Customer Reviews
The Evolution: An Appeal to Save Life On Earth 
2008-08-30
If the title of the book was like the title of my review, I would give the book 5 stars. I found the Biology and biography part of the book interesting. But the problem is that this book's proclaimed purpose does not match with its contents. It is about what the evolutionary biology and how to educate people about it, not really appealing to anyone to participate in saving the life except calling that someone as a pastor. Why pretending to appeal to someone when you insult them? Protecting the complexity of the ecosystem is something that those who value lives accept without the biological reasoning. I read this book expecting a good scientist arguing it with some valuable insights into other party's position (in this case, pastors) and thereby motivating them to join the force achieving the greater good despite of fundamental differences in opinions(?).
Be honest.
I can't imagine a great pastor writing a book titled as my review and starting the first page with "Dear Biologist", and then forwarding with how the Biology sucks, why the creation makes more spiritual senses, how to educate the general public about the Creation without boring them, and finally how great spiritual leaders the author met in the seminary. And in between the pastor says "By the way, we have to take care of this great evolution and its complexity." If any pastor wrote such a book, I could not call the pastor great in the good conscience.
Read this book if you are interested in the biology, especially the evolutionary biology and its education for the general public. Don't read it if you are looking for a insightful argument for the cooperation between the science and religion for the common great goal.
Hey Mr. Wilson!! 
2008-08-20
Thanks for writing this book. It was truly inspiration for me. I don't write many reviews so I'm going to make this short and sweet. I'm about to start my last semester of college and will soon be receiving my B.A. in Psychology. However, I had no idea what I wanted to do with it afterwards.
Typically students try to go to grad school, but I didn't know what field interested me enough to devote two more years too. Then I read this book and heard of Environmental Psychology. I've always been fascinated by our surroundings. How our natural and artificial environments affect who we are as people. In "The Creation", Wilson not only informs the reader that there IS a field of psychology that studies just that, but that many many studies have been done within that field and he mentions plenty.
So thank you Mr. Wilson for writing this book and inspiring me to further my education! This is the only book of yours I have read, but it is certainly not the last. I can't say I will agree with everything you have to say as I learn more about your ideas and theories, but I know for a fact you hold these evidence-supported-ideas and theories with great confidence and passion for your subject and your species, which is DESPERATELY needed today.
Tells it like it is 2008-06-21
Dr Wilson is a master at explaining, in layman's terms, why we need to take care of the whole Earth, not just those organisms that are directly useful to people. This book should be required reading for all high school and college students.
A good, quick read. 
2008-06-09
I like Wilson's view that science and faith can and should try to meet on common ground. I didn't get the feeling that Wilson is a racist, misogynist, or eugenicist, as has been alleged by others--just a helluva biologist! I found it fascinating that the total weight of all of the ants is as much as that of all of the humans. Also interesting is the % of undiscovered species, from which so many advances in medicine are waiting to be found.No Time To Kill
Bruce A. Roth
Daisy Alliance
www.daisyalliance.org
Can serve as an introduction to conservation 
2008-05-20
Short and straight to the point:
This book may be good as an introduction to conservation and what mainstream biologists think of it. It is nice to read and the concepts are easy to get. Since it is not an expensive book i recommend you to buy.
The downside is that failed "atheism public relations" approach Dr. Wilson tries. If you change the words science and reason for phisicalism then you can really understand what he is saying to the (imaginary?) Pastor, which, in a few words is: "I respect you, but the things you believe are irrational." Is it really respect? He finishes with the played out arguments against Intelligent Design, a subject apparently he knows nothing of. Filter this and you will be fine.
Creation:Saving Planet Earth 2008-04-08
In this daring work, Edward O. Wilson proposes an alliance between science and religion to save Earth's vanishing biodiversity.Dear Pastor:
We have not met, yet I feel I know you well enough to call you friend. First of all, we grew up in the same faith. Although I no longer belong to that faith, I am confident that if we met and spoke privately of our deepest beliefs, it would be in a spirit of mutual respect and goodwill. I write to you now for your counsel and help. Let us see if we can, and you are willing, to meet on the near side of metaphysics in order to deal with the real world we share. I suggest that we set aside our differences in order to save the Creation. The defense of living Nature is a universal value. It doesn't rise from nor does it promote any religious or ideological dogma. Rather, it serves without discrimination the interests of all humanity.
