The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

by Michael Shermer

I believe that the truth is out there but that it is rarely obvious and almost never foolproof. What I want to believe based on emotions and what I should believe based on evidence do not always coincide. I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science. We live in the Age of Science, in which beliefs are supposed to be grounded in rock-solid evidence and empirical data. Why, then, do so many people believe in what most scientists would consider to be the unbelievable?