceptable in many parts of the US. That is a social phenomenon worth studying.
Atheism itself (non-belief in any gods) isn't much of a belief system, but it is often associated with other beliefs. In that sense, there are "atheistic mindsets" worthy of study. Some atheists focus on the reliability of the scientific method and skeptical thinking more generally. Others focus more on the discovery that their childhood religion seems not to make sense. There are probably other clusters of "atheistic thought".
I don't agree with everything they say, but "prominent atheists" like Dennett (link and link) and Dawkins (link) have certainly influenced my thinking.
There are interesting polls (link and link) that give a broad-based sense of what people think about religion and atheism.
How to keep up with atheism? My three main sources are amazon, google, and reddit.
There's a huge amount of evidence for altruism.
Seems like you need to educate yourself a bit more before you go about flippantly tossing out such wide sweeping declarations about the nature of reality.
Good book for you to read: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Amazing work that helped revolutionize the modern view of Biology. This will likely turn your understanding of the nature of behavior inside out and will hopefully give you a new appreciation for the miracle that is humanity.
Oh boy, great questions but the answers can be really long and (again) belong under science moreso than philosophy. I think I'll link some resources and you can read at your leisure.
TL;DR - Biologists document lots of awkward features that develop in a tedious or haphazard manner that no sane designer would ever bother, plus we're missing tons of obvious features that any competent designer would probably include (hello, drowning sucks, gills would be nice). And their work is strongly supported by genetics and its underlying chemistry.
Thinking of Dawkins made me think of Darwin's Radio which is a great read purely as a work of fiction, but is based around a fun premise of endogenous retroviruses triggering evolutionary jumps; basically a sci-fi explanation for punctuated equilibrium. His book Vitals was pretty good too, although the ending made me want to punch someone.
God Created the Integers is the best there is that I know of. It gives you a synopsis of each (of 13) major innovators in mathematics, as well as a copy of one of their more famous or important proofs. It was edited by Stephen Hawking
It's awesome because it gives you a good history for people who like history, and then it gets down and dirty into the proofs for those who want the math.
If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend Dawkins "The Ancestor's Tale." It starts with modern humans, and then it works it's way back through our ancestors (explaining as it goes along when our "cousins" join the family tree; or to put it differently, it explains, in real time (rather than going backwards), our cousins departure from our common ancestor to the place they hold today). It doesn't focus exclusively on hominids or "transitional fossils," but the scope of the book will definitely give you an idea of the mountains of evidence we have for determining our ancestors, our cousins, and our family tree. I'm only about halfway through, but I've enjoyed it quite a bit so far. Take a look at the reviews online, and if it looks good, pick it up.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ancestors-Tale-Pilgrimage-Evolution/dp/061861916X
For books, The Fossil Trail and The Complete World of Human Evolution are good overviews, while Sapiens and Lone Survivors are interesting accounts of evidence about the emergence of our species.
I also really recommend the CARTA lectures available on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1B24EADC01219B23.
You can browse through that playlist to look for interesting topics, or search for something like 'carta university california' or 'carta uctv' or 'carta uctv [topic]' to see what's popular, or follow YouTube's recommendations between videos. Each one is pretty short at ~20 min, with 3 sometimes linked in hour-long videos.
There's a wide range of evidence and interpretations about things like coexistence of varieties vs intra-population diversity, the general nature and causes of genetic structure between populations, extinction due to direct conflict or competition vs. other factors, and so on - so it helps to see the range of viewpoints between different researchers, and range of evidence and interpretations from different fields.
These are some examples:
Emergence of Homo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W005V6OV_E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CazsHKnxmHQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5vOgDK3BKs
Sapiens origins, population movements, non-sapiens admixture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdP-Wjd1qSY&t=888s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ2H9NUn150&t=2343s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCzcPSMz1tA
'Self-domestication':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaS-teo33Zo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaS-teo33Zo
Climate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcBMrw9JQgA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLmCbBVq0xM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRk_gcNf7jo
Violence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRsQDfgwP08&t=12s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGaQ-oEpNG0
Art:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCuQw5I1-z0&t=423s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0TKYxAYGGA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rodmJcn7g
You can get by without enrolling in upper-level courses. There is some great free coursework out there if you want to go that route without paying money. Otherwise there are great introductory texts on the subject, like Why Evolution is True.
For strength training, Easy Strength by Pavel and Dan John. There is something in there for anybody.
For cardio training, it's not a book, but Lyle McDonald's series on methods of endurance training, also pretty much anything by Joe Friel.
For diet, Ruhlman's Twenty. It's not about nutrition, but it can teach you all the techniques you need to cook your own healthy (and on occasion not so healthy) foods so that you won't be tempted to go off the reservation and order a double deluxe pizza and chili fries when you don't know what else to eat.
Edit: For something very sport specific, there's also Jiu-Jitsu University by Saulo Ribiero and Kevin Howell. It's pretty much the beginning BJJ bible.
If you're really interested in this kind of stuff, check out The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins. In it, he examines our common ancestors with other life in backwards chronological order (our common ancestor with chimps, then our and chimps' common ancestor with the other apes, then apes' common ancestor with all primates, etc). There's lots of interesting information about how genes express and get selected for. For example, one particularly fascinating chapter covers the origin of our tri-chromal color vision, as opposed to the vision of most other mammals, like dogs, and what happened in our genes to bring about that change.
