Michael Shermer

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Shermer says: get on yer bike!

Michael Shermer (b. September 8, 1954) is an American historian of science, writer, professional skeptic, and ex-professional cyclist.

He is a noted "skeptical agnostic non-theist," the author of many writings on skepticism, and the founder of the American Skeptic Society.

Contents

[edit] A modern Paul

Like Paul, Shermer found his way on the long (bike) road to Damascus Mt. Elbert, in Colorado, when he realized that all the prayer, New Age pyramids, meditation, and homeopathy would not take the pain of 10 years of cycling away, and that these remedies and the philosophies behind them were all bunk. Like Paul, Shermer began to preach and teach, writing for Scientific American in the Skeptics column, writing books like Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time[1] (as well as the far more exciting Cycling: Endurance and Speed[2]), and lecturing across the US on topics ranging from Holocaust denial to creationism (which he aptly calls Evolution Denial).[3]

Useful comparisons to John, George, and Ringo are less forthcoming, however.

[edit] Inverse stopped clock?

Shermer leans heavily towards libertarianism and is known to be less than introspective where economic issues are concerned; occasional hilarity results with the rest of the skeptical community (one incident featured a thoroughly inept attempt to map economic freedom onto the Kardashev scale[wp]).[citation needed]

While Shermer's other work has been well received, his book Mind of the Market has been widely criticized in skeptical circles for being mostly full of bullshit pop evolutionary psychology used in order to rationalize his libertarianism.[4] This has led some to say there are "two Michael Shermers," "skeptical Shermer" and "libertarian Shermer." Others contend he never really stopped drinking the Randroid Kool-Aid. Of course, he has denied these charges.[5]

Initially an "environmental skeptic," Shermer returned to the warm embrace of reality, saying that "data trumps politics."[6]

One of Shermer's longstanding opponents in the skeptic community has been PZ Myers, who wrote several blog posts personally critical of Shermer, arguing that he was egotistical,[7] sexist,[8] and irrational.[9]

[edit] Books

Published works include

  • The Believing Brain
  • The Mind of the Market – on evolutionary economics, whatever that is
  • Why Darwin Matters: Evolution and the Case Against Intelligent Design – about evolution, evidence for evolution and ways of testing the theory
  • Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown – how thinking works and goes wrong
  • The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Share Care, and Follow the Golden Rule – How morality evolved and being moral without religious belief
  • In Darwin’s Shadow – on Alfred Russel Wallace who also discovered natural selection.
  • The Borderlands of Science – what is not clearly science or pseudoscience
  • Denying Historyholocaust denial and more pseudohistory
  • How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God – This is Shermer’s theory about the origin and reasons for religious belief.
  • Why People Believe Weird Things – on pseudoscience, superstitions, and other contemporary confusion
  • The Soul of Science – co-edited (with Pat Linse and ) about belief on science the soul and afterlife
  • The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience – analyzing supposedly scientific controversies[10]

[edit] Quotes

  • "On the deepest level, our brains are wired up to believe just about everything we encounter..."[11]
  • "Science is the best tool we ever devised. It's the only hope we have," he said. But "it's counterintuitive. People are not naturally inclined to think skeptically and scientifically."[11]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

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