You spelled one of the authors' name wrong: It's John Marino not John Marion

I read this book because, although I don't have any kids yet, I want to do some substitute teaching this spring. I thought I might be able to capture some of the fun that math games can entail. This book does the job. Bear in mind, these exercises are for YOUNGER children, up to 3rd grade or so. The authors are full of ideas, and seem to have a grasp both of child psychology, and the trials of parenting. The parenting part doesn't apply to me at this point, but I hope to be able to pass on some of the fun spirit these guys infuse their book with.

Hey, whoever is reading this -- you might want to think about sharing this book with someone in your life who couldn't afford it, when you're finished getting ideas from it. Or even more than one person -- go on a parenting listserv and talk about the book, and pass the word along. Maybe you have a poor cleaning woman who comes to your house, and only speaks Spanish. You could try to share a few of the games with her, if she has kids, and show her how her kids might benefit if she played these games with them. Think about it. It can only help.

"Teach Your Child Science" is a useful and well written book.

Children are naturally curious about the world. With this book, you will help your child discover and understand aspects of astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth science, physics, and phychology.

And there is much more here than many good, simple experiments. Science is more than an area of interest; a basic understanding of science and the scientific method helps us in all sorts of ways. Shermer helps you get your child on the path to rational thinking.

Shermer, like James Randi and Carl Sagan, is a strong voice against pseudoscience and the occult. He has written a book that is a building block to make your child a clear-thinking adult.

I have recently rediscovered my childhood love of bicycling. I bought this book because I always like to read up on my interests. This book was more than the usual "nuts and bolts", such as maintenance, technique, nutrition etc found in sporting books. I thoroughly enjoyed the personal adventure/experience stories from the various women cyclists. Most books simply instruct and educate, this one does both of those things as well as fascinates and inspires. I was in awe of the accomplishments of the author and the other women who shared their experiences, knowledge and insight.

Ambivalence surrounds me when I attempt to review this book. As someone who learned arithmetic in the pre-calculator days, many of the ideas in this book bring back deep memories. One of my favorite things to do when in my teen years and later was to keep track of the items in the grocery cart and estimate the total cost. It was considered a failure when the guess and true total differed by more than $0.25. While this skill did succeed in amazing people, I cannot recall a single instance where it actually was financially beneficial. And eventually I gave it up, going on to mathematics and computers.
But those days are gone, and calculators (computers) do free the mind for other things. So the question becomes, is it beneficial to read books of this type and learn the "lost" art of estimation? The history of mathematics informs us that early mental manipulation of numbers is a strong indicator of the future development of mathematical ability. Gauss and Hardy are two excellent examples of this. However, in later years Hardy in particular looked down on those who were mere number crunchers.
Which leads to the clearest use for the techniques demonstrated in this book, namely to instruct children in the mental manipulation of symbols. By having young minds compete against a calculator, mental techniques are developed that most likely cannot be created any other way. And those methods are excellent training for future careers in the quantitative sciences. And this book does an excellent job in introducing these "tricks." All are clearly explained and detailed solutions to the problems are in the back of the book. Anyone wishing to learn how to perform efficient mental computations will find what they are looking for.
If your goal is to teach or learn how to perform calculations in your head, then this book is for you. However, one should make an effort to keep everything in perspective. The ability to perform mental arithmetic should be considered as a step toward mathematical ability and not a stand-alone indicator of such skill.

(Published in "Journal of Recreational Mathematics" - reprinted with permission.)

He encontrado el libro muy útil , entretenido , y facil de leer.
Muy recomendable para iniciarse en el cálculo mental.

A truly amazing insight into various ways to mystify others with seemingly impossible mathematical challenges. Learn how to determine the day someone was born on, or guess the missing number in the answer to a multiplication problem. This book provides you with insight to the fun (yes... fun) side of math. You will be greatly impressed by the tricks to amaze your friends and make math interesting

I have no doubt that the Holocaust occurred or that Sherman & Grobman provide a useful compendium with which to answer those who say that it didn't. But the authors are naively confident about both the nature of "historical science" and the motivations of Holocaust deniers. "Real revision" and "dogmatic denial" are not necessarily opposites; they may be points on a sliding scale. The authors' discussion of Derek Freeman's critique of Margaret Mead (247-48) reveals what a weak reed peer review can be, and that six of the fifteen attendees at the Wannsee Conference held doctorates in law ought suggest the limitations of entrusting the search for truth to professional elites. Despite the their attempts at evenhandedness, Sherman and Grobman promote their own ideologies as much as Holocaust deniers do. Biases drive their conclusions as well. Sherman and Grobman are right about the Holocaust, less so in regard to the nature of history or the nature of man.

