Best products from r/DebateEvolution

have not read it..

but amazon has small number of reviews. largely from creationists, who think its great.. naturally they would eat it up..

https://www.amazon.com/Replacing-Darwin-New-Origin-Species/dp/1683440757#customerReviews

the only critical review I found there was this one:

>Though I am certainly not a creationist, I sometimes enjoy reading creationist material written by smart people. I'm always curious to see where they take their arguments. Nathaniel Jeanson is certainly one of the smartest in the Creationist Movement. AIG is lucky to have him on board.

>There are 2 reasons I enjoyed his book enough to give it 2 stars:
First, his writing inspired me to learn more about genetic clocks. After reading his book, I went on to read a great deal about them in the normal scientific literature. If pressed, I could probably put together a pretty good lecture on the topic, now.

>Second, Nathaniel included some of his own research which I found interesting. Though I certainly don't agree with his conclusions, he has found some potentially useful patterns in mammalian speciation rates.

>The reason I gave his book only two stars, is that Dr Jeanson used his data to jump to unreasonable conclusions, and in order to force his models to support a Young Earth view, he cherry picked the variables used in his equations. For example, in his mtDNA clock models, he refused to account for the way natural selection messes with fixation rates. I worry that most readers (unless they are trained in either genetics or statistics) won't notice the logical errors he has made.

>Jon Perry

-amazon review source

My recommendations from books I read in the last year or so (yes, these are all VERY STRONG recommends curated from ~100 books in the last year) -

​

Science fiction-

Derek Kunsken's The Quantum Magician (I would describe it as a cross between Oceans Eleven with some not-too-Hard Science Fiction. Apparently will be a series, but is perfectly fine as a standalone novel).

Cixin Lu's very popular Three Body Problem series (Mixes cleverly politics, sociology, psychology and science fiction)

James A Corey's The Expanse Series (which has been made into the best sci fi tv series ever!)

Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief series (Hard science fiction. WARNING - A lot of the early stuff is intentionally mystifying with endless terminology that’s only slowly explained since the main character himself has lost his memories. Put piecing it all together is part of the charm.)

​

Fantasy-

James Islington's Shadow of What was Lost series (a deep series which makes you think - deep magic, politics, religion all intertwined)

Will Wight's Cradle series (has my vote for one of the best fantasy series ever written)

Brandon Sanderson Legion series (Brandon Sanderson. Nuff said. Creative as always)

​

Manga -

Yukito Kishiro's Alita, Battle Angel series (the manga on what the movie was based)

​

Non-Fiction-

Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (and how we are not as rational as we believe we are, and how passion works in tandem with rationality in decision making and is actually required for good decisionmaking)

Rothery's Geology - A Complete Introduction (as per title)

Joseph Krauskopf's A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play, available to read online for free, including a fabulous supplementary of Talmud Parallels to the NT (a Rabbi in 1901 explains why he is not a Christian)

​

Audiobooks -

Bob Brier's The History of Ancient Egypt (as per title - 25 hrs of the best audiobook lectures. Incredible)

​

Academic biblical studies-

Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible and The Exodus (best academic biblical introductory books into the Documentary Hypothesis and Qenite/Midian hypothesis)

Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed (how archaelogy relates to the bible)

E.P. Sander's Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63BCE-66CE ​(most detailed book of what Judaism is and their beliefs, and one can see from this balanced [Christian] scholar how Christianity has colored our perspectives of what Jews and Pharisees were really like)

Avigdor Shinan's From gods to God (how Israel transitioned from polytheism to monotheism)

Mark S Smith's The Early History of God (early history of Israel, Canaanites, and YHWH)

James D Tabor's Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (as per title)

Tom Dykstra's Mark Canonizer of Paul (engrossing - will make you view the gospel of Mark with new eyes)

Jacob L Wright's King David and His Reign Revisited (enhanced ibook - most readable book ever on King David)

Jacob Dunn's thesis on the Midianite/Kenite hypothesis (free pdf download - warning - highly technical but also extremely well referenced)

> Hovind does a great job of sounding convincing to somebody who doesnt have the facts.

... or someone who is not scientifically literate. I don't have all the facts either, but there are heuristics I use to determine whether someone is feeding me a line of BS or not. If you think your scientific literacy could improve, check out Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. It's an excellent manual for learning critical thinking and skepticism. You can usually find a copy at used bookstores.

> So anyway that example you gave their pushes it to 50,000 years but what about older than that?

Right, since we're only speaking about radiocarbon dating here, 50,000 years is sort of the limit, since the half-life of C-14 is around 5700 years, after tens of thousands of years, there's so little C-14 left that it's increasingly difficult to use it as a means of dating.

If you want to date something older than that, you have to use methods other than radiocarbon.

One method is paleomagnetic dating.

Ice core dating is another. In this technique, not only can years be counted, but atmospheric gases can be sampled in these layers, and sometimes, these gases can be dated radiometrically. Years where there were large volcanic eruptions can be recorded, as that sediment is found in specific layers of the cores. I seem to recall that this method is good for up to 160,000 years ago.

Radiometric dating (as distinct from radiocarbon dating) are fairly widely-used methods. One example of this sort of dating is uranium-lead dating, and is the method used my Clair Patterson when he determined the age of the Earth back in 1956. There are a bunch of methods that are used, and in some cases, when using multiple methods to date something, we get results that are very close. In short: independent methods agree with each other.

If you've not seen any of it, you might enjoy Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. In episode 7, titled The Clean Room, they detail how Clair Patterson, in his quest to discover the true age of the Earth, discovers something else rather unsettling. I won't spoil it for you - if you want to watch that specific episode, DailyMotion has a link here. It's a decent overview of radiometric dating. The whole series is pretty good, if you're looking to update your knowledge on modern science.

/u/PaulDouglasPrice

I don't hate what I don't believe in.

I do trust modern science more than I trust a book written by a bunch of uneducated goat herders. You won't admit it, but you do too. I'm sure you seek modern health care when you get sick. The bible is not a source any more than the The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is.

/u/RedSquirrelFtw

>Let's be real nobody knows 100% how the universe was formed or how old it is, we can draw theories based on scientific evidence and the Bible but either side will never know with 100% certainty the exact details.

There are many, many independent lines of evidence that points to the universe being 13.787±0.020 billion years old. I recommend you read 13.8 by Gribbin. He does a great job of explaining how cosmologists have arrived at that number. Unlike the bible, all of the work described in that book has tirelessly been examined and contested for 100s of years of cosmologists and astronomers.

The name calling (I agree it's not acceptable) is born from people claiming their 'theory' is comparable to a scientific theory without any evidence.

Jerry Coyne has an entire wonderful book rebutting Creationism and at the same time laying out all the evidence for, well, Why Evolution is True. While I don't remember anything specifically about biodiversity, if you want to address the most common creationist arguments, it is the best go-to book.

https://smile.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne-dp-0143116649/dp/0143116649/

Neat, it is on sale

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0143116649