Book Club: Why People Believe Weird Things, by Michael Shermer

Our next meeting is Sunday, October 26, 5 p.m. at Standard Pizza, 755 Biltmore Avenue in Asheville.

We will begin our discussion of Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, by science writer Michael Shermer. We will focus on the foreword and introduction. There's lots to discuss just in those first 24 pages!

From the forward: Considering humans and our potential for both "the most unspeakable horrors and the most heart-winning acts of courage and nobility": Only two possible escapes can save us from the organized mayhem of our dark potentialities. Moral decency provides one necessary ingredient but not nearly enough. The second foundation must come from the rational side of our mentality. For, unless we regularly use human reason both to discover and acknowledge nature's factuality, and to follow the logical implications for efficacious human action that such knowledge entails, we will lose out to the frightening forces of irrationality, romanticism, uncompromising "true"belief, and the apparent resulting inevitability of mob action. Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency."

Note: Newcomers are welcome!
We would like to keep each meeting to a max of 10 people. Please RSVP if you do plan to come.