Shermer and Grobman offer a compelling analysis of the methods, mind-set, and agenda of Holocaust deniers and why it is important to confront them. Profiles of prominent Holocaust deniers, such as David Irving, give insight into their pro-fascist and anti-Semitic ideologies. Fundamentally, the book is a manual on confronting and refuting their pseudohistory. The authors demonstrate how theories such as deconstructionism help create historical relativism--the idea that all interpretations are equally valid even if they abuse facts--providing Holocaust deniers with a claim to legitimacy. Shermer and Grobman convincingly distinguish between free speech, which they support, and giving deniers free publicity through efforts such as their campaign to have anti-Holocaust ads put into college newspapers. After examining how anyone can know for certain whether the Holocaust actually happened, the book then explores the difference between historical revisionism, which is ongoing, and historical denial. An examination of Japanese attitudes toward the 1937 Rape of Nanking emphasizes that historical denial is widespread. The book will appeal to scholars, teachers, and students and is recommended for all libraries.

It is both puzzling and painful to recognize that there are still serious(?) people abroad in the world who loudly deny the veracity of the historical record concerning the Holocaust. As if to extend the unconscionable cruelty of the world yet longer for the millions of victims of this century's most heinous and tragic phenomenon, some actually continue to claim that either the Holocaust never happened, or that its dimensions and scope were much more limited and constrained that so-called Jewish revisionist historians would like the public to believe. This book puts the lie to all this nonsense, giving those who would deny the truth and accuracy of the history of the Holocaust an exceptionally thorough trip to the intellectual back shed to give them the whipping of their cranial careers.

With this volume, historians Michael Shermier and Alex Grobman have presented a virtual tidal wave of substantiating evidence of the nature of the complex social movement that the Holocaust deniers comprise. The authors trudge through a depressing tour of every aspect of this social movement, and go deeper into every aspect of the deniers and their social network in an effort to both better understand what motivates them as well as how to finally and authoritatively refute their claims. In so doing, they not only illustrate how shallow, self-serving, disingenuous, and disreputable these claims and positions are, but also provide much more substantial proof of the existence of the Holocaust.

In some ways this tour into the deep underbelly of continuing hate, bigotry, and ignorance is a descent into a Dante-like inferno, one the reader tends to recoil from because of its 'in-your-face' portrayal of such rampant and continuing racial hate and conflict. In other ways it seems more like an impromptu visit to the comical land of the Keystone cops, or the gang who couldn't shoot straight. Anyone falling for this grab-bag crack-pot mixture of conspiracy theories, racial suspicions, and social paranoia isn't likely to be sitting next to anyone in a graduate course in history, anyway. Still, one must remember that Hitler graduated from the ranks of the likes of these cretins.

This is a profoundly disturbing but altogether necessary book. To suggest that after fifty years serious people could still question the historical record regarding the savage and murderous events collectively referred to as the Holocaust is but one more painful indicator of how far the world must go to reach any kind of intellectual maturity or cosmopolitan compassion. One of the most interesting sidelights of the book is the fact that the authors have devised an ingenious framework that both contemporary and future historians and social scientists can employ to verify and virtually any historical event. I highly recommend it for anyone who has ever had someone say (as I have heard a number of times), "The Holocaust never happened."

