This is not new, but new to me (I’m clearly well behind the times), and looks excellent. Check it out:

The Talk.Origins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy.

Probably the best place to start is with their excellent FAQ page.

They also have a lengthy page of awards and recognitions.

There is also a good page from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

And there is also the CSICOP’s wonderful Intelligent Design Watch site.

Kudos to these folks for all their hard work!

Thanks!! And right in time!

I had dinner with my father the other night.  He is a well-read, intelligent man.  He tranferred to me his wonder and love of the space program and all things scientific.  When I was 2, I could recite the names of all the Mercury astronauts, thanks to him.

However, he revealed to me his denial of human evolution.  His canard was “no transitional fossils.” I’m not a biologist, but an avid reader of all things Sagan, Gould, Dawkins, Scott.  I assured him that there are such fossils.  Not just for Homo Sapien, but horse, dog, bird, etc.  He denies it.  Yes, no, yes, no...that was the conversation for a while!!  I explained that, besides hard fossils, we have DNA!  This is the strongest link for a single common ancestor of us all.  But he denies that is evidence.

Long story short:  I searched the databases and sent him excellent essays, such as Shermer’s recent wolves to dogs essay.  I event sent in Eugenie Scott as he has been influenced by the right wing religious wackos who have infiltrated the Republican party (sigh, he’s a conservative!) and might counter with the materialism arguments of theists.
I await his admission that he’s read the things I’ve sent.  Perhaps he’ll realize there is more out there than Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

Anyone have some other good essays/article to compliment my list?  I do also have, and plan to give him, The Blind Watchmaker, Why People Believe Weird Things, some Sagan and Gould.

In a footnote at the beginning of his Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Dan Dennett lists a few of the better books attacking intelligent design. Can’t recall them right now, but you could go to a bookstore or library and look.

Or do some research on the websites I listed above. They are really FULL of great info.

OK, I have Dennett’s book in front of me now. The books he recommends are:

Philip Kitcher 1982 Abusing Science
Douglas Futuyma 1983 Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution
Langdon Gilkey 1985 Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock
“And others.”

But I still think the best place to start is with the sites above or Judge Jones’s Kitzmiller v. Dover decision. It is free on the web and brilliantly written.

Thanks!

Good choices.  I don’t know if my dad’s read the stuff I gave him yet.

About the Dover transcripts--very enlightening.  I especially liked Michael Behe’s testimony on cross.  He really wiggled around defining Intelligent Design, what exactly an irreducibly complex structure looks like--all these things.  Clearly, if the leading expert on ID can’t give succinct answers, then the theory can’t be very good.

Even I can define evolution in one or two clear sentences. And I’m no scientist!

How to tell if someone is lying?  They can’t give you a straight answer.

Thanks again, doug!

Linda

Glad to be of help.

I’m not sure if someone else posted this somewhere on this site and I missed it.
But HERE is an excellent resource site for Charles Darwin primary source material.
It includes text, images, and even audiobook versions of Darwin’s books.  Entirely free.

Thank you!
I find the presentation of the materials on that site to be very well done.

Erasmusinfinity, I’ve merged your thread here; we’ll keep it as a sticky.

Great.  I figured that since, being atheists, we all worship Darwin… We are Darwinists, right? 

erasmusinfinity - 23 April 2008 09:53 AM

Great.  I figured that since, being atheists, we all worship Darwin… We are Darwinists, right? 

I think I’d prefer to say I appreciate Darwin.

Speaking of Darwin, I would like to know how people get this idea that Darwin’s theory is collapsing?  I just don’t see how they get that idea and I heard it again on another podcast.  I ended up turning it off because it was not as scientific as the lecturer thought he was.  Manly P. Hall was his name and he didn’t seem to know anything about science, esp with that statement that Darwin’s theory was collasping.  IF anything, it is expanding with more knowledge about evolution and alike.  These people make no sense and obviously don’t know what they are talking about when they attempt to talk science.