Henry Ford, the man, the worker, the citizen,

Book Description

1927. In the belief that a simple biography of Henry Ford would be welcomed by those who have the interest and desire to known more about him is the reasoning behind this book. The study thus conceived and undertaken is not academic in any sense. The author did not attempt any so-called psychographic study of Mr. Ford, nor any minute analysis, nor yet any elaborate interpretation of him or his purpose. He sought to tell the story of Mr. Ford's life, his rise, his achievements, as simply, naturally, and humanly as so natural and human a subject deserves. Handsomely illustrated.

Henry Ford; the Man, the Worker, the Citizen

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Henry Ford; the Man, the Worker, the Citizen

Manufacturer: George H. Doran,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000FMBC9Q

Customer Reviews:

Great Book Waiting to be Explored.......2000-11-03

this is one of the best expedition book i've ever read. i'm from the yukon territory in canada, and i certainly can find myself relating to the story. the landscape description is precise and amazing. the mountains. the snow. the water. and the lake. all beautifully described. i'm so proud to be a yukonian. and this book should certainly be read for all those who loves to explore the great outdoor or and the undisturbed mountains of the world.

I wish I bought some other book; IT A 0 OUT OF 10!.......2000-04-03

I find a terrible contradiction in Authers' philosophy. The book's content and context are surprisingly bad--many unclear, unidiomatic and repetitive false statement.It do not have a clear central idea that has a strong voice to support his idea. This book only reflects authors's opinion. I wish I bought some other book; IT A 0 OUT OF 10!

Echoes of a Life Spent on Edge.......2000-01-19

Tenderini and Shandrick weave a powerful account of one explorers life in this well composed biography of a sovereign turned mountaineer. The Duke of the Abrizzi was one of the ironheared forerunners of the alpinist breed who preceded the fluffy, 'conquer-but-don't-experience' mountaineers of the last ten years. Shouldered up against the backdrop of the shaken world order of the turn of the last century, the words of the writers breed within the reader a vision of the routes (mountain and sea) upon which the Duke traveled with his constant band of likeminded aquaintences. A very scholarly approach to the headwaters of the mountaineering sub-culture which has become a torrent in our age.

Book Description

Basic Acting: The Modular Process not only introduces readers to the exciting world of acting in a step-by-step and practical way, but also prepares them with the theme of the 21st Century: the “new multiculturalism.” Harrop and Epstein have developed a systematic method of teaching acting which is “action-based.

Customer Reviews:

Great Book for Teachers of Acting.......2005-12-01

For those that already know about the craft of acting and have studied the art form, I highly recommend this book. Epstein lays out his plans for actors to work "moment-to-moment" from a physical understanding of the craft. Many of his exercises pull from a variety of sources and enable an actor to understand the implications of "The Method" and the teachings of Stanislavski as they relate to their own physicality. This book may be difficult for undergraduate students to comprehend by simply reading, but the exercises and the purpose of them will give them endless moments where their acting has "dropped in" and starts to become clearer to themselves and their audiences.

BASIC ACTING: THE MODULAR ACTING PROCESS

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BASIC ACTING: THE MODULAR ACTING PROCESS
Sabin R. and John D. Harrop Epstein
Manufacturer: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. Needham Heights, MA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IWP5LY

Book Description

The Obsession is a deeply committed and beautifully written analysis of our society's increasing demand that women be thin. It offers a careful, thought provoking discussion of the reasons men have encouraged this obsession and women have embraced it. It is a book about women's efforts to become thin rather than to accept the natural dimensions of their bodies--a book about the meaning of food and its rejection.

Customer Reviews:

Likely a comfort; little to offer otherwise.......2007-07-03

Being neither a woman nor someone who has had any eating disorders, I hesitate to be too harsh about this piece. I would guess that "The Obsession" will (and, judging from the other reviews, does) serve as a device of comfort for some of those who are members of the aforesaid categories.
However, as someone who chose the book because of an interest in eating disorders--friends have experienced them--I was disappointed by this work.
Potential readers should be forewarned that most of the "analysis" in the work is psychoanalytic: that is, virtually useless. A quote from page 166 my 1981 paperback edition summarizes the problem: "But when we know of the obsession that follows, we shall be inclined to see in this cluster of disparate facts the very pattern which underlies the eventual development of obsession." That is, the author is using throughout the book post hoc reasoning, fitting information to theory. The least thought is required to see that the principal conclusion reached here (that social oppression of women leads to eating disorders) is well supported by the evidence in the book, provided the conclusion is known before the supporting data are selected. Likewise, the least thought is required to realize that, because no speculation is offered as to why some women do _not_ develop eating disorders, the argument of the book is naught but rationalization.
Another minor flaw--perhaps this has been rectified in subsequent editions--is that the prose is boring.
Again, I mean not to deny that the volume might be a comfort to some; to most, however, it will not be worth the price. I paid the equivalent of about 75 cents for it and regret it.