I bought this book rather in spite of than because of the other Amazon reviews, and lugged it with me on a flight out to the West Coast. The book lasted from Boston to Atlanta, and when it was over I closed it with a sigh of relief. While Shermer is certainly at times an engaging writer here he indulges in a rather peculiar form of quantitative psycho-history mixed in with the equally peculiar allocation of behavioural traits to birth order. There MAY be something in this somewhere, but at the same time it smacks of the 19th century Victorian fetish about cranial measurments that Shermer's evident hero-mentor Stephen Gould took to task in THE MISMEASURE OF MAN. That Shermer is so obsessed with his methodologies (he devotes a substantial portion of the book to 'how he did it") is a shame because it lessens and weakens his focus on his putative topic, the fascinating Alfred Wallace. Instead of really delving intoWallace's background and early experiences we get a few pages of quick gloss intertwined with what frankly struck me as mumbo-jumbo about what it means to be a Younger Child. This may be all very new Age & Hip right now, but I strongly doubt it will prove to have much in the way of scholarly legs. Then there is the tedious re-hashing of Gould's speculations which other reviewers have already re-hashed. Yup, they are old, they are trite, and can we please now move on? Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the discussion of Wallace's involvement with various "Spiritualist" frauds during the second half of his career. Here the writing really picks up & one has the sense that "aha, now we are going to get somewhere". Alas, the excitement soon fades & the book itself fades out to a gentle glow at the end. i really don't know how to categorize this text. It is far too incomplete for someone unfamiliar with Wallace's life & work to get a real sense of the man and it offers such an odd view on Wallace's relationships with friends, family, colleagues & rivals that one is left wondering just what was intended. A footnote to a more general study? Maybe, but i agree with the reviewer who calls for the need of a REAL biography that puts Wallace AND his science in proper context.

A nice story of the scientist who came to a similar conclusion about natural history as his elder and more famous colleague, Darwin. I enjoyed reading about Wallace's background (quite different than Darwin's), his world travels, and the ways in which his theories differed from Darwin's. The author uses multivariate analysis on personality traits to attempt to explain some of these differences; I'm not fully convinced of the validity of that (for every statistical rule there are exceptions, and as Mark Twain colorfully observed, "there are lies ..."), but it's an interesting possibility.

Restoring Albert Russell Wallace's reputation is an occasional occupation with historians. Some wish to elevate him over Darwin, usually on the question of "priority" - who first thought up evolution by natural selection? Others portray him as the victim of Britain's class structure - doomed to obscurity because of his humble background. Shermer, although the title implies otherwise, makes an attempt to reconcile Darwin and Wallace, at least over natural selection. From that point, Shermer follows Wallace through a complex life. This readable, if somewhat shallow, biography does Wallace justice, but at the cost of shedding the broader context. In support of his programme, he relies heavily on Frank Sulloway's research on "birth-order" and creativity. This innovative study has had a rocky career, but Shermer finds it useful. For him, the findings have meaning, but their validity remains unclear. Especially when comparing but two subjects.

Wallace was a complicated personality, perhaps even more so than Darwin himself. In order to build a coherent image of his subject, Shermer creates a "historical matrix model". This is a three-dimensional visual aid of the elements he's utilising in erecting Wallace's biography. Mixing time, Wallace's various excursions and interests, Shermer ties the whole structure to his subject's views on evolution of humanity and the mind. Whether this method works may depend on your attitude about applying mathematical structures to a man's life. Fortunately for readability, Shermer keeps the application of this device at a low key, saving his analytical summation to the end of the book - where it falls flat.

Shermer traces the voyages Wallace was virtually forced to undertake. Financial woes dogged the naturalist throughout his life, although it's hard to see that from Shermer's portrayal. Although Shermer puts Wallace "in Darwin's shadow" he was easily as fluent a correspondent as his more famous counterpart. Yet few of the cited letters contain appeals for employment. Instead, Shermer takes us through Wallace's views on social questions, spiritualism and variations on natural selection. He also shows how Wallace traveled and dealt with a broad spectrum of issues and the people associated with them. Darwin, of course, maintained almost a hermit's life at Down. It's strange that Shermer makes little note of the contrast of the two since much of Darwin's information leading to natural selection came from a global correspondence. Wallace, ever the field researcher, relied more on his own collections for evidence.

Although providing us with a highly readable biography of the man, Shermer is virtually silent on the general social scene of Victorian Britain. In pursuing his subject's life, we are given quirky events and some questionable people. There's an excuse for avoiding the tumultuous politics of the era, but Shermer follows Wallace in his admiration for socialist Robert Owen and the role of Mechanics' Institutes to educate the workers. Both schemes were designed to generate worker contentment at minimal cost - Britain retained a horror of worker rebellion after the Napoleonic era. No mention is made of the Luddite or Chartist movements, which should have elicited comments from socialist Wallace.

