Greatest Show Part 2

In Chapter 4 Dawkins makes several more interesting points that evolution is in fact, a fact. :)

I found the most interesting part of this section of the book to be the discussion of the various clocks that we can use to historically date events. He mentions the rings on trees that can be used to date events dating back 11,500 years in a process called dendrochronology.

He also mentions the we can see the passage of time by viewing sedimentary rock and makes the point that no mammal fossils have ever been found before a given point in time, not one. He further states that "...they are not just statistically rarer in Devonian than in later rocks. They literally never occur in rocks older than a certain date."

And finally he discuss radioactive clocks that measure time in reference to how much material of a certain type is can be detected given known decay rates (vastly simplified!).

The single most interesting point he makes is that how can all of these different clocks point to the same dates and all be wrong if you only believe the earth is a certain age.