"This sparkling book romps over the range of science and anti-science." --Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel
Revised and Expanded Edition.
In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. A no-holds-barred assault on popular superstitions and prejudices, with more than 80,000 copies in print, Why People Believe Weird Things debunks these nonsensical claims and explores the very human reasons people find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things," Michael Shermer takes on science luminaries like physicist Frank Tippler and others, who hide their spiritual beliefs behind the trappings of science.
Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. Why People Believe Strange Things is an eye-opening resource for the most gullible among us and those who want to protect them.
Michael Shermer is the author of The Moral Arc, Why People Believe Weird Things, The Believing Brain, and several other books on the evolution of human beliefs and behavior. He is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the editor of Skeptic.com, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. He lives in Southern California.
- "怀疑论者恰恰就热衷于去揭露那些胡说八道的异端邪说。意识到别人荒谬的逻辑推理是件很开心的事，但这不是问题的主旨所在。作为怀疑论者和具有批判精神的思想家，我们不应受情绪的干扰，而要试着去了解别人出错的原因，弄明白社会和文化传统对科学所产生的影响，只有这样我们才能更地了解世界发展的规律。 荷兰哲学家巴鲁克-斯宾诺莎说：“我曾进行过不懈的努力，其目的不是去嘲弄、哀叹或讥笑人们的某种行为，而是试着去了解他们。”"
- "Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest. The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, Rest and expatiates in a life to come."
- "This hope is what drives all of us -skeptics and believers alike- to be compelled by unsolved mysteries, to seek spiritual meaning in a physical universe, desire immortality, and wish that our hopes for eternity may be fulfilled."
- "Life is contingent and filled with uncertainties, the most frightening of which is the manner, time, and place of our own demise. Under the pressure of reality, we become credulous. We seek reassuring certainties from fortune-tellers and palm-readers, astrologers and psychics. Our critical faculties"
- "three tiers why people believe weird things:(1) because hope springs eternal;(2) because thinking can go wrong in general ways;(3) because thinking can go wrong in particular ways."
- "Humans evolved the ability to seek and find connections between things and events in the environment (snakes with rattles should be avoided), and those who made the best connections left behind the most offspring. We are their descendants. The problem is that causal thinking is not infallible. We ma"
- "Balance can be found by answering a few basic questions: What is the quality of the evidence for the claim? What are the background and credentials of the person making the claim? Does the thing work as claimed?"
- ""One of the characteristics that sets man apart from all the other animals (and animal he indubitably is) is a need for knowledge for its own sake.""