A more bizarre oversight is Shermer's failure to impart Wallace's feeling on some of natural selection's sharper criticisms. One in particular, Lord Kelvin's assessment that the age of the solar system was too short to allow the needed time frame for evolution. Fleeming Jenkin's point that changes in organisms would be blended back, a point that Darwin, ignorant of Mendelian genetics, agonised over, is also overlooked by Shermer. Since any biography of Darwin will deal with these issues at length, it's only logical that Shermer should have addressed them. Either that or Wallace ignored them - we remain in the dark either way.

Shermer's sins of omission may be forgiven as retaining clarity and brevity. His committed sins, however, cannot be condoned. His long career as an acolyte of the Pope of Paleontology leads Shermer to peck at Darwin's image. The worst examples are intrusions of "punctuated speciation" in a variety of disguises. Shermer's attempt to promote his mentor's outdated thesis borders on the pathetic. He aggravates it later in the book with other Gouldian pronouncements. Gould makes the index six times, with "punk eek" scoring another ten. In a biography of Wallace, this ploy is simply an outrageous non sequitor. He puts Wallace in "Darwin's dark shadow" [what other kind is there?], implying some sinister agenda. Wallace is "eclipsed" by Darwin - as if Darwin so intended. Darwin's opposition to spiritualism is a "secret war". The position is misleading. The shadow is cast by the long-lived eminence of Darwin's contributions, but Shermer makes no mention of that. It's history's verdict, not Darwin's.

Shermer's use of Sulloway is bewildering. Parallels between Darwin and Wallace are inevitable, but the author's are flimsy. "Birth order" as an issue with these two men is misleading. If he wanted to compare the two as personalities, why does Shermer ignore the similarity of Wallace's losing his first love, Marion Leslie and Darwin's loss of Fanny Owen? That Wallace delved into a wider list of topics than Darwin keeps the former's public life more interesting, but doesn't move the latter into a "shadow." Wallace wasn't dogged by illness throughout his life - his long life certainly suggests good health. He shed whatever Christianity he had at an early age, while Darwin was driven to abandon it from his studies and the loss of children. Shermer doesn't need to shatter Darwin's image to restore Wallace's, but that intent is broadcast in his title. It was a mistake. If Shermer is intent on restoring Wallace's reputation, he should have hired somebody to do it for him. Janet Browne would be a good first choice. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

What I'm looking for is a detailed users' manual for a Baloney Detection Kit (as Carl Sagan called it.) I'd hoped to find this in one of Shermer's previous works, Why People Believe Weird Things, and I'd hoped to find it here. In both cases, the first part of the book did exactly this, but somewhere along the way it turned into case studies of debunking, rather than the process of debunking. (That's okay: they're well-written.)

Michael Shermer's background is psychology and ultra-long-distance cycling; he's written a number of books on cycling and analysis of (and refutation of) Holocaust deniers. He's also president (apparently for life) of the American Skeptics society and a reasonably good writer. In this book, Shermer spends a lot of time talking about the scientific method, its strengths and potential flaws -- and, more importantly, its system for dealing with its flaws (which he claims "sets science apart from all other knowledge systems and intellectual disciplines" -- a heady claim I wish he discussed more.)

Since this is supposed to be a review of Borderlands and not Weird Things, I'll just say that if you like this, you'll like the other as well. In The Borderlands Of Science, he analyzes beliefs that are at defensible, beliefs that could (or were once thought to) be scientifically accurate. Among these are, for instance, ramifications of cloning, confirmation bias in explaining racial differences in sports (about which Malcolm Gladwell has also written), and a whole, whole lot of discussion of Alfred Wallace. Wallace and Charles Darwin were both responsible for the theory of evolution. Wallace is not remembered as widely for a number of reasons, which are explored in frightening detail in roughly 3.5 of the 16 chapters of this book. Shermer did his doctoral thesis on Wallace, not coincidentally. The ratio of stuff-about-Wallace-or-Evolution to everything-else, by chapter, is 3:7; Shermer is pretty focussed on this specific discussion.
The book has four sections: a short introduction (which is quite heavy in skeptical theory, exactly what I wanted) and the main body, discussing borderlands theories, people, and history. In theories, he tends to stray a little from 'why people believe weird things' into 'why stupid people believe weird things' (as he did in the book of the same title) and that's fun. He covers a lot of quite current topics (like cloning, Wacky Unified Field Theories, the importance of Punctured Equilibrium in the evolution of evolutionary theory.)