Basketball is the number one sport in my country, the Philippines,
there's a book about it [Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball]
(http://www.amazon.com/Pacific-Rims-Flip-Flops-Philippines-Basketball/dp/0451233220), no other sports compare
Edit: I personally think volleyball is a close second not because of how much tv time it gets but because a lot of people plays the sport, football(soccer) is slowly becoming popular, i know baseball is pretty popular back then but it has declined.
Edit2:how could i forget about boxing? Manny Pacquiao is a demigod
If you're interested in the subject, there are lots and lots of great resources on it, though nearly all of it focuses on human evolution. Even if you're just interested in evolution as a whole, Dawkins' book "The Ancestor's Tale" is a really great way to get familiar with modern species' progenitors in a really engrossing way.
my paper back was $3.50 it is published by basic books and it is offered on audible in a talking book format style let me look at amazon and i will just send the link to the book on amazon .... good luck
OK Here is the link :
The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385058985/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_V15xCbZG3CT55
Please be sure to read the reviews at that page of this book.
I highly recommend reading about the research going on into evolution of finches in the Galapagos. They've been the subject of study since the 70's and it's fascinating stuff.
For a short read, check out this National Geographic article. There's also the Pulitzer prize winning book on the subject, The Beak of the Finch.
tl;dr - Significant evolutionary change can happen in the span of just a few months, rather then millennia. (E.g. researchers have seen the average size of finch beaks change by 15% in just 1-2 years).
Interesting. No doubt you're right that some mammals have awful stamina and some reptiles have good stamina, but couldn't it still be true that mammals have greater stamina in general? My original comment was based off this passage in Nick Lane's book Life Ascending (page 210)
> What exactly is it that we have but the reptiles don’t? It had better be good.
> The single most compelling answer is ‘stamina’. Lizards can match mammals easily for speed or muscle power, and indeed over short distances outpace them; but they exhaust very quickly. Grab at a lizard and it will disappear in a flash, streaking to the nearest cover as fast as the eyes can see. But then it rests, often for hours, recuperating painfully slowly from the exertion. The problem is that reptiles ain’t built for comfort–they’re built for speed. As in the case of human sprinters, they rely on anaerobic respiration, which is to say, they don’t bother to breathe, but can’t keep it up for long. They generate energy (as ATP) extremely fast, but using processes that soon clog them up with lactic acid, crippling them with cramps.
> Could you please tell me where to find the documentation to show that (macro) evolution has been proven?
A good place to start would be Richard Dawkins' "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution". This is a book written by a leading evolutionary biologist in a way that laymen can understand, and it's a fascinating read. The book describes the various ways in which evolution has been proven, including the math you ask for. It also includes an extensive list of scientific papers and other sources for further reading.
I can also fully recommend /r/askscience. Also, unless you've already read it, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution - Dawkins, is a fantastic (quite simplified scientifically, but explained beautifully) book.
However, the two programmes I'd most strongly recommend are Wonders of the Solar System and Wonders of the Universe; both presented by Prof. Brian Cox and produced for the BBC.
not so much.. sometimes, and perhaps even often so. One of the appeals, however, for star trek has always been the early attempts to strive for believability. The early writers were in constant contact w/ the cutting edge sciences, trying to line up their stories w/ where science looked like it could go one day.
I'm getting this from Michio Kaku's "The Physics of the Impossible". It was a fascinating and fun read.. In it, he made note many times concerning Star Trek's attempts to stay relevant to the sciences they portrayed. Thought you may like to know
This is the book. Check it out if you get a chance!
Here is a good book for Christians on evolution. It was recommended by Dawkins once for people that didn't like him and would never read his own books.
http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0060930497
The author (Miller) is Roman Catholic, and also has several other good books on the topic if you look at the author's page on amazon.
This one by a different author is also very good.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0670020532/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
If you'd like the basics online, here:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/topicbrowse2.php?topic_id=46
I love shopping for people! I still don't know too many people around here, but /u/AlySedai is awesome because she can quote Homestarrunner. I would totally buy her Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible because I've been reading all sorts of ridiculous crap about dimensional physics today, and found this serendipitous. I also own this book and it is great and I am a fan of Michio Kaku's hair.
You should pick up and read Physics of the Impossible:A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
There is a chapter dedicated to how to create a plausible light saber, as well as things like force fields etc that we see in popular sci fi.
E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy often gets attacked as being too conservative. I haven't actually read it to give my own opinion, but that's the reputation.
Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind might interest you, too. Bloom was definitely conservative, but the book curiously gets a certain amount of play among leftist thinkers.
For Atheism:
For Christianity:
You could start with a book like this: E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy or Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book or How to Think About the Great Ideas.
Or you can, like you've said, gather some info. about certain historical periods or cultural eras and decide to learn more about them. It's not easy, but you're living in a time where you can easily and freely access a lot of information.
The Ancestors Tale
Dawkins gets a lot of hate, but the man knows his evolutionary biology and he can write! This is a great read, and a good overview of human ancestry, and if you're interested in the finer details of natural selection, follow it up with The Selfish Gene.
