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Sep 22, 2011

Christine rated it:

At first I was afraid this was just another atheist rant (like the disappointing God Delusion by Dawkins). Fortunately, it shaped up to be much more interesting than that. yes, it preaches to the choir, and unless you are an absolute skeptic about everything, you will find yourself offended at some point when reading this. I am pretty skeptical myself, but there were a couple of passages that got to me in an unpleasant way anyway. What really won me over? Sheerer spends a few pages bashing Depak More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jun 19, 2011

Rpmcestmoi rated it:

He knows his science and his brain as mind thesis has always been a view I have held, which, as we all know, makes him brilliant. But Shermer also describes for me the true believer in the Eric Hoffer sense. He insists on science when we talk of god but embraces the teat of libertarian capitalism because it warms him, I guess. He offers no evidence for his view in this sphere, so I guess he has a belief and the dopamine hit he gets from that cold capitalist teat works for him.
Not a ba More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2011

Judith rated it:

If you have friends who believe in ghosts, magic, ESP, aliens, witchcraft, voodoo, or any mystical spirit, you should urge them to read this book. In it, they will find the biological, historical and evolutionary basis for the belief, and then the cure for the belief, which basically boils down to using the human brain to confront the myth. Considering the vast store of scientific information at our disposal in this current century, it is astounding that so many people still believe in the sup More...

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Oct 14, 2011

Bill rated it:

In this book, Shermer argues that humans form beliefs from genetic predispositions and social experiences. We then selectively filter data and experience to support those pre-existing beliefs. We see "patterns" of meaning in our experience, and we tend to project "agenticity" when causal factors are not known. I respect Shermer for admitting up front that he is subject to the same process, in which emotion trumps reason in matters of belief. So, I read with great interest ho More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 11, 2011

John rated it:

Michael Shermer is a prolific writer, best known for The Science of Good & Evil, Why People Believe Weird Things, and, publisher of Skeptic Magazine. I have been a huge fan of Shermer for some years and traveled cross-country twice this year to attend his conferences on the west coast.

The early chapters of The Believing Brain have some redundancy from Shermer's earlier work but the last 60 percent is a wealth of new information that I found enlightening, and partially disturbing. Unl More...

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Sep 13, 2011

Gendou rated it:

A heart-felt and personal journey from superstitious pigeons to speculative cosmology.
Each chapter has a poetic and emotionally accessible summary, which is a nice touch.
I must say how well written and organized the book is; a rare thing these days!

While this book is weak on atheism (compared to, say, Dawkins), it gives a very genial reflection on the fragile nature of belief through examples of thinking gone awry.
For example, a link between anxiety and magical thin More...

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Aug 25, 2011

Robert rated it:

I was really excited about this book. I was hoping that it would update and extend Consciousness Explained with contemporary neuroscience about belief. That was, after all, exactly how the book billed itself through the marketing coverage and through the first couple of chapters.

And, to be fair to the book, there is a fair bit about that going on. I know more about the neuroscience of belief than I did when I started. The science content — which is almost entirely found within the firs More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2011

Ryan rated it:

The Believing Brain

We assume that belief follows reason, but it's actually the other way around - reason follows our beliefs. Two biases dominate our perception of the world:
1) self confirmation bias - we only see the evidence that confirms our existing belief
2) the "agent" bias - our minds are designed to look for the agent that caused a given result

Our belief in religion ("god" is the ultimate "agent") in conspiracies (911 truth, JFK, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 09, 2011

Kim rated it:

Taken from http://kwomblescountering.blogspot.com/2...

It took me awhile to find this photo (see the link above) in my stream of thousands of photos because it's more than a month old. I've been reading Michael Shermer's latest book The Believing Brain for over a month now to review it for here and Science 2.0. I spent more than a month with Baron-Cohen's The Science of Evil. I try to be thorough and careful in my reading of books I review; I don't want to gloss over it and throw o More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jun 24, 2011

Jorge rated it:

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies by Michael Shermer

"The Believing Brain" is a fantastic and ambitious book that explains the nature of beliefs. Mr. Shermer provides his theory of belief and with great expertise and skill provides compelling arguments and practical examples in explaining how the process of belief works. He applies his theory to a wide range of types of beliefs and does so with mastery. This excellent 400 page-book is co More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 11, 2011

Tanja rated it:

I have been following Michael Shermer's column in "Scientific American" for years. It's the first thing in the magazine that I read. This book definitely did not dissapoint. Shermer starts off with anecdotes and then goes into the very specific. Oft repeated throughout the book is that belief comes first, rationalization of the beliefs afterward. First we decide to believe, then the evidence collected tends to support what we believe. This is regardless if the subject is religion, para More...