In section two: people, he discusses the Copernican revolution and its effects, then goes off about Alfred Wallace. Here, he does something weird that needs more discussion. In analyzing Wallace, he constructs a psychological profile, which he derived by having a large number of Wallace experts fill out a survey of the "strongly agree, 9, 8,.. 3, 2, strongly disagree" sort, and then uses the results of these surveys to fill in his discussion of why Wallace became a scientific spiritualist, for instance. It's an interesting technique that he also uses with Steven Jay Gould and Carl Sagan. It is tempting to ask how much confirmation bias exists in a survey of this sort, though. Since I've already let the spoiler out of the bag, Shermer discusses Gould and Sagan, spends some time doing a statistical analysis of Sagan's greatness as a scientist (by comparing published papers by topic with a number of other contemporary, canonically great scientists) and pauses briefly to smack Freud upside the head in a somewhat snarky comparison of Freud and Darwin.

Finally, in section three: histories, he does a lovely discussion of the myth of pastoral tranquillity, including a quick summary of four ancient civilizations that probably managed to destroy themselves through environmental stupidity without (as he puts it) any need of Dead White European Males coming in and inflicting devastation from outside. Shermer then analyzes (and debunks) the theory of transcendent genius, the Mozart Myth, as he calls it, and goes back to two more chapters on Wallace and evolution, in a discussion of the Piltdown Man hoax and why that should (but doesn't seem to have) support the idea that science can be self-correcting and learn from its mistakes.

I like what Shermer is doing, and he writes well and readably. If I sound a bit impatient, it's because I want him to be writing about the application of critical thinking rather than case studies, and when he starts out writing just what I want to read, then goes off in a different direction, he leaves me standing at the intersection saying "hey, wait, this isn't the bus I wanted." The book could stand to be either edited down into two books: a Wallace analysis and a case studies in how science inspects itself discussion, or edited up with a clearer discussion of the math involved in his statistical analysis of Sagan or his psychological profiling of people. In the end, I liked it, I learned a fair bit from it, and I would recommend it to people who want to learn more about both critical thinking and science history.

To satisfy the title -- that is, to define borderlands science and give the reader the tools to recognize science, borderlands science, and non-science -- I think this book could have been significantly shorter. In fact, I think the first 30 or so pages do just that, and admirably too. In those pages, he even has a couple good examples to illustrate his ideas. He shows how silly "remote viewing" is after he's given it fair shake. Also in those pages was a fascinating discussion of hypnosis and the idea of a "hidden observer." The book was worth its purchase price for those first 30 pages alone. But I'm very happy the author didn't stop there. It did seem to me that the book didn't really flow that well or to have a well-defined purpose, but I really didn't mind, because I found most of it very interesting. He's definitely earned my respect as a fair minded and very sharp historian, although I may have learned more than I wanted to know about Alfred R. Wallace (you know, the co-discoverer of evolution). Throughout, the author seems very interested in what makes people do what they do and he spends some time investigating this (well worthwhile). On to a few of those gems I mentioned, besides "remote viewing" and hypnosis. Want to know why alternative medicine is so popular? And just a bit of data that shows that at least some of it doesn't work? There is a great quote from physicist Richard Feynman: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." (He was investing the Challenger accident and trying to convince NASA that politics should be secondary to reality.) A few other gems were his discussions on: race and its relation to abilities (ex: black basketball players); cloning; codes hidden in the Bible; the state of belief before the Earth moved (sun-centered solar system); more openness = less religiosity; getting a handle on what "genius" means (along with brief but very nice discussions on Einstein, Newton, and other geniuses); and the "beautiful people myth" (that there was once a time and place when people lived in harmony with the planet and their neighbors). In summary, I definitely found this book worth reading and highly recommend it. I look forward to checking out his other books, and to checking out at least one episode of his TV show ("Exploring the Unknown" on Fox Family).

