Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a biologist (and evolutionist), I am one of those who did not need to be convinced by this book. I am already there. So, I was at somewhat of a disadvantage in trying to estimate how this book might affect the average creationist and IDer. One problem is that creationists come in several stripes----and I don't mean the usual division of creationists into young-Earth vs old-Earth etc. I mean the professional creationists such as some clergy (including TV evangelists) and foundation employees etc with a financial or power stake in maintaining creationism vs some people who have an ignorant, but honest, attachment to creationism for what might be called religious reasons (in spite of Dawkins and everything else) vs the hard-core religionists who care not a whit about evidence and who think that "faith" is faith, no matter what the evidence against it. Dawkins probably will not reach the first and third of these groups. Whether he is able to reach the second remains to be seen. Those people with an ignorant but honest attachment to creationism are largely unlikely to read (much less buy) a book such as this. I am at somewhat of a loss to know who this book targets. The Hell-fire and Damnation preachers will just ignore it and go on preaching---they have too much of a good thing in power and money flow to give it up by becoming honest. Dawkins needs to target the mainline Christian clergy. But then, who goes to church to listen to sermons on evolution? As for the book itself, it took me a while to get used to the chatty style, mostly in first person, that characterizes Dawkin's later books. What Dawkins presents is only PART of "The Evidence for Evolution". He mentions once or twice that he had to jettison discussion on some point or another that would have added to the discussion (and to the length of the book). But if there is a lot of evidence, why not present all of it? He leaves out, for example, the embryologic evidence for skeletal homologies. Basically he only presents pictures of several skeletons and expects hard-core creationists to accept that bone X in a bat is homologous to bone X in a whale, etc. The creationist would say they these bones only appear to be homologous because are used in similar ways. Show the embryologic homologies and even the DNA evidence and the case is unassailable (to an honest mind). But Dawkins does not do this. Also, he does not present a detailed discussion of branchial arch homologies in fish and higher vertebrates. It may be mentioned (I don't recall), but a full discussion would have been unanswerable. Ditto for jaw and earbone homologies. Dawkins did not discuss retroviruses and missed a big opportunity there. Perhaps he thought that at some point he had reached overkill. I think the book is approximately a 90% effort, with too much good stuff left out.