The NY Times has an article on a new book published by the National Academy of Sciences titled “Science, Evolution, and Creationism“. You can read the book online for free as well, you can sign up to get a PDF version of the book that is much easier to read. Basically, the book gives a brief summary of the evidence for evolution and then spends the majority of its time denouncing so-called creationism. The copyright given in the book seems fairly strict, so I will not quote from the book to back up my claims so please have a look for yourself.

It’s a short book, obviously written at the middle school/high school reading level so it seems to be meant to reach a wide range of audiences. It cites many examples of findings in the fossil record, DNA mutations, dating methods of fossils, geologic research, and astronomic research. No answers are given for the “where did matter first come from?” or “how/why did the Big Bang ever occur in matter which was in a state of equilibrium?” questions so don’t look for them in there.

In summary, this would be a good book to read if you are looking for a quick overview of what the most current theory of evolution states and what the belief of a lot of the scientific community is on the origins of life in the universe. With all of the news on creationism recently, it is understandable why a book like this needed to be written. It is basically a defense of their beliefs written in the same way Christians defend ours when fallacy comes up in church doctrine.

Personally, this book doesn’t provide any new evidence to sway my belief. The account given in Genesis 1 and 2 and the lineage given from Adam to Christ in the gospels is too specific for man to have evolved from another species.