Michael Shermer is currently my favorite skeptic. He always ends up making me think, whether I agree with him or not. The Borderlands Of Science is not Shermer's best book. It lacks the consistency of Why People Believe Weird Things and How We Believe (both of which I think are 5 star books). Borderlands reads like a collection of essays (which I think it is - my back issues of Skeptic are either buried or at school, so I can't compare the essays in the magazine to the chapters in the book). This isn't a bad thing, since the chapters make for good reading and thinking, but I think readers would be happier if they knew that at least some of the chapters where modified from earlier essays (I've searched the book for mention of the pedigree of the material, but I can't find any). That aside, I think that Borderlands has enough meat on its bones for even the most skeptical reader. The highlights for me were the chapters on Alfred Russel Wallace (Shermer has researched Wallace extensively and needs to do a full-length book on him) and the Myth chapters in the last third of the book (the Beautiful People Myth and the Amadeus Myth). I think current subscribers to Skeptic Magazine may find Borderlands a bit of a review, but if you're not familiar with that magazine or with Michael Shermer's writings, The Borderlands Of Science should be a good introduction to both.

Fledgling and veteran skeptics alike are familiar with the major authors of the field, among them: Carl Sagan, Martin Gardner, and Michael Shermer. Shermer, the publisher of the quarterly magazine Skeptic, possesses a breezy, affable writing style well suited to presenting skepticism to the public. Most chapters of "Why People Believe Weird Things" contain entertaining anectdotes and observations, accomodating readers without insulting their intelligence.

However, those looking for deeper insights into human psychology or skeptical tenets will not find them here. That alone would not be a major fault in this book, but the fact that some passages attempt to construct models of human behavior err on the side of presumption. (One example in particular concerns the cyclical nature of human history: the model is neatly and well-thought out, but sheds little light on its subject). Nevertheless, Shermer's passion for skepticism shows throughout, and the book remains a great read for those interested in the field.

While this book might better have been titled 'What weird people believe', Shermer addresses many of the North American emotional aberrations with wit and clarity. The geographic limitation omits haunted castles in Britain, elephant tusk powder for potency in China, or papal infallibility, but none of these interest his immediate audience. As an American skeptic, Shermer is here seeking to expose irrational beliefs, presumably in the hope better education will result in fewer aberrant ideas. By showing readers what some people believe, spending pages exposing the fallacies in those beliefs, he's challenging us all to take up the cause in his behalf. That's an admirable quest, deserving attention and applause.

Discussing the transmission of weird ideas, Shermer traces expansion of one of the European 'witch crazes' during the 17th Century. This topic is one worthy of further pursuit. Many modern delusions follow patterns often discounted as 'mob hysteria'. In a modern episode, he cites the Satanic Cults of this century in showing such events recur. Shermer's book shows the importance of plumbing these occurrences in the hope of applying some preventive medicine. The medicine is rational thinking, which this book shows isn't limited to the educate elite. If Shermer can attract more people to take the time to understand and care about what is happening in their society he's done what he set out to do. What you, as a reader, must do is extend his appeal - tell the media loud and clear that you don't want them to enhance belief in 'weird things' by spending so much time on them.

Some reviewers have complained this book lacks depth. The 'why' of these errant ideas is incomplete or lacking, but the book isn't intended as a deep psychological study. There are references in the bibliography for that topic. This book is an appeal for awareness - readers will learn the strange ideas his subjects have and who else believes them. Shermer can only be admired for his courage in exposing these mythologies. Shermer's call for reason deserves a wide and attentive audience. Join us and support his book.

My first impression upon finishing this book is that the title is wrong. Though Dr. Shermer addresses some issues about why people believe weird things, for the most part this book is more about the weird things people believe, and not so much about the reasons they believe them. For a better discussion about why people believe weird things, I suggest Thomas Gilovich's book "How we know what isn't so."

Shermer devotes all of chapter one to expanding on the definition and characteristics of a skeptic, and all of chapter two to describing science. This lays the bedrock for his future discussions about pseudosciences such as creationism, and helps to make clear the reasons these pseudosciences and superstitions fail to meet the demanding requirements of science. He explains that a skeptic is not synonymous with a cynic. Instead, a skeptic is someone who questions the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it. As such, skepticism is an essential part of the scientific method.

Chapter 3 is a jewel. It describes 25 ways in which thinking goes wrong. Reading this chapter left me wondering if these rules for fallacious reasoning are not encoded somewhere as the rules for participation in some of the more notorious Internet newsgroups devoted to various mythologies.

