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

Some people are always trying to rewrite the book they were born to write – just like others try to rewrite their best song every time. Shermer is writing and rewriting about belief and why we have this form of thought ingrained in our brain. He provides a bag of arguments which should appeal to a variety of readers as they have a broad spectrum (from personal stories to cognitive biases to neuroscientific findings to logic) and do not all fit into the title’s focus to be honest. And Shermer has become a public person and writes as he speakes, subtly mocking the adversary front given the trusted superiority of his arguments and, most importantly, evidence. His arguments are sound, be sure, and I generally agree with him. Yet, his way of building the book smells of rehash of arguments that were actually found somewhere else by someone else and which he renamed on purpose. He borrows from all over and entangle it all with personal theses which in most of cases remain just that, hypotheses. That is, I do not particularly like his self-speaking attitude, which incidentally makes him pale in front of giants of thought he borrows from (Darwin and Kahneman, for two).
Shermer’s ideas on patternicity and agenticity are interesting nonetheless, and he has a talent to condensate evidence from scientific works in few pages. This is particularly evident in the chapter dedicated to cognitive and behavioral biases, in spite of the availability of far better sources for these pieces of knowledge. Conversely, he indulges too much in the reconstruction of two cases (Galileo’s and Hubble’s stories) where science showed its self-correcting anti-bias methodology – they turn out to be mostly excercises in science history.
Shermer’s general claim is plain: science is the best method we have to shatter false beliefs. Now, he is one of the many to praise science (Deutsch does it much better and more deeply, by the way), yet it is evident that he does this to kind of objectively support his personal view on the subject matter of belief. I do concur to his evidence-based skepticism, yet he still though moderately looks like a preacher that once preached orthodox cattolicism and now scientific method.