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Oct 03, 2011

Lon rated it:

I first heard Shermer on a video podcast from TED. The ideas intrigued me. In the lecture, and in this book, he investigates our tendency to embrace new ideas only if they confirm what we already believe while rejecting ideas that contradict or threaten our current belief. Citing research in neuroscience that suggests that our brains are wired to seek patterns and relationships, Shermer postulates that as a species, we were more likely to succeed in the game of life by perceiving patterns even i More...

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May 17, 2011

Ellen rated it:

This book bills itself as "why people believe weird things," but it's really more of "why you shouldn't believe weird things." It should be noted that I don't actually believe in any of the things discussed in the book (God, heaven, hell, and other religious things; UFOs and alien abductions; conspiracy theories, esp. 9/11 conspiracy theories), so the arguments against were tedious at best, and I gained no insight into why other people do believe them.

Shermer's tone More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Sep 19, 2011

Marya rated it:

Shermer is here to tell you that we’ve gotten it all backwards. We don’t believe after we see the evidence; we believe first and then see the evidence in that light. The first third of the book is devoted to explaining the brain studies that show that belief is embedded in all humans and always takes the lead in any thinking. The next two thirds of the books tackle everything from God to the afterlife to conspiracy theories to show why we would already be predisposed to believe in these thing More...

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Jul 01, 2011

Heather rated it:

There were a few books in this book and I only enjoyed one of them. Unfortunately for me, most of the content was repeat information from things I've read/heard before. The first sections dealing with the biology of the brain were interesting.

So much of the book (a book in itself) was spent refuting things that don't exist (UFOs, ghosts, god, 9/11 conspiracies, etc.) it was tiresome. I know they don't, I don't need it explained why. This continued on for a long, long time. I almost g More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2011

Julie rated it:

Michael Shermer is Mr. Skeptic, and somehow I hadn’t read anything by him until this. For the most part I enjoyed his arguments and his agnostic/open-minded approach to belief. (There is some straw man stuff he did around religion that kinda irked me.) More important than a quibble I might have is how thankful I am that he is willing to take the time and dismantle 9/11 truthers, or holocaust deniers; to do it logically and point by point.

This book is kind of a survey, I found the poli More...

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Oct 06, 2011

Jani-Petri rated it:

Shermer is not as good a writer as some other famous skeptics or atheists such as Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, or Dawkins. The book has some interesting discussions, but they are quickly followed by more boring sections that one feels were added quickly in order to add to the page count. Editing should also have removed some sillier claims (my edition stated that Iraq and Afghanistan wars cost something like 4 billion which is 10% of US GDP....patently ridiculous). I also found it annoying that Sh More...

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Jan 07, 2012

David rated it:

U.S. President Lyndon Johnson once formed an alliance with a erstwhile political enemy. When someone asked him why, Johnson remarked that he would rather have the enemy inside the tent urinating out than outside the tent urinating in.

So it is with Shermer. His thesis, that the human brain through the process of natural selection has evolved to see patterns, even when none exists, gives him a platform from which he may assault the many, many popular beliefs with which he disagrees. I More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 05, 2011

JulesQ rated it:

Some things about the book that bothered me:

1.) The number of times Shermer inserts himself into the science. "And then I was talking to a guy while I was on a TV show and you wouldn't BELIEVE the crazy things he was saying to me." Okay, Shermer, we get it, you're famous. And you think people who believe in things that you don't believe in are crazy.

2.) The fact there were some throw away things said that I know were false. I mean, sure, they were throw away things More...

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Sep 01, 2011

Jane rated it:

I found the book very engrossing in the beginning. I enjoyed Shermer's three different tales of belief. I also found his theory on patternicity and agenticity to be interesting. Overall, he did a reasonably good job of building a case for beliefs forming first and then rationalizations coming later. Although, his own personal beliefs did seep through time and time again, for the most part, he was pretty successful in objectively analyzing different beliefs.