First of all, OP is definitely talking about terraforming - for what other reason would humanity attempt to create an artificial atmosphere?
> As far as the technology, it is just a matter of scale and materials engineering to build large enough generators.
Seriously? This simply isn't true.
>so there is no point in doing the math at this time.
Actually, the math dealing with volume of gases involved and amount of energy in the total system are hugely relevant in terms of human scale vs. planetary scale.
The thing is - your argument is arbitrary as hell no matter how much you write. There's nothing wrong with thought experiments. But there's a difference between those born in good theory and daydreams. The fact is that this technology may never be developed and may be impossible. It is certainly WELL beyond the range of human endeavors and will remain so for a very long time, more on the 10,000-100,0000 year scale, if ever. You speak of it as an inevitability, which it isn't.
Have a look at Dr. Kaku's book, Physics of the Impossible, for a good speculative overview of technological advancement in regards to energy manipulation and generation. I think you'll have a better appreciation of the scales involved after reading it (though he doesn't mention terraforming specifically, if I recall.)
Because there is no god, just the universe of which you are a part of. Get the strong feeling of being a part of this universe next time you trip (if you trip again shrooms might be the better choice). Also i think your real crisis is obvious: You seak a worldview. Go read some E.O. Willson (the social conquest of the earth) or the "ancestors tale" by richard dawkins (https://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-Tale-Pilgrimage-Dawn-Evolution/dp/061861916X) and also read about some philosphers. I think THIS is what would really really help you. Go for it and speak about your new insights with your councilor. You will be happier and more fullfilled than prior the experience. But dont try to get religious, thank you.
Well, "Pacific Rims" is about his journey/immersion to the Philippines in search of this crazy-obsessive basketball culture he heard about in the States. He thought it was an interesting enough subject to cover so he convinced his Fulbright panel to send him here. I may be biased because I'm Filipino haha I'm 80 pages in and I love this thing.
Here's an Amazon link for the book and a webseries he did for NatGeo called "Pinoy hoops."
Do you have a copy of God Created the Integers?
> Pulled together for the first time, and paired with commentary from the world's most respected scholars, God Created the Integers presents history's extraordinary moments in math, culled from 2,500 years of history and 21 distinguished mathematicians, four more than the hardcover edition. Each chapter begins with a profile of one of these mathematical masters, followed by original printings of their relevant works. This new paperback edition includes the work of Euler, Galois, Bolyai, and Lobachevsky.
I recommend [A Fair Country.] (http://www.amazon.ca/Fair-Country-Telling-Truths-Canada/dp/0143168428/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320394310&sr=1-2) It's more of a sociological perspective, but I definitely enjoyed it.
If you haven't yet read them, Dawkin's The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype are excellent overviews of the unexpected intricacies of the operation of evolution, with the target audience of the educated layperson. 40 and 30 years old, respectively, but still hold up. Well worth your time if you're interested in such things!
I recommend "The Greatest Show On Earth".
You didn't like "The God Delusion"? I thought it was awesome.
Welcome to the Church of Richard Dawkins.
Start with this - Read it a few times.
Then try this - This one is heavy but worth it.
When your done, go back to your original faith and research it. You mentioned you were a christian. Read the bible again having absorbed these books. To be an effictive Atheist you need to understand the perspective of the religious.
Let's count the logical fallacies! This should be fun.
>You are out-numbered by several billion people who actually have faith in something that is Superior to the world and life.
Argument ad populum, just because lots of people believe something, does not mean it is true. At one point, most people thought the sun revolved around the earth
>...just because someone is religious, doesn't automatically make them wrong about something.
Straw man. Atheists don't say that a religious person is automatically wrong. Also, we recognize that religious people obviously have, and continue to, make lots of contributions to science.
>If we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?
A complete misunderstanding of evolution. Try reading Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.
>The most ridiculous thing i've ever heard is humans being born from exploding stars.
This matter refers to the carbon, iron, calcium, etc necessary for life was first fused from hydrogen and helium in the fusion furnaces of stars and when they exploded (developing into planets and such) allowed life to evolve in the first place. No stars = no heavy metals = no life.
>So by your logic there is not a SINGLE event of genocide that has been occured by non-religious affairs?
Straw man. No atheist I've ever heard of thinks that every bad thing in history is done only by the religious or for only religious reasons.
>Why NOT believe in God? Why take the risks of going to Hell?
Pascal's wager? I would hope you would see the flaws in that pretty clearly. One flaw: you said you weren't Christian (a Muslim I'd presume) so what if Christianity is correct? The new testament quite clearly states the only way to heaven is through Jesus. Another: what if there is a god, but he only lets atheists into heaven?
>What i meant is, why does over half the world believe in him?
Argument ad populum again.
>Big bang theory? How did that happen? you can't figure that out because your little tools have been created by humans, which are very inferior to God. the only answer that makes sense is, somebody has got to have created the universe. Its not like its been around. Who created God? No one knows, but dont go ahead and call myself a hypocrite.
You are being a hypocrite here. "Big bang theory? How did that happen? you can't figure that out because your little tools have been created by humans, which are very inferior to God."
Why is there a god?
"No one knows, but dont go ahead and call myself a hypocrite."
