How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God by Michael Shermer, 2nd Edition
A wonderfully interesting book. I read and enjoyed his book Why People Believe Weird Things, which deals with Holocaust denial, UFO abduction, and the like. My good friend Joshua gave me a DVD of a presentation Mr. Shermer gave at a skeptics convention.
The book deals with why people believe in God (stated reasons, and evolutionary/biological reasons), and what it all means.
Lots of interesting insights, and some statistics, two of my favorite are:
* Most people in the U.S. who believe in God, state that they do so because they see evidence of God in the world around them (e.g. the world is so wondrous, someone must have made it)
* Most people in the U.S. who believe in God, state that they believe other people who believe in God do so because they need to. (e.g otherwise they would be filled with existential angst and not want to go on living)
Others:
* 96% of people in the United States believe in God (or some supernatural being).
* In 1776, 17% of the population of the U.S. went to church. Mid 19th century: 34%. Today: 60%! How can people say we’re going to hell in a handbasket?
* Genes appear to control 50% of your tendancy to be religious.
* There is a hormone or enzyme or something (can’t remember which) that controls whether you tend to see patterns where none exist. Skeptics have little of it, believers have a sufficient amount.
Fascinating, fascinating stuff.
“* In 1776, 17% of the population of the U.S. went to church. Mid 19th century: 34%. Today: 60%! How can people say we’re going to hell in a handbasket?”
Maybe the route to hell is through churches?
We have falsely tied the concepts of “Morality” and “Ethics” in with “Religion”. This leads to people who have doubts about their religion (which any thinking person does at some point in their life) to devalue their personal ethics and morals.
I am not a religious person. But I do try to be an ethical one. How I treat other people, and the world we live in does not depend on how I think they came to be. Nor on whether we share a common set of origin myths.
Mr. (Dr?) Shermer touches on the fallacy that a belief in G/god or subscription to a religion is necessary for a moral/ethical populace. He mentions the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma as an example of why a moral/ethical populace is evolutionarily probable.
I think Dr. Shermer goes into it in more detail in The Science of Good and Evil.
Personally, I try to be moral and ethical because Kermit the Frog told me to, and he’s cool.