Evolution and the Big Questions: Sex, Race, Religion, and Other Matters

“David N. Stamos’s Evolution and the Big Questions delivers what its title promises―you get to look at all of the issues, such as race and ethics and religion, that make the study of evolution so interesting, and more than just a science. The book is written in a clear and friendly manner and deserves a very wide readership.”
Michael Ruse, Florida State University

This provocative text considers whether evolutionary explanations can be used to clarify some of life’s biggest questions. It offers a lively, informative, and timely look at a wide variety of key issues facing all of us today―including questions of race, sex, gender, the nature of language, religion, ethics, knowledge, consciousness, and, ultimately, thc meaning of life.

Some of the questions examined are:

• Did evolution make men and women fundamentally different?
• Is the concept of race merely a social construction?
• Is morality, including universal human rights, a mass delusion?
• Can religion and evolution really be harmonized?
• Docs evolution render life meaningless?

Designed for students and anyone with an interest in the relationship between evolutionary heritage and human nature, the text takes an interdisciplinary approach and offers direction for further reading and research. Each chapter presents a main topic, together with discussion of related ideas and arguments from various perspectives. Along the way, it poses life’s biggest questions, pulling no punches, and presenting a challenge to thinkers on all levels.

David N. Stamos teaches philosophy at York University, Toronto. Author of The Species Problem (2003) and Darwin and the Nature of Species (2007), Stamos is well published in a wide variety of academic journals.