Ah, that all makes sense now... ಠ_ಠ
>Why is God making chaos on earth instead of making us live in luxury in the gardens of paradise? Its a TEST.
If your God is omniscient, he would know the outcome, therefore making tests irrelevant.
Why Evolution is True - By Jerry Coyne
The author specifically and purposefully avoids all talk of religion and morality, and very simply and concisely lays out the evidence and logic behind evolutionary theory.
Anyone who reads this book and continues denying evolution is not approaching the subject honestly, or has other reasons (religious) for rejecting evolution.
It's only a couple hundred pages, and certainly is no longer than 'Life How Did It Get Here-By Evolution or By Creation', which I am nearly 100% certain is what he will be giving you. (For a fun game, take a shot every time you read a blatant lie or intentional misstatement of fact, or quote mine you find in that book. Just be sure you don't need to drive for the next couple of days.)
He may give you the new Creationism tract they introduced this summer, which is nothing more than excerpts from the larger book.
If we are talking about social progress I honestly believe it is because of racism. Canadians are comfortable with complexity and understand that both individual and group rights are important. Americans live in a perceived power struggle (within themselves and between groups) that they can't reconcile.
>The long winters that the first settlers faced, forcing them to look out for one another?
And the First Nations people that showed these settlers how to live and brought them into their ever-growing circles and showed them what acceptance really looks like.
Book? -->
http://www.amazon.ca/Fair-Country-Telling-Truths-Canada/dp/0143168428
Well you start with the wikipedia page on human evolution. There is also more about human evolution from the national geographic. In terms of books I highly recommend the ancestors tale which takes you through evolution backwards, starting with humans and ending with the first life single celled organisms living billions of years ago. You can also try any number of these books on human evolution although I would recommend this one since it is one that I have read and worked with is a human voyage.
If you would like I could give you a quick run down of human evolution, fossil finds and current thoughts on the subject.
Definitely read it. About evolution, I recommend Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth
Along those lines, Dawkins is great for explaining evolution in easy-to-understand detail. Pick pretty much any book by him and you'll get a very good education.
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time follows the Drs Grant who followed finches in the Galapagos over multiple generations. and observed the beginnings of the process of speciation. It's a very good book, and I highly encourage you to read it.
Right, I have a bit of a terrible memory so here are some... not all of them have a woman as the main but generally more than just 'supporting' or 'girlfriend' roles :)
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear. This is part of a series and I'm pretty sure this is the first in that series with Darwin's Children the next one.
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
Ender's Game.
Mainly my favourite authors are Greg Bear, Greg Egan, Neal Stephenson, Stephen Baxter, Philip K Dick - the usual crowd. Do you have any recommendations?
I remember Darwin's Radio having a lot of science, and a super interesting premise. How would the world fact if all of a sudden more and more children showed different abilities to their parents?
The Greatest Show on Earth
or
The Ancestor's Tale which is a personal favorite of mine although not specifically devoted to evidence arguments. It's just an amazing read through our biological world and along the way the case for evolution becomes overwhelming.
A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul is a good read that addresses this question. He has a fascinating POV on it.
> Why can't God copy/paste?
I can see this has already gone nowhere fast.
If you wish to entertain the possibility of another truth, I highly recommend this book. Before you ask the inevitable, yes - I've read the Bible. Didn't find the truth in it, unfortunately.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/146923307X
I think Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale is one of his best. It takes the traditional bacteria to human story of evolution and flips it on its head, escaping the sense of directed progress that so often occurs in evolutionary books. I would also second the suggestion for Shubin's Your Inner Fish.
Read Michio Kaku's book for an excellent explanation by a brilliant theoretical physicist. http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Impossible-Scientific-Exploration-Teleportation/dp/0307278824/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1321968155&sr=8-3
Then I'd suggest The Ancestor's Tale. It is a fantastic and beautiful journey into the past.
I really like the book "God Created The Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History" from Stephen Hawking because he makes a historical introduction and then he puts the original texts.
Certainly, a worthful reading.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/d2YVk2ZRuQuqvVlu/giphy.gif
“A Métis Civilization,” Saul makes a strong (if counterintuitive) case that Canadian culture owes more to its native roots than to the European settlers and their Judeo-Christian belief system
A Fair Country : Telling Truths About Canada N/A https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0143168428/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdo_TfXLzb1W1DE1S
When it comes to understanding evolution, Why Evolution is True is a very entertaining, easily read introduction. I would also recommend The End of Faith by Sam Harris.
I've been reading this book about basketball in the Philippines and the PBA and it is awesome. I really want to visit Manila now and just play pick up games all the time.
He is an absolute legend in the Philippines (PBA). Rafe Bartholomew, who was a Grantland contributor, wrote a great book about the PBA and a good chunk of it is about Bates.
Amazon link
Loved your book Physics of the Impossible. I am currently in my second year as a Materials Engineering student. In your opinion what is the most interesting new material being developed right now?
Here is a good book about the people who study Darwin's Finches in the Galapagos. The researchers have documented the birds evolving very quickly in response to droughts and floods on the island. It's fascinating!
I think you have touched on something very important. There is a really good book on this called Facts Can't Speak for Themselves by the nationally known and respected jury consultant Eric Oliver.
