Richard Dawkins goes off the deep end

The pretentious title of demagogic "New Atheist" Richard Dawkins' soon-to-be-released new book, "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution", sounds like something out of a P.T. Barnum circus. And the book is going to give the "accommodationists" (those who believe in "accommodating" the anti-Semitic Darwinist Cafeteria-Christian goyim who interpret the Christian gospel as literal while at the same time rejecting the bible's much more credible Jewish creation story) -- who are already very unhappy with him -- conniption fits.

A Publishers' Weekly editorial review of the book says,

. . . Dawkins also came to realize that a disturbingly large percentage of the American and British public didn't share his enthusiasm for evolution. In fact, they actively abhorred the idea, since it seemed to contradict the Bible and diminish the role of God.

As I have pointed out many times, religion is not the only reason why people question evolution -- a belief that the scientific evidence is poor is another important reason.

So Dawkins decided to write a book for these history-deniers, in which he would dispassionately demonstrate the truth of evolution beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt.

Darwinists "prove" evolution by cherry-picking evidence.

After only a few pages of The Greatest Show on Earth, however, it becomes clear that Dawkins doesn't do dispassionate, and that he's not particularly interested in convincing believers to believe in evolution. He repeatedly compares creationists and Holocaust deniers, which is a peculiar way of reaching out to the other side.

Comparing creationists and Holocaust deniers? Dawkins sinks to a very low level of demagoguery here.

Elsewhere, Dawkins calls those who don't subscribe to evolution ignorant, fatuously ignorant and ridiculous.

But Dawkins refuses to accommodate Darwinist cafeteria Christians.

All of which raises the point: who, exactly, is supposed to read this book? Is Dawkins preaching to the choir or trying to convert the uninformed? While The Greatest Show on Earth might fail as a work of persuasive rhetoric — Dawkins is too angry and acerbic to convince his opponents — it succeeds as an encyclopedic summary of evolutionary biology.

The National Center for Science Education posted a review of the book. The review, written by Douglas Theobald, an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Brandeis University, says,

In a book on evolutionary evidence, it is hard to avoid a few nods towards debunking the common creationist fallacies. Nevertheless, unlike many other popular books that cover the evidence for evolution, this is not primarily a refutation of creationism or 'intelligent design' arguments.

How can evolution theory be "proved" without refuting creationist and intelligent design arguments?

Theobald continues,

Rather, Dawkins's latest book is a positive commemoration of the triumph of a grand arching theory that has withstood the continuous onslaught of 150 years of new data, including the tsunami of molecular, genetic, and sequence data from the past fifteen years.

The past fifteen years has also seen a "tsunami" of new data against evolution.

Theobald continues,

In the final analysis, The Greatest Show on Earth will take a deserved place alongside other "must-read" evolution books. No other book currently available approaches Dawkins's comprehensive yet accessible treatment of the extraordinarily diverse and massive body of data that drives ineluctably to the same conclusion, the only conclusion that makes sense of everything in biology: that all the "endless forms" of known life share a common genetic kinship, as they have been, and are being, evolved.

And there we go again with that nonsense that evolution is "the only conclusion that makes sense of everything in biology."

The accommodationist NCSE endorses the book despite Dawkins' opposition to accommodationism.
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