In this, his magnum opus, the world's best known skeptic and critical
thinker, Dr. Michael Shermer - founding publisher of Skeptic magazine
and perennial monthly columnist ("Skeptic") for Scientific American -
presents his comprehensive theory on how beliefs are born, formed,
nourished, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. This
book synthesizes Dr. Shermer's 30 years of research to answer the
question of how and why we believe what we do in all aspects of our
lives, from our suspicions and superstitions to our politics, economics,
and social beliefs.

In this book Dr. Shermer is interested in more than just why people
believe weird things, or why people believe this or that claim, but
in why people believe anything at all. His thesis is straightforward:
We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, emotional,
and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by
family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after
forming our beliefs, we then defend, justify, and rationalize them
with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational
explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.

Dr. Shermer also explains the neuroscience behind our beliefs.
The brain is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through
the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns,
and then infuses those patterns with meaning. These meaningful
patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed, the brain begins
to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those
beliefs, which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the
beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them -
and round and round the process goes in a positive feedback loop of
belief confirmation. Dr. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive
tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths and to
insure that we are always right.

Download File Size:624.9 MB

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