His theory is that we are hardwired for story telling and that we have to frame facts that can be conveyed in a narrative manner that touches the stories that people have internally. It is a method for tapping into a type of confirmation bias. Essentially, framing facts in a narrative in such a way that we are preaching to the choir even if they disagree with us. But, you have to listen to discover the song they are singing.
I think if we all learn to listen more to discover the stories that people have internally, it opens a door to communicate with people through story telling to get our points across no matter what it is.
Most people operate in an analysis fact free world and make decisions based on the narratives they have constructed from personal experience. This is a mental shortcut in all of our brains that allow us to survive and not drown in the incredible amounts of data we experience from birth to death. It allows us to survive by deciding what is an immediate issue, like the danger of rattle snake right next to you rather than a lion half a mile away.
Then the use of language is how we survive as a group by relating stories to other people. Those stories propagate and rise in importance in how is is perceived to aid in survival. If we can connect and share experiences, we can move people in our direction.
Two other books worth reading is Dawking, The Selfish Gene and The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille.
I think your student may be borrowing ideas from E.D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy, seen partially here - which is frequently cited in literacy debates. So then I wonder if he's taking his ideas from E.D. Hirsch, Jr's several best-selling books on "cultural literacy" (like Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know). It does sound quite similar to what he describes in the small paragraph you've given us.
For example: Hirsch contends that "literacy is more than just the actual mechanics of reading. Literacy means understanding what you read and to understand what you read you need to have the appropriate background knowledge." He criticizes the formalistic theories of literacy that focus almost entirely on formal reading skills without paying much attention to the background knowledge or schema that students need to know before they can comprehend a given text. ... Hirsch concludes "that shared information is a necessary background to true literacy." Source - Cultural Literacy in the New Millennium: Revisiting E.D. Hirsch.
The "cultural processes" that your student refers to seem to relate to Hirsch's argument that we must understand how students utilize and process "background knowledge" aka their personal "cultural literacy" to gain full understanding of what they encounter in education and in readings.
If you're worried, I'd look into Hirsch's work a little further to see if he seems to be pulling more from it. It does look like he may be doing so, particularly because of he describes "true literacy" (a phrase Hirsch uses) a lot like how Hirsch describes cultural literacy. He may not, though! It's definitely your call in the end what's going on here.
EDIT: It is definitely from the article mentioned in /u/od_9 's post, but the author (a prof at UC Berkeley) is using cultural literacy ideas from Hirsch and similar scholars, so I wasn't completely off-track!
> I do not understand the theory and I thought that based on the answers that I received here I would make a decision based on how much I really want to read up on it.
That is literally like asking about how to make ice cream in a subreddit about developing black and white film.
If you're interested in a topic, research the topic using relevant resources.
>Can you suggest some books that a person in my position of ignorance would find beneficial?
Start with Why Evolution is True, Wikipedia, RationalWiki, Iron Chariots, and any highschool text on evolution, and then go from there.
I just started reading some of Richard Dawkins - The Ancestor's Tale, and it seems pretty good.
The Beak of the Finch is a pretty good read.
Read Dawkin's Ancestor Tale - In short, creatures that survive by hunting and foraging through small enclosed spaces with little light need to know what's in front and on the side of them as they creep around.
Whiskers are used to provide that data. What's really interesting is the amount of gray matter (sensory processing) dedicated to the feedback.
Humans have large sensory areas for eyes. Dogs for olfactory. Moles for their whiskers.
If you haven't already, you might enjoy putting aside a few weeks reading for The Ancestor's Tale. It's just dozens of those stories.
One of the most amazing ones is about Ring Species, which are nothing short of absolute proof of speciation with no need for fossils or gene analysis.
I highly recommend this book. It should give you plenty of intellectual ammo: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/B002ZNJWJU/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0
I'd recommend Lone Survivors: How we became the only Humans on Earth by Chris Stringer. It has some wordy technical terms, but overall a pretty accessible read.
Short synopsis: There are several types of Parrots, Bovine species and so on, so why aren't there several types of co-existing Hominid species? This books takes a look at our distant origins and explores some reasons as to why we're the only Humans left on Earth.
Why evolution is true. by Jerry A. Coyne
Pretty much all the evidence you need for evolution there. For information about the origins of life you will have to look elsewhere though.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0670020532
Oh I see, you don’t understand that gender and sex are two different things. The concept of gender expression is probably meaningless to you, and yet you probably couldn’t be bothered to learn what it means, so you wouldn’t understand that the reason why a person’s gender expression is expected to match a person’s sex is because it (knowing who the “men” and who the “women” are) makes it easier for men to oppress women. You also don’t understand that gender is a social construct, and I’m guessing you don’t understand what a social construct is either. You’re definitely not aware that what you just said was both sexist and transphobic, because to you masc and femme are indistinguishable from the bodies that perform them, which is why men never cry and women don’t play sports. I’m guessing “male” in that scenario is someone with a penis, so you obviously don’t understand how human reproduction works, and are probably not considering the problem hermaphroditism poses to the gender/sex dichotomy like the fact that some children are surgically altered to be given a penis or a “pussy” at birth because they are born with ambiguous genitalia. Never mind the fact that genitalia has little to do with attraction because it’s kept under clothes(edit: although I acknowledge genital attraction is a thing). You clearly don’t understand that biological sex is different to identify anyway due to the complexity of genes for example people born XXY or XYY, but none of that matters because you’re a troll.
