Science in the soul : selected writings of a passionate rationalist
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 424-427) and index.

Science in the Soul brings together three decades of Richard Dawkins' essays, polemics, and paeans illuminating the wonders of nature and attacking faulty logic. In a passionate introduction, Dawkins calls on us to insist that reason take center stage and that gut feelings -- even when they don't represent the stirred dark waters of xenophobia, misogyny, or other blind prejudice -- should stay out of the voting booth. In the essays themselves, newly annotated, he investigates a the importance of empirical evidence and decries bad science, religion in the schools, and climate-change deniers. Dawkins has equal ardor for "the sacred truth of nature" and renders here the glories and complexities of the natural world. Woven into an exploration of the vastness of geological time, for instance, is the peculiar history of the giant tortoises and the sea turtles, whose journeys between water and land tell us a deeper story about evolution. At this moment, when so many highly placed people still question the fact of evolution, Dawkins asks what Darwin would make of his own legacy -- "a mixture of exhilaration and exasperation"--And celebrates science as possessing many of religion's virtues -- "explanation, consolation, and uplift"--without its detriments of superstition and prejudice.