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Loy Machedo's Book Review -- Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer

395 views · Published 13 March 2013 · 7:56 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: Loy Machedo · 2013 · Education

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Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com) and the Director of The Skeptics Society. I discovered this amazing personality by accident when I watched a Debate between him / Sam Harris versus Deepak Chopra / Jean Houston (Topic -- The Future of God). He has authored several popular books on science, scientific history, and the philosophy and history of science, including Why People Believe Weird Things, How We Believe, and Denying History (with Alex Grobman).

Now here is the twist.
Shermer was once a Born Again Christian, who for 7 years evangelized door-to-door as part of his profoundly held beliefs. So after years of practicing Acupuncture, Chiropractic, Massage Therapy, Negative ions, Rolfing, Pyramid power, Fundamentalist Christianity, and as he put it - "a host of weird things", I guess realized all this was absolute nonsense. So on Saturday, August 6th 1983, he finally became a Skeptic.

The Book is divided into 5 parts.
1. Science and Skepticism
2. Pseudoscience and Superstitions
3. Evolution and Creationism
4. Pseudohistory and History and finally
5. Hope Springs Eternal

By the time I completed reading the book, I realized that this book was mostly about the weird things people believe, and not so much about the reasons they believe them. And almost every belief based concept was covered -- Religious Claims, The Paranormal, Near-Death Experiences, Alien Abductions, Witch Craze, Cults (Didn't know Ayn Rand was a Cult Group). Added to this the author not only gave a logical progression to explain how the beliefs started, but he was fair enough to remain neutral with his opinions.

Now what did I like about this book:
1) Michael Shermer is Brilliant Educator who Explores, Explains and Elaborates on the what, how and why. And he is a genius at explaining hard to explain concepts. This book clearly personifies just that.
2) If there was one chapter that I could single out, it would be Chapter 3 titled 'How Thinking Goes Wrong', 25 Fallacies that lead us to believe weird things. That in itself shows how analytical and detailed Shermer gets when he dedicates himself to any subject.
3) Finally, the book clearly exposes to the amount of knowledge that one may not have known existed and what the person was not aware of. To me, this book was nothing short of shocking and a total revelation.

Criticisms:
I love Michael Shermer and I am a big fan of his but I must point out a few bits of this book you may not like -- at least I didn't.
1) The 2nd half of the book especially the chapter on the Holocaust was absolutely boring. I literally struggled to read through it. No doubt, it was well-researched and very detailed -- but I was not at all interested in the subject at all. Personally, I felt he should have dedicated and published this in another book, so that those who had interest on this subject, had the option to buy it.
2) Michael Shermer is totally on another level. So if you think this book is going to be a light, easy, fun read -- you are absolutely mistaken. This book is the "Heavy Duty Hardcore Edition" of Intense Analysis. So if you cannot handle a book that drives nails into your head -- don't think of even buying this book. 

Moment of truth
This is not a book you can read easily. Nor is a book that you would give up on easily. I got introduced to a world where I realized there is so much to know, so much to learn and so much to think about. It made me look at Skeptics with deep sense of respect and awe. This book is for keeps and I am glad I purchased the entire range of Michael Shermer's books.

Truly fantastic and worth it if you are into Critical Thinking.

Overall Rating
8 out of 10
PS - Think twice before purchasing this book. It is not meant to entertain you.

Loy Machedo
loymachedo.com | loymachedo.tv

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