Richard Dawins, autor del controvertido libro El espejismo de Dios, presenta en esta ocasión una "evidencia empírica de la evolución"; y lo hace en el año en que se conmemora el 150 aniversario de la aparición de El origen de las especies, de Darwin, en un momento en que las ideas del padre de la evolución están siendo cuestionadas por parte de los defensores de la hipótesis de un "diseño inteligente". Con una intención eminentemente divulgativa, el autor pretende llegar a un público amplio y suscitar un debate en todos aquellos que están de acuerdo en considerar la ciencia como algo vivo, estrechamente vinculado a la sociedad actual. Dawkins se enfrenta a cuantos sostienen la idea de un creacionismo revisado opuesto a la evolución.

تطور الكائنات بالانتقاء الطبيعي ليس قضية رأي أو وجهة نظر تحتمل الصواب والخطأ (فرضية)، بل حقيقة علمية مثبتة (نظرية) بكمّ هائل من الأدلة والبراهين المتوفرة على بعد كبسة زر من أي فضولي يسعى للمعرفة. لذلك، فإن الجهل في عصرنا هو خيار لا عذر له. ( )

Great book. This and The Ancestor's Tale should be required reading in High School. ( )

Highly recommended read regarding evolution and the evidence for it. RD brilliantly explains how to pay notice to similarities between species, how cells and organisms work or do what they do and how it impacts evolution and growth. Regarding the element of religion and creationism, RD keeps his cool when comparing this to evolution. He is one passionate man about evolution, or as he puts it, the truth. This book is to some extent not complete, as RD has touched upon other subjects/elements in his previous books. But somehow you don't have to have read them to understand TGSOE. ( )

This is one of those books where I have to differentiate between readability and content.

The content, what we know that tells us evolution is right, is very interesting which makes this book well worth reading by someone uncertain or someone that feels they lose out in arguments because they are missing details.

The readability on the other hand is not as great. I don't know if it is intentional but the author keeps repeating himself within a couple of paragraphs. It might be an attempt to hammer something into the mind of the reader, but I found it annoying and it reminded me of some books that are written to a page count rather than a content mass.

I will still give it four stars out of five since I learned a lot through the book.

And a quick spoiler. Things that support evolution include, but are not limited to: Layering of fossils. Dating of fossils. Visible changes in isolated populations in just a few decades. Our ability to modify dogs and cows. The weird mistakes found in body designs. The similarity of species. The lack of similarity between flying mammals (bats) and flying dinosaurs (birds). The weirdness of some animals that seem to have migrated from sea to land and then back to sea. And so on.

The author is quite upset that so few people know about this in certain countries and I can understand him. ( )