A guide by Jack B. W., philosopher and scientist, Boston.

Even though they have never done any scientific research on the question, some religious people pretend that they have the definite answer to the origin of life on earth. Their faith-based explanation is derived from centuries old scriptures and they pretend that the universe was created in six days, over 6,000 years ago, by an all-powerful deity. That's creationism

Scientists refute these religious legends and have established instead that the Earth is about 4.5 billion year old, while the first appearance of life on Earth occured some 3.1 billion years ago, in the form of micro-organisms such as algae and bacteria. The process of evolution produced all the different life forms on the Earth. The earliest traces of man date from 7 million years ago.

The most recent tactic of extremist religious groups is to claim that creationism has scientific value. They call their faith ideas about creation "intelligent design theory". According to this theory, life is too specifically complex (complex structures with specific functions, like DNA) and irreducibly complex (reduce a complex structure by one part and it loses its function, like eyes) to have evolved by only natural forces. Therefore, life must have been created by a supernatural force � an intelligent designer or a god. But this theory has nothing to do with science and a lot with theology. It is not a scientific theory essentially because it offers nothing in the way of testable hypotheses. A theory that cannot be proven false is a tautology that belongs to the realm of faith, not of science.

Read what the best authors have to say on the subject.

The best publication on freedom from religion is:
FREETHOUGHT TODAY
http://ffrf.org/fttoday

1. � FIRST STEP: Read books on the philosophy of science and the myth of creationism:
�Religion and Science
�Introduction to Western Philosophy: Ideas and Argument from Plato to Popper
�The History of Western Philosophy

2. � SECOND STEP: Read books on the myth of creationism:
�Scientists Confront Creationism
�Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: A Basic Guide to the Facts in the Evolution Debate
�Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences
�The Triumph of Evolution: And the Failure of Creationism
�Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism
�Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism
�Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives

3. � THIRD STEP: Read books on the fourteen-billion-year story of cosmic and human history:
�A Different Approach to Cosmology : From a Static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality
�Big Bang: The Origin Of The Universe
�From the Big Bang to the Big Brain
�Bye Bye Big Bang: Hello Reality
�The Big Bang Never Happened : A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe
�The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe
4. � FOURTH STEP: Read books on the Emergence of Life on Earth:
�The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
�DNA : The Secret of Life
�The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview
�Life's Origin: The Beginnings of Biological Evolution
�The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
�Where Do We Come From? : The Molecular Evidence for Human Descent
�The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
�What Evolution Is
�Evolution : The Triumph of an Idea

5. � FIFTH STEP: Read books on biology and genetics:
�The Journey of Man : A Genetic Odyssey
�Mapping Human History : Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins
�Genesis `: The Evolution of Biology
�Beyond the Gene: Cytoplasmic Inheritance and the Struggle for Authority in Genetics
�Soul Made Flesh : The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World

6. � SIXTH STEP: Read this book on the controversy between Darwin and Lamarck:
�Lamarck's Signature : How Retrogenes Are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm

7. � SEVENTH STEP: Read books on the great mass extinction of the past:
�When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
�Snowball Earth : The Story of the Great Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life as We Know It
�Life on a Young Planet : The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth
�Mass Extinctions and Their Aftermath

8. � EIGHTH STEP: Read great books on the causes of collapse of societies:

�The Collapse of Complex Societies
�Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

9. � NINETH STEP: Read great books on the questions of life, death and ethics from a humanist or christian perspective:

�The Moral Animal : Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
�The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
�Why I Am Not a Christian : And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
�Atheist Universe: Why God Didn't Have A Thing To Do With It
�Atheism: The Case Against God
�Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
�Farewell to God : My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith
�Science & Religion: An Introduction
�God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution

10. � TENTH STEP: Read great books on the history of religions and about religion in the USA:
�The Dark Side of Christian History
�The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read
�The Born Again Skeptic's Guide To The Bible
�The New American Empire

Products mentioned include:

'Religion and Science'

'Introduction to Western Philosophy: Ideas and Argument from Plato to Popper'

'A History of Western Philosophy'

'Scientists Confront Creationism'

'Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: A Basic Guide to the Facts in the Evolution Debate'

'Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences'

'The Triumph of Evolution : and the Failure of Creationism'

'Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism'

'Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism'

'Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives'

'A Different Approach to Cosmology : From a Static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality'