Custard, I've enjoyed reading your posts. Welcome to EvC.
When I first got interested in natural history, I decided to start out reading two books on the creation-evolution debate, one from each side.
Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism (1983) by Philip Kitcher and
Darwin on Trial (1991) by Phillip Johnson. Taken together, they support the position taken by you and Lithoid-man, that creationism is based on deceit.
Kitcher's book remains one of the best books I've ever read on any subject. Alas, it's out of print, but copies seem to be easy to find at local libraries. Kitcher goes through the history of the life sciences as well as the philosophy of science itself, in order to lay the foundations of his support of evolution as a valid scientific construct. Kitcher assumes the reader understands philosophy and has at least a working knowledge of history, which makes
Abusing Science a challenging but rewarding read. He describes Darwin's theory and explains the rational basis of his inquiry, then discusses the slew of subsequent research that confirms Darwin's conclusions. He then describes creationism in the context of empirical evidential inquiry, pointing out its scientific shortcomings. Then he wraps up by discussing the false dichotomy between religious faith and scientific endeavor. Kitcher is rational and comprehensive, his perspective is balanced and straightforward. I couldn't recommend this book highly enough.
Phillip Johnson's work, on the other hand, is incendiary and emotional but masquerades as the voice of reason in a culture of ignorance. It's written for people with little or no understanding of history or philosophy. His caricature of evolutionary theory (not to mention his bizarre redefinitions of complex subjects as materialism and naturalism) is indistinguishable as the subject Kitcher discussed with such care and patience in his work. Johnson's insistence that evolution is unsupported by evidence shows his glaring lack of a realistic grasp of scientific methodology. Perhaps most significantly, Johnson puts words in the mouths of people like Darwin, Thomas Kuhn, and Stephen Jay Gould that were exactly the distortions that Kitcher condemned. Johnson's fantasy of evolutionists as a sinister secular priesthood supporting the sham philosophy of Naturalism in a vast conspiracy is utterly comical.
I've read many other books on the subject since then, but those two works defined my introduction to the creation-evolution controversy. I realized it was a one-sided issue very early.
regards,
Esteban "Reason in the Balance" Hambre
™ Version 4.2
