When I first picked up this book in a church library I was skeptical and a little surprised. Surprised because most churches that have books on the subject of creation versus evolution are strongly pro-creationist. Skeptical because I have read many so-called “neutral” books before and discovered that they were not so neutral as they claimed. I expected the author to have many fallacies in his arguments. I probably would not have even read the book had I not held it in my hand, even if the book was highly recommended to me.
As it turns out, I was wrong about the book not being neutral and about author’s arguments being full of holes. Ratzsch’s book is one of the best and most objective books I have ever read on the subject (including books written by both sides) and I very strongly recommend the book to anybody who has any significant interest in the creation-evolution dispute. For anyone who wishes to either criticize evolution or creation, this book is an absolute must-read.
Ratzsch's book mainly focuses on the bad arguments advanced by both sides. The kinds of bad arguments he presents are based on misunderstandings of the opposition's position or on mistaken beliefs of what science is. The latter is usually an attempt to show that the opponent’s theory does not qualify as being legitimately scientific. Ratzsch also looks at the history and development of both Darwin’s theory and modern creationism.
One very notable thing here is his two chapters on the nature and philosophy of science (the best I have ever seen). Those two chapters show why many popular mistaken views of science are wrong (ideas like inductivism and falsificationism) some of which I accepted before reading the book. It inspired me to write one more paper about the nature of science before I graduated high school. I dug much deeper than usual and my research confirmed much of what the author said. It has gone under many revisions since I graduated from high school, but you can still find my paper here.
As great as the book is, there are a few flaws. His definition of creationism, for example, is vague and imprecise (p. 12, in which he defines a “creationist”). For purposes of the book only (he states that it is not inherent in the definition), he lumps young earth theory and catastrophism with creationism, but that is not the problem. He quotes someone saying that creationism is the idea that a Supreme Being used his intervention to cross the discontinuities of nature (e.g. non-life/life and reptile/mammal). While this is a form of creationism, that is not the definition of creationism. Ratzsch seems to recognize this on page 172, when he mentions that there are forms of creationism neither make reference to scripture nor theology. Another annoying feature is that the author does not have an index for his book. This may have been done to encourage people to read the entire book (reading the entire book be ought to be done, since I have found it best not to only examine a particular section).
All in all though, this is a very highly recommended book by Tisthammerw even if you are only somewhat interested in the subject. I have yet to find a book that is more successfully neutral and objective than this one.