Well if you have the time, there's The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins and Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne. You could check if your local library has one of them.
Also, although this will not teach you evolution, Richard Dawkins notes a flaw in the idea of a designer in that there are clear imperfections that one would not expect from an intelligent designer, but would from evolution.
Read "The Beak of the Finch," two species hybridized and essentially gave rise to a third species. The book talks about the research and discoveries of Peter and Rosemary Grant, both highly respected biologists. http://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067973337X
A reasonable reply. Why don't you learn a bit more about evolution before trying to use it in an argument. Try these....Why Evolution Is True - Jerry Coyne or The Greatest Show On Earth - Richard Dawkins
My one-stop book recommendation would be Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. It's a short read, but nearly every paragraph is its own distinct argument, and it covers a lot of territory.
If you're aiming to construct your paper around a set of the most popular arguments, here are some common refutations to arguments for the existence of God. Keep in mind that many of our arguments are in the form of refutation instead of assertion, since the burden of proof is on the claimant:
Ontological Argument (Argument from experience) - We assert that feelings do not equal facts; revelation is not a reliable basis for a factual claim. We also realize that to criticize someone for feelings that are personal can seem like a personal attack. Most of us wouldn't tell someone who claims he/she had a spiritual experience that it didn't happen, but we would try to find a scientific explanation rather than coming to the immediate conclusion that it was God's doing. As a brief example, a friend of mine said he "felt the touch of God" when his daughter was born, but we interpret his feeling as a normal, natural high that most people feel at such an emotional moment.
Teleological Argument (Argument from design) - We accept the evidence for evolution and realize that it is inconsistent with the biblical creation story. For further reading about what proof we have for evolution, I'd personally recommend The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins, and he promotes Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True though I haven't read the latter yet.
Cosmological Argument (Causal Argument) - This is a case of people assigning the "God" label to something difficult to comprehend. The best we have to go on so far is the Big Bang Theory, and scientists will continue to test the theory. We don't have evidence that the beginning of the universe was brought about by an omnipotent/omniscient being outside of what is claimed by religious texts, and that goes back to the. We might also ask, "who/what made God?" inviting an infinite loop of "which came first" questions.
Moral Argument - We believe (normal) people are able to tell the difference between right and wrong without religious guidance. In turn, it seems that the Christian Bible teaches, excuses, or condones actions that our enlightened society would deem immoral, such as slavery, killing of children and non-heterosexuals, oppression, rape, and genocide. Interpretations of the Bible differ, of course, and most modern Christians don't believe they should actually kill their disobedient children (or that the laws of the Old Testament no longer apply since the coming of Christ, which is another conversation). Regardless of arguments from the Bible, we believe that science can tell us a lot more about morality than we give it credit for.
Lastly, here is a wikipedia list of lots more arguments in case you'd like to ask about specific ones: link
Good luck, and I hope you enjoy writing your paper. Not that you should necessarily crowd-source coursework, but you'd probably get quite a strong response if you posted up a final draft, too.
We've already been attempting something like this at several islands in the Galapagos. There's an island, Daphne Major, that has incredibly restricted access where people have been studying finches since at least the '70s. The original ~20 year study was written about in The Beak of the Finch - definitely worth a read.
Jerry Coyne has a great book you might want to pick up
Or maybe the one by Dawkins
Or there's always this
"he civil rights issues of the united states in the early to middle 1900s happened around a classification of "black". "
I said, "where are they" not "where were they". So, right now, how are people grouped?
"at you are saying does not in any way apply to this conversation"
What does apply to the conversation?
What is race to you?
Once again, discussions on race are non-nonsensical as you have proven. No one can adequately define what race is. Race to one person is completely different to another. Even if you define race and can group people, what is the point?
If I am being annoying or ignorant. Please clarify your position, use current media reports, use concrete evidence.
The only evidence I can bring is what Dawkins mentioned on race:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618005838/vdare
""Interobserver agreement suggests that racial classification is not totally uninformative, but what does it inform about? About things like eye shape and hair curliness. For some reason it seems to be the superficial, external, trivial characteristics that are correlated with race—perhaps especially facial characteristics.""
Beak of the finch by Jonathan Weiner is a pretty darn good book. It tells of one experiment on evolution and how it works. I have read a lot, but this one is more about the people as well as the new ideas of experiment than the theory of evolution.
Some great answers in here, but if you really want to understand then you will want to dive into a documentary, lecture, or book.
Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7WHs6I1NLs
Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x858bOny4Gw
Audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG0j_lvW6A0
Books!
Relatively light reading: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Planet-Search-Origins-MacSci/dp/1137278307/
A bit higher level: https://www.amazon.com/Lone-Survivors-Came-Humans-Earth/dp/1250023300
Textbook: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-World-Human-Evolution-Second/dp/0500288984
Cultural Literacy is the the foundation of the second book Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.
It's the Reader's Digest Condensed version of what you seek, but it could be a good springboard for you so that you're able to find things you might want to learn more about.