The second part of the book examines claims of the paranormal, near-death experiences, alien abductions, witch crazes, and cults. Although these stories make interesting reading, they are same examples of debunking we have seen for years. I, for one, would appreciate a fresher skeptical approach that is not so (apparently) reluctant to challenge the claims of institutionalized religions. Is transubstantiation any more credible than claims of the paranormal? Are alien abduction stories any less credible than the Book of Mormon's claims about a large, literate Hebrew society in America 2,000 years ago, that used horse-drawn chariots and steel swords? Are witch crazes any more significant than some Christians who let their children die rather than bringing them proper medical treatment? I think not, and I believe it is time for skeptics to broaden their portfolio beyond the usual array of paranormal activities and alien abductions.

Shermer devotes chapters 9 through 11 to the conflict between creationism and evolution. This section of the book has a wonderful summary of the legal battles fought to keep the religion of creationism out of public schools. Chapter 10 has an excellent description of what is evolution, and a very brief summary of 25 arguments used by creationists against evolution, along with counter arguments used by scientists. Interestingly enough, Shermer offers very little in the way of direct evidence against creationism - of which there is a tremendous amount - and focuses mostly on how to defend evolution. Unfortunately, he has truncated his 25 arguments so much that they are of little practical use - especially against more polished debaters. Shermer admits this at the beginning of the chapter, and does offer an excellent bibliography of more detailed references for the reader.

Shermer's defense of evolution bogs down when he encroaches on the idea that evolution is not a threat to religion. [This is how I interpreted Shermer, though he is not entirely clear about his personal feelings regarding this matter.] Science most certainly is a threat to some religions - creationism, for example (and Shermer argues throughout his book that creationism is a religion - which is why it should not be taught in public schools). It seems obvious to me that sometimes science does threaten religion (more some than others) - but that is religion's problem, not science'. Scientists should stop apologizing for that fact.

In trying to sooth the potential conflict between science and religion, Shermer quotes Stephen J. Gould (one of my favorite authors). Interestingly, Gould (uncharacteristically) offers a spectacular example of some of the bogus reasoning Shermer discredits in chapter 3. Gould says (page 132):

"Unless at least half my colleagues are dunces, there can be - on the most raw and empirical grounds - no conflict between science and religion."

Here, Gould violates Shermer's rule 19 (overreliance on authorities - Gould's colleagues in this case). Then, Gould leaves us wondering if, instead, we are to consider the other half of Gould's colleagues (the half that apparently do not agree with him) as dunces.

To his credit, Shermer provides a definition of religion on page 145 (though he offers no definition of God). I am not sure he makes the matter any clearer by doing so, however, since his definition of religion (as a method) places it as the antithesis of science (also defined as a method). Yet, I got the impression from his book that Shermer agrees (on a fundamental level) that there need not be any disagreement between science and religion.

Part 4 discusses racism and pseudohistory in the case of holocaust deniers. This part seemed out of place in the book primarily because Shermer spends comparatively little time discussing the weirdness of the opposing camp, instead focusing mostly on his perceptions. Though I agree with him on most points, I could no shake the feeling the chapters belong in a different book with a different title.

In the last section (section 5) Shermer gets back on track and finishes with an interesting view of the societal role science plays, and the roll it will play in the future. Shermer holds hope for the human race, in spite of its sometimes-overbearing tendency toward mysticism. He also gives a wonderful summary of why people believe weird things: because it feels good. Though I would like to know more about why it feels good, I cannot argue with his conclusion.

Overall, this was an excellent book. Dr. Shermer is a clear thinker. His ability to focus on the central issues and facts makes this book refreshingly illuminating. His personal touch, brought through stories of actual life experiences, adds to the pleasure of reading his book.

Duwayne Anderson

In this book, Shirmer shows an astonishing knowledge of skeptical books and writings over the ages, and of recent publications, too. In Appendix 2, he shows excellent knowledge of and use of mathematical statistical analysis as applied to the social sciences.

I would highly reccomend reading Shermer's WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS as a prequel to this book.
As a skeptic beforehand, I found parts of HOW WE BELIEVE to be rather hard to digest, and even tedious at times. Such is the case of the many pages on mythology, and how it developed in the human race, and how it developed into religion.
Sometimes, I guess that I have a taste for simple explanations of things. For example, how did ancient "prophets" and "wise men" receive the "word of God"? I would answer simply that they went out into the wilderness, fasted, and had hallucinations.
Shermer (a former Christian like me, who has become an agnostic), never says so directly, but he apparently believes that Jesus and Abraham were real historical characters. I think that the likelihood is high that they were fictious. In other words, and to use the word "myth" in a different sense than Shermer does, it is likely that Jesus was just as mythological as the other gods from Apollo to Zeus. The same is probably true about the other ancient religious leaders.