I am not entirely sure wher More...

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Jul 07, 2011

Kristen rated it:

This was a well organized scientific description of belief. I greatly enjoy structure and his lists were well done. I shy away from his opinion pieces. He gives science as the basis for how we should overcome our instinctual desires to believe. He shows it as the only way to find real truth. He then goes onto a weird tangent about how most educated people are liberal and he doesn't understand why. If the choices are between framing a society where abortion and atheism are illegal and a wor More...

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Nov 28, 2011

Catelyn rated it:

I agreed with, disagreed with, and was ambivalent towards this book, each in equal measure. It was a very interesting read.

I am always appreciative of a skeptic/atheist/agnostic who doesn't treat religion like it's some blight on humanity or insist that we can disprove God's existence. I found the author very polite and far less condescending than others I have read on similar subjects (*cough* Hitchens and Dawkins *cough*). Perhaps it was because he spent a while as a fundamentalis More...

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Jan 21, 2012

David added it

This is another great book by Micheal Shermer. I've read several of his other books and liked them all. This one examines belief from a neuropsychological, evolutionary, social and scientific perspective. As a believing Mormon for most of my life, I never came across explanations like this about how we form our beliefs. Now it seems all very understandable to me. No matter what your current beliefs are about religion, evolution, politics, or health, you should at least consider the various More...

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Jun 29, 2011

Danny rated it:

I was probably the most excited about this book before cracking it's cover... The premise is alluring and it is very timely (it seems that we are having a media renaissance in the recognition of human limitations of rationality) yet, once opened, the book just falls into too many traps to be exciting to me.

Perhaps the largest flaw for me was that the work is 'too current' - insofar as much of the book seems to be just a parroting of factoids that have been floating around in many othe More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 24, 2011

Sarah rated it:

I thought this was going to be about belief, but it mostly a nasty rant about what idiots people are if they believe in anything except Western science ('cuz of course science is objective, rational, and never wrong ever because it's all conducted by infallible robots). The author incessantly picks apart religious and supernatural beliefs but devotes all but zero energy examining what some the problems of skeptical zealotry might be. Perhaps the worst example was when he said that being skeptic More...

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Aug 07, 2011

Irene rated it:

Ever hear one of those people who just enjoy chip, chip, chipping away at the way other people think? The kind of person who ends up saying "At least you're consistent" like it's the door prize for trying to make a cogent argument? Yep. That's Michael Shermer. But I give him credit. He knows how to turn his critism into a franchise. There are plenty more books and TV appearances where this came from. I had to chuckle, though, when he laid out Deepak Chopra, who is a snake charme More...

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Jan 12, 2012

Mark rated it:

this book has lots of interesting stuff in it on theories of how the brain works and why it we have a tendency towards believing in things for which there may be little evidence. And, he should know as he appears to be an expert in believing in things - where expert is defined as having done it all, once. Unfortunately, the author is unable to restrain himself from his current beliefs and stick to the "facts". The regular side trips into conservative american politics distracts from More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 29, 2011

Richard rated it:

I was hoping that this book would explain the biology and evolution of what makes us believe things. It does do that, but does not stick to that theme. Shermer digresses often and spends a good deal of time debunking beliefs in extraterrestrial visits, ESP, and a lot of pseudoscience. His discussions on religion were thought provoking, and I appreciated that. However, instead of coming back to the idea of why the human race believes things, he concludes with a long discussion of the history More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2011

Joseph rated it:

Great book! Will doubtlessly be a classic within the skeptical canon.

This book covers a lot of ground so I'll just restate the thesis and point out a couple of my favorite moments. Shermer aruges that belief comes first and evidence for those beliefs comes second. As much as we should strive to, we don't weigh evidence and then come to a rational decision. First we find patterns, real or imagined, which Shermer calls patternicity. Then we ascribe meaning to those patterns which rein More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 02, 2011

Cora rated it:

The benefits of The Believing Brain may be best realized by readers who are like the author. He states, "I am a skeptic not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know." Michael Shermer writes lucidly about how the brain is wired for belief and pattern recognition and what that process looks like.

Shermer classes all belief into a category of 1. He then lays out the sequence of neural events that culminates in a new belief. This model is applied to many beli More...

6 comments like (1 person liked it)

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