The Greatest Show on Earth, Chapter 7

Chapter-by-chapter thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

by John C. Snider © 2009

Chapter 7: Missing persons?  Missing no longer

I am not a biologist, nor am I an anatomist, much less a paleoanthropologist.  So when a scientist shows me a reconstructed skull and breathlessly talks about its similarities or differences to a human skull, or a chimpanzee skull…well, to some extent I’ll just have to take his word for it.

In Chapter 7 Dawkins provides an overview of what scientists know about human evolution, and about the sometimes bitter arguments over identification and classification.  It is these arguments–over whether a fossil fragment is homo sapiens, or homo habilis, or something else entirely–that the Creationists seize upon, and mischaracterize as “controversy over evolution.”  Which is ironic, since Creationists also accuse scientists of being smug know-it-alls.  So which is it?

Dawkins also illustrates, via an interview he conducted with Wendy Wright, president of the conservative Concerned Women for America, how willfully blind the Creationists are, and how tightly they cling to their talking points.  Wright insists that there is no “material evidence” on museum display of human evolution, that it’s all based on “illustrations.”  This is, of course, preposterous…but again, laypeople like Wright and myself can only rely in the learned opinions of specialists.  Whom one believes is based on a process of triangulation: do the claims match with what I already know, and do the specialists have reputations for excellence and credibility?  I conclude yes; Ms. Wright evidently concludes no.  What can you do?

On to Chapter 8…!

The Greatest Show on Earth is available at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Read my thoughts on Chapter 6.

Read my thoughts on Chapter 5.

Read my thoughts on Chapter 4.

Read my thoughts on Chapter 3.

Read my thoughts on Chapter 2.

Read my thoughts on Chapter 1.