Book Review: Science, Evolution, and Creationism

Many people continue to have questions about our knowledge of biological evolution.  They perhaps believe that scientific understanding of evolution is incomplete, incorrect, or in doubt. Or may wonder if it is possible to accept evolution and still adhere to religious beliefs. 'Science, Evolution, and Creationism' by National Academy of Sciences, speaks to those questions. 

The book begins with a discussion about evolution and the nature of science, where the scientific understanding of biological evolution is underscored. Further, it explains the composition of the present world, and how evolution leads to it. Each species that lives on Earth today is the product of an evolutionary lineage 

of more than one species. The common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was a species estimated to have lived 6 to 7 million years ago, whereas the common ancestor of humans and the puffer fish was an ancient fish that lived in the Earth’s oceans more than 400 million years ago. Thus, humans are not descended from chimpanzees or from any other ape living today but from a species that no longer exists.

An insight into creationism then follows. It explains how, various views of creationism typically have been promoted by small groups of politically active religious fundamentalists who believe that only a supernatural entity could account for the physical changes in the universe and for the biological diversity of life on Earth.  How these creationists hold very different views, while citing what they claim to be an incomplete or conflicting fossil record as evidence that living things were created in their modern forms.  

However, the book puts these matters to rest.  The sequence of fossils across Earth’s sediments points unambiguously toward the occurrence of evolution.

 A good set of questions and answers at the end makes this even more clear, where, some of the questions answered are: 

Aren’t evolution and religion opposing ideas? Isn’t belief in evolution also a matter of faith? What evidence is there that the universe is billions of years old? 

This is a short, good guide and, a fitting retort to all irrational souls. This can make one feel confident and happy that the basic components of evolution will continue to be supported by new evidence, as they have been for the past 150 years.