Poignant and Revealing book.......2006-01-11

I read this book a while ago and was very moved and still am by its candidness. I found that it will resonate with anyone who has experienced an eating disorder, and it will enlighten someone who is naive to the hell that underlies such an eating disorder. After reading this remarkable volume, one cannot help but realise that eating disorders are not at all about food and that overcoming one involves much more than changing one's eating habits. The reader will realise that beating such a disorder is no easy feat. It can be the hardest task someone will ever complete.

The Obsession: a feel-good feminist study.......2002-01-27

This thoughtful, powerful, and well-researched study of women`s preoccupation with food and weight is one of the best feminist reads ever. I began the book with expectations of simply enjoying a valid cultural history of food and eating. Soon, however, I could`nt put it down, as I recognized myself and many of my friends and relatives in Chernin`s case histories and literary examples. She captures perfectly the feelings of guilt and low self-esteem that ensue when you don`t stick to a society-prescribed diet, even though that diet may be harming you physically and emotionally. She mentions at length the uneasiness felt by women who are miraculously happy with their bodies, because a culture and media obsessed with willowy, thin figures subtly pressure them to feel uneasy. The structure of the book is set up as a neat balance between real-life studies of anorexia and other weight disorders juxtaposed with cultural and literary views on women and their appetites and figures. The section on Margaret Atwood`s novel "The Edible Woman" and its treatment of the anorexic personality is just one instance where Chernin`s insights amaze you. At the book`s fascinating conclusion, I felt like cheering. It makes one feel proud to be a woman, no matter what size you wear or which body part you dislike. I`m not going to say that it turned my entire self-image around, but it definitely helped set me on a path of self- discovery and liking my physical body beter. That`s why I hope today`s young women will find and read it, too. Oh, and the poem comparing designer jeans to girdles is priceless!

A life-changing historical perspective of women's bodies.......1999-03-06

I read The Obsession back in 1980, when it first appeared. I was struggling with a severe eating disorder, and thought my problem had to do with will power and discipline. The Obsession was one of three books I read that year that literally turned my life around: the other two were Feeding the Hungry Heart, by Geneen Roth, and Fat is a Feminist Issue, by Susie Orbach. Each gave me a different, and crucial, perspective on my own struggles. Kim Chernin's book reminded me that the craze for skinniness is a very recent development in Western culture; that it has everything to do with the power dynamics of our society, and nothing to do with whether we're good or bad people based on our size; and that the most powerful female figures in history have been amply endowed, if not (by modern standards) downright fat. After reading this book, I felt like a warrior goddess for weeks. It helped me let go of a lot of self-hatred and confusion about my body. Kim Chernin is also an exquisite writer - there were passages that literally took my breath away. I give this book my highest recommendation for any woman struggling with her body image, or any reader wanting to understand women's minds at a deeper level.

The Obsession - Reflections On The Tyranny Of Slenderness

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The Obsession - Reflections On The Tyranny Of Slenderness
Kim Chernin
Manufacturer: Harper-perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IWRHP6

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The Obsession. Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness.

Manufacturer: Perennial Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000I36LFC

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Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness
Kim Chernin
Manufacturer: Harper & Row, 1981
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEKRBO

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OBSESSION: REFLECTIONS ON THE TYRANNY OF SLENDERNESS
Kim Chernin
Manufacturer: Harper & Row
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000RAF4V8

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The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness
Kim Chernin
Manufacturer: HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OLP6NG

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Lacked a rational decision maker in the writing process

Macroeconomics: Principles and Policy, 2004 Update
William J. Baumol , and Alan S. Blinder
Manufacturer: South-Western College Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Study Guide to accompany Macroeconomics: Principles and Policy

ASIN: 0324201656

Book Description

This text remains a proven leader in the world of economics. Since introducing the aggregate supply/ aggregate demand model as a fundamental tool for learning economics over two decades ago, in this edition William J. Baumol and Alan S. Blinder continue their long tradition of equipping students with the knowledge and tools they need to apply modern economics to their world. Hallmark features include one of the strongest policy treatments on the market and a careful and in-depth focus on the most important economic tools students should retain after the course is over.

