We all believe in something. To believe in nothing is to endure a painfully grim existence in which it is impossible to experience love, loyalty, fidelity, or trust. So we believe to survive, to organize ourselves into communities, to share our lives with our partners and to grasp the truths of the world around us. But somewhere along the way, belief went too far. It became a crutch,fantasies to fall back on when science systematically dispelled the world of gods and magic and replaced it with a world of inescapable knowns. We've cured diseases and sent astronauts to the moon; we've spread democracy to the world and harnessed the power of the sun; we've built 200-story skyscrapers and journeyed into the depths of oceans. And still three quarters of us believe in gods. Three quarters of us believe in an after life. Three quarters of us believe in things never seen, never felt, never proven. How is such a thing possible?
Mr. Shermer, a professional skeptic and a professor of the history of science, has assembled here the major conceits that burden believers the world over, gods and ghosts, aliens and conspiracies. For the most part, he relies on neurology to provide scientific explanations for these irrationalities, arguing that what he calls patternicity, or the brain's desire to find patterns in the world around it, is the origin for many of our myths. The brain is, in the end, an extraordinarily advanced tool for pattern recognition. After all, rapidly distinguishing harmless rocks and lovely trees from poisonous snakes and deadly panthers was necessary for our survival, causing evolution to favor those humans who were the quickest to read and react and to cast aside those too slow to avoid the deadly sting, the lethal bite. But while this capacity for patternicity served humans in good stead in the wild, it harms us in the modern world, for it prompts us to ascribe meaning and significance to every worldly mystery. And given that humans are designed to survive, not to think scientifically, these conclusions often rest on supernatural foundations, foundations that are re-enforced by mental constructs like confirmation bias and selective memory which aid humans in believing in what they cannot see.
While much of The Believing Brain is a scientific exploration of belief, Mr. Shermer acknowledges that science cannot explain every earthly phenomenon. Here, he falls back on philosophy, arguing that the onus is on the believer to prove that the supernatural does exist. The onus is not on the non-believer to prove it does not exist. One cannot prove a negative. For some, this is a weak attempt on Mr. Shermer's part to excuse away the inability of science to solve for every unexplained mystery. For others, this is only logical, an attempt on the part of a non-believer to compel believers to justify their beliefs, to subject them to scientific rigor. For Mr. Shermer himself, it appears to be enough to simply state his case and have his readers decide where to stand.
In the hands of a less sensitive author, this would be a polemic, a heartless attack on the illogical beliefs of billions. But Mr. Shermer is better than that. Unlike atheists of the contentious ilk of Richard Dawkins, he does not seem driven by the need to be right. He is impelled by a more noble goal, the search for truth, whatever its shape. Perhaps this sensitivity to others emanates from his own time as a devout believer. Whatever its source, it provides a gentle reasonableness to a contentious argument. Mr. Shermer is interested in dialogue, not conquest, making this a useful read for believers and non-believers alike.
We all depend on conceits, lies we tell ourselves to get us through the day. But though these lies may be useful, their utility does not change the fact that they are lies. If the search for truth, in life and in our world, is the noblest of goals, and I think most of us can agree on this, than that revealing light must be shined on all our beliefs, no matter how sacred. For it is only when we subject these conceits to scientific scrutiny that we can begin to sift out reality from fiction.
A fascinating piece. It relies too heavily on current theories drawn from scientific experimentation to build a completely convincing case for why we believe, but that does not appear to be Mr. Shermer's objective. His goal is to present the data and to extrapolate conclusions from that data. It is for the reader to decide what, ultimately, to believe. (4/5 Stars)
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