As an example of how Shermer can be tedious about a topic, consider his several chapters in WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS, where he confronts Holocaust disbelievers. I think that the simpler explanation of these people is words to the effect that "they have their heads buried in the sand".

In HOW WE BELIEVE, I found Shermer's Chapter 10 on "Glorious Contingency" to be overdone and on shakey ground. I think that as a consequence of the nature of the physical universe, the forces restraining contingency are much stronger than Shermer does. Just how strong, I cannot know. Something that I do know is that one one planet, at least two (not just one) large-brained families of animals evolved. I think that dolphins are just as intelligent as humans, but they cannot have technology where they live.

Overall, I give HOW WE BELIEVE three stars, but WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS, five stars.

To me the title of this book suggested a treatise essentially on the psychology of belief systems. Indeed we are presented with quite interesting material in this regard. Mr. Schermer uses the fields of psychology, evolutionary biology, sociology, philosophy, and anthropology, amongst others, to help explain belief systems.

While I found that almost all the book held my interest, it seemed somewhat disjointed. Some of the material is also quite controversial. While such matters only serve to entertain me, others may get offended - Christians may take umbrage at having their beliefs repeatedly referred to as "myths".

The book presents intriguing survey results on why people believe in God. What is most fascinating is that respondents felt that other people believe in God for reasons that differ considerably from their own. Shermer moves on into a discussion of evolutionary biology and a "belief module" (more controversy). Then, surprisingly, we move into a section concerned with traditional philosophical arguments (primarily those of Thomas Aquinas) for belief in God. When you get right down to it, no one embraces religious belief purely on the basis of philosophical arguments. Creationists will be offended by a section on their beliefs. A chunk of the book is given to the Indian Ghost Dance of the 1890s, and we read a discussion on a mathematical refutation of the recent best seller The Bible Code. Good stuff, but its like reading a collection of essays that are not often obviously related to each other.

The final chapter had me scratching my head the most. It's a section discussing the controversy surrounding Stephen Jay Gould's theories of evolution regarding necessity/contingency/chance. While poring through this I kept wondering what it had to do with religion. My question was never answered satisfactorily. Shermer forces this subject into a paean to the wonders of living in a contingent universe. He states that his abandonment of religion allows him to bask in the beauty of our magnificent universe. I get annoyed with concept that if you are religious you can't appreciate science and nature. Not every religious believer is constrained by fundamentalist young earth/intelligent design theories. I am an agnostic who was brought up a Catholic. My intense curiosity and admiration of nature was as strong when I was a believer as it is as a non-believer today.

Michael Shermer is the founder and leader of the Skeptic's Society, and in this, his most recent book, he takes on religion in a collection of essays. Although his direction seems to meander, the research that went into this book provides an excellent aggregation of facts and ideas that explore why people believe in anything or anybody, from James Van Praagh to God himself. Shermer's proposal of a Belief Engine is an interesting one and explains how humans, as pattern-seeking creatures, could have evolved an inherent propensity to believe. Unfortunately, I feel that this book will offend religious folk (rather than create skeptical converts), despite Shermer's claims that he means only to understand.

In my opinion, the religious and the skeptical are always at one another's throats because neither accepts the other's criteria for acceptance of an idea. The skeptic relies on science to discover the truth; the answers to his or her questions are things to be discovered. Someone with a more religious outlook starts at the opposite end of the spectrum. That is, all answers can be found through faith in God and it is up to us to conform our worldview to confirm that philosophy. With one group seeking an answer and the other starting with the answer, it's no wonder that both wouldn't mind seeing the other ousted from schools, government, and other positions of influence.

Having said all that, I wonder if anyone's mind will actually be changed by this book, or if it will serve only as a rallying point for like-minded skeptics as a sort of skeptical equivalent of _Evidence That Demands a Verdict_. No matter the eventual outcome of the science-religion conflict, this book provides a solid intellectual foothold for the skeptic.