The Science of Good & Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow The Golden Rule by Michael Shermer

This is Shermer’s third book in his pseudo-trilogy, the first two of which were Why People Believe Weird Things and How We Believe. The first book was an interesting look at people who believe in UFOs, witches, holocaust denial, and other, well, weird things. The second got more into the nature of belief from a scientific and social point of view.

This one takes on morality and suggests an evolutionary basis for doing good. It’s a good, sound dissertation on the topic.

And, as always, he has lots of interesting side stories, studies and statistics. One bit I’ll bring out because it gave me a jolt:

Consider that, according to polls, 95% of the citizens of the United States believe in God. Elsewhere, I read that Agnostics and Athiests account for about 0.9%.

And consider this excerpt:

A 1999 Gallup poll… When asked, “If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be an X would you vote for that person?” (with X representing Catholic, Jew, Baptist, Mormon, black, homosexual, woman and athiest), while six of the eight received more than 90 percent approval, only 59 percent would vote for a homosexual and less than half, 49 percent, would vote for an athiest.

That means I belong to a group that is more of a minority than homosexuals, blacks, hispanics, jews, and Asians. Roughly on a par with Native Americans and Alaska natives. In addition, we’re more mistrusted than all of the traditionally villified groups in the U.S. (They didn’t put terrorists on the poll, but I’m confident we’d have a better chance at the White House than Osama. Maybe.)

For the first time in my life as a white, heterosexual, middle class male from the midwest, I believe I might qualify for some sort of Affirmative Action.

I’m writing my congressperson.