I've always liked Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.
you should check out this book. it explains why filipinos love basketball and why the sport flourishes as the number one sport in the country
Richard Dawkin's book The Ancestors' Tale goes in the opposite direction -- from mankind back to the common ancestor of all life -- and tries to estimate the generations along the way. At some point before getting to Amoebas, however, he gives up, because the best approximations are complete guesses. But you could get some insight into your question from that book, I believe.
I don't have my copy on me, and Wikipedia doesn't include his estimates. But check it out! Wikipedia Amazon
Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne is the book I read for the same reason. It is concise, factual, and easy to understand. I recommend it to everyone in your position.
If you haven't discovered it already, check out Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku. It explains things like force fields and interstellar travel (as well as weirder shit like time travel and antimatter engines) in terms of actual theoretical physics, but is written in a way that is easy for non-experts to understand. I've read that he kept getting letters from sci-fi writers wanting him to explain this stuff to them, and that's what led him to write this book.
If you're looking for a biology-related book to read when you can't take textbooks any more, I highly recommend The Ancestor's Tale. My high school AP Bio teacher had us read that (and write reports on every chapter to make sure we'd read it thoroughly instead of skimming), and that taught me more biology than I ever realized. I'm almost done my bachelor's and I'm still encountering material in classes that is familiar to me because of the Ancestor's Tale.
>Capital is the primary (only?) true drive in the segregation of society into a hierarchal class system.
Actually, centralized, exclusive access to decisive coercive violence is the primary true drive in the segregation of society into a hierarchical class system.
>anarchist will have to turn to subversive media propaganda
If you're using the traditional definition of propaganda--i.e., a message designed with purpose to persuade--I agree. The public needs to be exposed to and educated about a small number of vitally important ideas that have traditionally been suppressed. The American populace is uniquely equipped (due to their widely dispersed access to decisive coercive threat) to dismantle their oppressive government. They are merely lacking the right information and motivation.
Not OP, just helping out with some formatting (and links!) because I like these suggestions.
> 1) The Magic Of Reality - Richard Dawkins
>
> 2) The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
>
> 3)A Brief History Of Time - Stephen Hawking
>
> 4)The Grand Design - Stephen Hawking
>
> 4)Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari (Any Book By Daniel Dennet)
>
> 5)Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker
>
> 6)From Eternity Till Here - Sean Caroll (Highly Recommended)
>
> 7)The Fabric Of Cosmos - Brian Greene (If you have good mathematical understanding try Road To Reality By Roger Penrose)
>
> 8)Just Six Numbers - Martin Reese (Highly Recommended)
Yeah man, I've been meaning to get into hardcore sociology for a while now. I have been looking at this book specifically which might be of interest to you or others: link.
There is a book about this (disclaimer: haven't read past the intro) : Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball by Rafe Bartholomew
https://www.amazon.com/Pacific-Rims-Flip-Flops-Philippines-Unlikely/dp/0451233220
The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. Probably one of the best books that cover the research on the Galapagos finches.
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane
There's a great book called The Beak of the Finch. It tells the story of how evolution has been observed occurring in the field, today, now, in the same Galapagos finch populations that Darwin observed.
> I more want a good timeline from the primordial ooze to me typing this message.
Dawkins' The Ancestors Tale is exactly the book you want. It starts with present day humans and works backwards, explaining the points at which different branches of species diverged along the evolutionary tree.
Evolution is true:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0670020532
Evolution is true and doesn't conflict with religion:
http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0060930497
Skepticism:
http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469
This book is an excellent and simple example of animals evolving now, right before our eyes: http://www.amazon.com/The-Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution/dp/067973337X
What you refer to as "hyper evolution" is called punctuated equilibrium. The Beak of the Finch is an excellent and very readable explanation of the process.
This book is pretty awesome. http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0393338665
Explains everything from how life started to why (most!) animals must die of old age (and everything in between)
I have a copy I can mail you if can't get hold of it.
Physics of the Impossible -Dr. Michio Kaku is a fantastic read.
Try Why Evolution Is True, by Jerry Coyne. It's eleven bucks and it's fascinating.
>one huge evil being with a bunch of disposable bodies
That being is called a meme. Intersectional social justice is one of the most contagious, and in some senses effective, memes of all time.
If you're interested in reading about such a thing, check out https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Landmark-Science/dp/0198788606
Here are a few of my favorites:
The Beak of the Finch
Wild Trees
Almost anything by Richard Dawkins
Why Evolution is True
Justice
I enjoyed the ancestor's tale by Dawkins.
You should read Dawkins's book
https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Landmark-Science/dp/0198788606/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1510064662&sr=8-2&keywords=dawkins&dpID=41BSMHjI39L&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
and you will be amazed how close you are.
If you want to read more about the subject, I'd suggest reading Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew
It's a good read that explores how Philippine culture and basketball tie together.
Dawkins has written several good books on evolution, "The Blind Watchmaker" is another good one.
"Why Evolution is True" by Prof. Jerry Coyne is another informative (and fun) book on evolution.
On earth, most speciation happens within a population that is not physically split up by anything (water, mountains, etc.). In fact, getting split up by some kind of a boundary actually makes it harder for two populations to evolve into different species; there isn't any evolutionary pressure on them to become sexually incompatible.
