Michael Shermer Biography, Age, Teaching, Education, Books, Awards, Skepticism, Competitive Cycling, Heavens on Earth, Published Works
Michael Shermer is the author of books that attempt to explain the ubiquity of irrational or poorly substantiated beliefs, including UFOs, Bigfoot, and paranormal claims. In 1997, he wrote Why People Believe Weird Things, which explores a variety of “weird” ideas and groups (including cults), in the tradition of the skeptical writings of Martin Gardner.
A revised and expanded edition was published in 2002. He wrote in the Introduction: So we are left with the legacy of two types of thinking errors: Type 1 Error: believing a falsehood and Type 2 Error: rejecting a truth.
Believers in UFOs, alien abductions, ESP, and psychic phenomena have committed a Type 1 Error in thinking: they are believing a falsehood. … It’s not that these folks are ignorant or uninformed; they are intelligent but misinformed. Their thinking has gone wrong.
Michael Shermer a book of known as In How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, he explored the psychology behind the belief in God. In its introduction, he wrote “Never in history have so many, and such a high percentage of the population believed in God.
Not only is God not dead as Nietzsche proclaimed, but he has never been more alive.” From April 2001 to January 2019, he wrote the monthly Skeptic column for Scientific American. He has also contributed to Time magazine.
In February 2002, he characterized the position that “God had no part in the process [of the evolution of mankind]” as the “standard scientific theory”. This statement was criticized in January 2006 by the scientist Eugenie Scott, who commented that science makes no claim about God one way or the other.
In May 2002, he and Alex Grobman published their book Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?, which examined and refuted the Holocaust denial movement. This book recounts meeting various denialists and concludes that free speech is the best way to deal with pseudohistory.
Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown was released in 2005. His 2006 book Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design marshals point-by-point arguments supporting evolution, sharply criticizing the intelligent design. This book also argues that science cannot invalidate religion and that Christians and conservatives can and should accept evolution.
In June 2006, he expressed skepticism as a regarding the mainstream scientific views on global warming, wrote in “Scientific American” magazine that, in the light of the accumulation of evidence, the position of denying global warming is no longer tenable.
The Mind of The Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics were released in 2007. In his reports on the findings of multiple behavioral and biochemical studies that address evolutionary explanations for modern behavior.
It garnered several critical reviews from academics, with skeptic Robert T. Carroll saying: “He has been blinded by his libertarianism and seduced by the allure of evolutionary psychology to explain everything, including ethics and economics.”
In February 2009, he published The History of Science: A Sweeping Visage of Science and its History, a 25-hour audio lecture. In May 2011, he published The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies: How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths.
Prior to his work on science and skepticism, he published his books on cycling and others on child education in the math and science disciplines. These include collaborations with Arthur Benjamin. In January 2015, he published The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom.
Harriet Hall says of Shermer’s 2018 publication, Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia, that “the topics of Heavens on Earth are usually relegated to the spheres of philosophy and religion, but he approaches them through science, looking for evidence — or lack thereof.” She goes on to say that “[s]ome will argue that he goes beyond the science” but that “it will definitely … make the reader think.”
