the official site of Michael Shermer

Self-deception proves itself to be
more powerful than deception

The war in Iraq is now four years old. It has cost more than 3,000 American lives and has run up a tab of $200 million a day, or $73 billion a year, since it began. That’s a substantial investment. (continue reading…)

Does having faith in God need to be an emotional decision, or can it be purely an intellectual one? What difference does faith make in your everyday life?

Watch the video

Is the suffering we experience in the world evidence for or against God? What do you believe happens after death? How does belief or lack of belief in an afterlife affect your understanding of life?

Watch the video

When exploring the borderlands of science, we often face a “boundary problem” of where to draw the line between science and pseudoscience. The boundary is the line of demarcation between geographies of knowledge, the border defining countries of claims. Knowledge sets are fuzzier entities than countries, however, and their edges are blurry. It is not always clear where to draw the line. Last month I suggested five questions to ask about a claim to determine whether it is legitimate or baloney. Continuing with the baloney-detection questions, we see that in the process we are also helping to solve the boundary problem of where to place a claim. (continue reading…)

When lecturing on science and pseudoscience at colleges and universities, I am inevitably asked, after challenging common beliefs held by many students, “Why should we believe you?” My answer: “You shouldn’t.”

I then explain that we need to check things out for ourselves and, short of that, at least to ask basic questions that get to the heart of the validity of any claim. This is what I call baloney detection, in deference to Carl Sagan, who coined the phrase “Baloney Detection Kit.” To detect baloney — that is, to help discriminate between science and pseudoscience — I suggest 10 questions to ask when encountering any claim. (continue reading…)