It actually doesn’t take too long to get a decent grasp of evolution. Just reading the wiki page in detail will probably take less than an hour, and give you a decent grasp on it. Possibly also read some of Eliezer’s stuff on how people get evolution wrong.
If you want to go a bit further, I’m sure you can find a middle school or high school level textbook that could explain more.
It doesn’t take to long to get a decent grasp of Le Sage’s theory of gravitation either. Most problems have solutions that are clear, simple, and wrong.
I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing as well. There are lots of books published by creationists and I am sure they are quite compelling (I haven’t actually read those either), otherwise they wouldn’t write those. Essentially, reading someone’s summary is again putting yourself into the hands of whoever wrote it. If they have an agenda, you’ll likely end up believing it. So, really, you need to read both sides, compare their arguments, etc. Lots of work.
The problem with textbooks is that they are the “pink slime” of publishing. College textbooks are slightly better than grade school textbooks, in that they have slightly greater than zero market forces acting on them (not many, but some) and can assume an adult level of comprehension.
See also this paper about common misrepresentations of evolution in textbooks and science literature.
It actually doesn’t take too long to get a decent grasp of evolution. Just reading the wiki page in detail will probably take less than an hour, and give you a decent grasp on it. Possibly also read some of Eliezer’s stuff on how people get evolution wrong.
If you want to go a bit further, I’m sure you can find a middle school or high school level textbook that could explain more.
It doesn’t take to long to get a decent grasp of Le Sage’s theory of gravitation either. Most problems have solutions that are clear, simple, and wrong.
I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing as well. There are lots of books published by creationists and I am sure they are quite compelling (I haven’t actually read those either), otherwise they wouldn’t write those. Essentially, reading someone’s summary is again putting yourself into the hands of whoever wrote it. If they have an agenda, you’ll likely end up believing it. So, really, you need to read both sides, compare their arguments, etc. Lots of work.
The problem with textbooks is that they are the “pink slime” of publishing. College textbooks are slightly better than grade school textbooks, in that they have slightly greater than zero market forces acting on them (not many, but some) and can assume an adult level of comprehension.
See also this paper about common misrepresentations of evolution in textbooks and science literature.