Most speciation occurs because there are two empty niches within the ecosystem, and a population splits to fill both of them. A really good lay explanation of how this happens can be found in The Beak of the Finch. I highly recommend this book.
A good real-life example of this would be the cichlids of Lake Victoria. When the ancestor of these cichlids first showed up in this lake, there were numerous empty ecological niches, and the descendants of these fish evolved various specializations to compete better against each other.
The thing with specializing, though, is you don't want to breed with a fish of a different specialization, because your babies won't be very specialized, and they'll get outcompeted by fish that are more specialized. For this reason, being a very picky fish—that is, having a strong sexual preference for fish who share your specialization—is a major evolutionary advantage.
And giving off signs to other fish like you, to let them know that you're one of their kind, is also an advantage. This is why the cichlids in Lake Victoria are so amazingly diverse, despite being closely related and living in amongst each other. If you're a blue fish, you know to breed with other blue fish, and not with red fish. If you breed with red fish, your lineage will probably die out, and your preference for red fish will die with it. (Obviously, red fish would evolve the same preference for other red fish and aversion to blue fish.)
Sexual preferences and sexual displays are not the only method animals evolve to avoid interbreeding with a population of a different ecological specialization. Some animals (like frogs and cicadas) evolve to breed at different times of the year from their closely-related neighbors.
And some species (including most plants) do it by merely having incompatible sperm and eggs (or pollen and ova), or by having flowers specialized for different pollinators. If you're an oak that's specialized for growing on a riverbank, for example, you don't want to get pollinated by an oak that's specialized for growing on higher ground, because you'll still drop your hybrid acorns on the riverbank, and they just won't grow as well. You can't stop that oak's pollen from reaching you (oaks are wind pollinated), so the next best thing is to build some kind of protein defense on your ova that stops the highland oak's pollen from working on your ova—but still allows the pollen of your fellow riverbank oaks.
In the case of two your two intelligent species, they need to possess two traits to be realistic.
1 — They need to fulfill different ecological niches. They must not compete directly with each other (only in indirect ways that are not enough for one to drive the other to extinction). They need to live compatibly with each other, not unlike the way wildebeests and zebras do (they don't compete directly with each other because they eat different grass). And, if they were to interbreed, the hybrid children would be at a biological disadvantage to purebred children (e.g., suffering more from malnutrition due to not being specialized for digesting the available foodstuffs, or being more susceptible to predation due to lacking the right equipment to escape or defend against danger).
2 — They need to avoid hybridizing. This can come about through several ways—finding each other sexually distasteful (the way we find chimpanzees unattractive), wooing prospective sexual partners at different times or in different ways, having incompatible gametes or genitalia, etc. There can be a social taboo against interbreeding, too, but it would almost certainly be rooted in biology (much the way that incest taboos are ultimately derived from our instinctual aversion to inbreeding).
The Beak of the Finch. It's nonfiction about how scientists are actually recording quantifiable evolution within Darwin's finches. Much more interesting than it might sound...
The hill keeps shifting, too - so what may be "higher" terrain today may not be tomorrow. And everyone climbs the mountain with the following algorithm - "Always take steps upward." Then a bunch of people find themselves on local peaks, unable to cross chasms to the actual highest peak of "fitness."
This mountain analogy is actually quite helpful for understanding the philosophical connotations of Darwin's theory. Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea is actually one of my favorite books on the topic.
You are quite right in the vagueness of 'equality'. Almost as bad as 'sovereignty association' isn't it? Obviously at some point we need to move from the general to the specific. How about 'equality' that is implicit in provincial powers? Take a look at A First Nations Province by Thomas Courchene and Lisa Powell ( http://www.queensu.ca/iigr/pub/archive/aboriginalpapers/misc/AfirstnationsprovinceCourcheneandPowell.pdf ).
As for the significance of the 1701 Treaty Of Montreal, read A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul, the president of PEN International and husband of past Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson ( http://www.amazon.ca/Fair-Country-John-Ralston-Saul/dp/0143168428 ). In his book, he suggests a number things particularly pertinent to this discourse:
reserves or residential schools there. It was this treaty that enabled the peaceful (relatively) settlement of what was to become Canada and laid the groundwork for the country we have today. When the English took over, the Treaty was not overturned. Yes, new laws came about that were in conflict with it, that's why we have a mess. But in a civilized society new laws don't automatically wipe out older laws. They have to be worked out by all parties concerned. That's what we need to do right now.
If she will read a book for this and evolution is a big sticking-point, then actually maybe The God Delusion isn't the best Dawkins for the job.
I'd suggest Climbing Mount Improbable, or The Blind Watchmaker. Surprisingly I don't think The Greatest Show on Earth is the best to start with.
Or, This one :http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0670020532
Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne: Buy it on Amazon
A quality online resource for you would be the free online archive of MIT's class "Human Origins and Evolution"; check it out here: MIT OCW 3.987 EDIT: This would actually only be appropriate as a guide for further study on your own. The course materials provided are primarily syllabi and the like, but does provide an extensive list of books and other sources of information that may be up your alley.
Much more technical options are also available from their biology department: MIT OCW Bio