The first was philosopher of science Stephen Meyer's Return of the God Hypothesis which came out last spring and has received excellent reviews in places like the Wall Street Journal and The Claremont Review of Books. It is the sort of book that would lead most open minded readers to conclude that the scientific case for a designer of both the cosmos and life is exceedingly strong.
Meyer's argument is based on the overwhelming evidence for a cosmic beginning, the extraordinarily improbable fine-tuning of the constants and forces that make the universe suitable for life, and the massive obstacles facing any naturalistic explanation of the origin of life itself.
Each of these phenomena is much more likely to be the result of an intentional design than a series of astronomically improbable accidents. The arguments in Meyer's book make the denial of this assertion intellectually absurd.
The second of the two books is one that I've referenced in several recent posts (see here, here and here). It's a book titled Animal Algorithms by an expert in navigational systems named Eric Cassell. The posts to which I've linked will give the reader a sense of the amazing abilities that have somehow been programmed into animals, especially insects, and Cassell's explanation of these abilities in Animal Algorithms should be read by every biology student and teacher.
Here's an excerpt from a review of the book by Jonathan Witt at Evolution News:
In Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts author Eric Cassell explores the buzzing, migrating, web-spinning, and colony-building world of ingenious animals blessed with gobsmackingly impressive skills — in many cases, from birth.Return of the God Hypothesis is excellent but hefty and in places a bit technical. Animal Algorithms is about 200 pages of fascinating explanation of what the latest research shows about animal behavior. Meyer's book is a must read for anyone who has an interest in the origin of life, or the origin and structure of the cosmos.
How do blind mound-building termites know passive heating and cooling strategies that dazzle skilled human architects? What taught the honeybee its dance, or its hive mates how to read the complex message of the dance? How do monarch butterflies known to fly thousands of miles to a single mountainside in Mexico, to a place they’ve never been before?
The secret, according to author Eric Cassell: behavioral algorithms embedded in their tiny brains.
But how did these embedded programs arise in the history of life? There’s the problem for evolutionists. “Specified complexity, irreducible complexity, and the Cambrian explosion are inexplicable from a Darwinian viewpoint,” comments Baylor University computer engineer and intelligent design theorist Robert J. Marks. “In this book, Cassell masterfully adds animal algorithms to the list.”
Cassell's book is must reading for anyone who has an interest in whether unguided Neo-Darwinian evolution can really provide a plausible explanation for the astonishing behaviors of living things.
They'd both make perfect Christmas gifts for someone whose interests lie along these lines.