Pastor, we need your help. The Creation—living Nature—is in deep trouble.The Creation is E. O. Wilson's most important work since the publications of
Sociobiology and
Biophilia. Like Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring, it is a book about the fate of the earth and the survival of our planet. Yet while Carson was specifically concerned with insecticides and the ecological destruction of our natural resources, Wilson, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, attempts his new social revolution by bridging the seemingly irreconcilable worlds of fundamentalism and science. Like Carson, Wilson passionately concerned about the state of the world, draws on his own personal experiences and expertise as an entomologist, and prophesies that half the species of plants and animals on Earth could either have gone or at least are fated for early extinction by the end of our present century.
Astonishingly,
The Creation is not a bitter, predictable rant against fundamentalist Christians or deniers of Darwin. Rather, Wilson, a leading "secular humanist," draws upon his own rich background as a boy in Alabama who "took the waters," and seeks not to condemn this new generations of Christians but to address them on their own terms. Conceiving the book as an extended letter to a southern Baptist minister, Wilson, in stirring language that can evoke Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," tells this everyman minister how, in fact, the world really came to be. He pleads with these men of the cloth to understand the cataclysmic damage that is destroying our planet and asks for their help in preventing the destruction of our Earth before it is too late. Never a pessimist, Wilson avers that there are solutions that may yet save the planet, and believes that the vision that he presents in
The Creation is one that both scientists and pastors can accept, and work on together in spite of their fundamental ideological differences. 25 line drawings.
Excellent service! 2008-02-08
Speedy shipment, order came brand new just as described! Would do business with again!
Fun read, and very informative 2008-01-10
Not a lot to say other than I really enjoyed the book and it was a fun fast read.
Commendable but unnecessary 2008-01-06
This book is a plea for cooperation on environmental concerns between scientists and religious leaders. It is styled as a letter to a (presumably imaginary) Southern Baptist Pastor - apparently a reference to the pastors of Wilson's own Christian childhood - but this appears to be a gimmick which even the author soon tires of.
Wilson believes there should be cooperation between scientists and religious leaders on environmental issues. This is all very well, but I suspect that most people of my acquaintance would accept this without question. Is it really worth writing another book about?
I don't mean to trivialise Wilson's concern. I agree that ecological problems are extremely important, and that in the past they have been sorely neglected. As a matter of fact, I have spent a significant part of the last thirty years educating young people about the disastrous effects of habitat destruction and introduced species on environments, particularly the fragile environments of my own country.
Nor do I mean to imply that the book is useless. I admit that I had not really thought sufficiently about the problems of freshwater ecology before reading it, nor was I aware of the magnitude of the SLIMES (subterranean lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems).
However, I notice that a search on Amazon using the term "Ecology" reveals more than 140 000 books, and while I admit to being completely unfamiliar with well over 99.9% of these, most of those that I have looked at reveal at least some concerns similar to Wilson's. I can also say that in my experience, similar environmental concerns form a significant part of both Geography and Science curricula at primary, secondary and tertiary levels.
Wilson seems to imply that religious ministers should be as concerned about extinctions and endangered species as about theology. As an Australian Catholic, I have no experience with Southern Baptist pastors, but it is my observation that a great many religious ministers are already more worried about ecology than about their own subject. So I can see little point in this book being written.
As an aside, I wonder what would be the response if someone wrote a book arguing that ecologists should give more concern to theological problems.
A BEAUTIFUL CONSILIENCE 2007-12-10
Biologist and humanist E. O. Wilson's use of the religious symbol of creation reminds us that it is a continuing process and not something that was completed in the first chapter of Genesis. His forging of an alliance between science and religion implements the theme of his earlier book "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge."
There is consilience in the way that science's "how" complements religion's "why." Wilson eloquently describes the beautiful harmony of contrasts evident in the multitude of species that occupy so many ecological niches. There is also a multitude of religious beliefs that provide meaning and purpose for the diversity of cultures and traditions. Wilson passionately pleads for the communities of religion and science to cooperate in saving our planet.
