Shapeshifter
New Member
I just found out that an old colleague I went to school with turned out to be a religious person who questions evolution. As this is something special around here (Europe), I arranged a meeting with him and we'll have a talk. I'm looking forward to it, I wonder what he has to say and if I can find any bit of reason in him.
In any case, to get to the thread title: One thing I would really, really like to have is a small book containing all the necessary facts with references and a couple of pictures. So that whenever an argument about god and evolution arises, one could take out the book when necessary and cite facts right from the confirmed sources. Like when a creationist says "There are no transitional fossils", I would not only be able to say "no, that's not true, look it up in some science book", but actually have it right here in my bag, maybe with a couple of pictures of a Tiktaalik and all that. Of course with valid references.
Then, a "numbers" section with important statistics like "how many scientists actually side with evolution", so that creationists can't just walk around claiming that "there's much controversy" or "the scientific community is divided on some facts", because: No... they are not! And I could actually show them what percentage of which people do believe in creationism.
I mean, it's all here, they could just read a few books or spend a few hours on youtube. But they wont, so when I would be in an open discussion with a non-fundamentalist but still moderately-strong believer, I could not only make (valid) claims, but also back them up with written facts including references.
I haven't found such a book, and I don't believe there is one.
Now, this is just an idea, but I'm quite fond of it:
Couldn't we make our own? I could install a wiki software on my server and we could start brainstorming. It wouldn't need to be big, it just needs to cover central aspects. A good starting point would be to briefly transpose AronRa's "Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism" to Text. As said, it would need a few statistics, a few transitional fossils, some general education on abiogenesis and evolution and all that. When there's enough content, it could be offered as a pdf to be printed out at home. An actual publishing would be much more complicated, and that would be far away, but that would be the final idea.
What do you think?
Would you like having a small paperback book of all important facts? Would you help making it? What problems do you think could arise?
In any case, to get to the thread title: One thing I would really, really like to have is a small book containing all the necessary facts with references and a couple of pictures. So that whenever an argument about god and evolution arises, one could take out the book when necessary and cite facts right from the confirmed sources. Like when a creationist says "There are no transitional fossils", I would not only be able to say "no, that's not true, look it up in some science book", but actually have it right here in my bag, maybe with a couple of pictures of a Tiktaalik and all that. Of course with valid references.
Then, a "numbers" section with important statistics like "how many scientists actually side with evolution", so that creationists can't just walk around claiming that "there's much controversy" or "the scientific community is divided on some facts", because: No... they are not! And I could actually show them what percentage of which people do believe in creationism.
I mean, it's all here, they could just read a few books or spend a few hours on youtube. But they wont, so when I would be in an open discussion with a non-fundamentalist but still moderately-strong believer, I could not only make (valid) claims, but also back them up with written facts including references.
I haven't found such a book, and I don't believe there is one.
Now, this is just an idea, but I'm quite fond of it:
Couldn't we make our own? I could install a wiki software on my server and we could start brainstorming. It wouldn't need to be big, it just needs to cover central aspects. A good starting point would be to briefly transpose AronRa's "Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism" to Text. As said, it would need a few statistics, a few transitional fossils, some general education on abiogenesis and evolution and all that. When there's enough content, it could be offered as a pdf to be printed out at home. An actual publishing would be much more complicated, and that would be far away, but that would be the final idea.
What do you think?
Would you like having a small paperback book of all important facts? Would you help making it? What problems do you think could arise?
. Covers pretty much everything, though it could use some updating and re-styling. But yeah, it would actually be a great idea to create a LoR website with all FAQs on evolution.