Customer Reviews:

Lacked a rational decision maker in the writing process.......2005-08-24

Economics likes to pretend to be rational, but to say that any rational decision maker uses an ideology, is a contradiciton. Since an ideology is not rational to begin with. So right from the first chapter, I could see where this book was headed.

Filled with mild anectdotes like one of the books larger claims is the raising of minimum wage would be harmful overall towards investment. Then in a small box in one of the chapters, information about recent research showed that these ideas are false. In other words the raising of minimum wage didn't reduce investment, and didn't increase unemployment, infact it reduced unemployment. Not satisfied with that result, the authors note that groups that have found legitamate results such as this, are ignored by politicians, and thus comes the remark that "research has its consequences."

There is also a quote from Einstien talking about how wonderful compounded intrest was. Actually, the man was making a joke, he wasn't serious about it. But the authors go on to explain compound intrest, using Einstien as an example of a great thinker supposedly baffled by compounded intrest. It makes me wonder how much other things were taken out of context.

There are also chapters written about the wonder and might of supply side economics a.k.a Regeanomics. In fact this policy is so wonderful, it is almost as if there is no other economic policy on the face of the earth.

I honestly would have liked to know more about other types of economic policies, both their negative and positive effects, but this book provided nothing but bias.

Book Description

Gabriel García Márquez (b. 1927) is a sophisticated literary artist who has attained broad popularity. His masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, has sold tens of millions of copies world wide. His later works have enjoyed equally astounding sales. His achievement as an author received the highest official recognition with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

Conversastions with Gabriel García Márquez starts with the years just following the phenomenal success of One Hundred Years of Solitude and goes on through his most recent, turn-of-the-century exchanges. We learn a great deal about his impoverished childhood, his Caribbean roots, his life as an indifferent student, his apprenticeship as a journalist, his days of hunger in Europe, his primary literary influences, the inspiration that led to the writing of his most renowned novel, the difficulties brought by fame, and his leftist opinions. Works such as The Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in His Labyrinth, and News of a Kidnapping are discussed in detail.

When interviewed by journalists from Hispanic countries, García Márquez opens up and chats spontaneously and frankly about all sorts of topics, including himself. Some of those conversations, now translated into English for the first time, are gathered in this volume. They offer a fascinating glimpse of the Colombian genius at his most down-to-earth, informal, and relaxed. Taken together with seminal pieces from The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review, and other English-language periodicals, Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez offers a nuanced, multifaceted view of one of contemporary literature's greatest masters.

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Conversations with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Gene H. (ed) Bell-Villada
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000M4PBBW

Book Description

The last two centuries have witnessed a radical transformation of Jewish life. Marked by such profound events as the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel, Judaism's long journey through the modern age has been a complex and tumultuous one, leading many Jews to ask themselves not only where they have been and where they are going, but what it means to be a Jew in today's world. Tracing the Jewish experience in the modern period and illustrating the transformation of Jewish religion, culture, and identity from the 17th century to 1948, the updated edition of this critically acclaimed volume of primary materials remains the most complete sourcebook on modern Jewish history. Now expanded to supplement the most vital documents of the first edition, The Jew in the Modern World features hitherto unpublished and inaccessible sources concerning the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, women in Jewish history, American Jewish life, the Holocaust, and Zionism and the nascent Jewish community in Palestine on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel. The documents are arranged chronologically in each of eleven chapters and are meticulously and extensively annotated and cross-referenced in order to provide the student with ready access to a wide variety of issues, key historical figures, and events. Complete with some twenty useful tables detailing Jewish demographic trends, this is a unique resource for any course in Jewish history, Zionism and Israel, the Holocaust, or European and American history.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent compendium of translated documents.......2006-11-10

This is an excellent supplementary reader for a Jewish studies course at the undergraduate upper division or graduate level. It contains a wealth of translated documents from the European Jewish experience in the modern period. It covers both the Western and Eastern European experience, and is an excellent source for studying the encounter of Judaism with modernity, particularly the haskalah and Hasidism.

Essential documents.......2005-01-28

The work contains essential documents of Jewish history from 1700 to 1948. The question of its political balance is however a real one, and I felt perhaps wrongly a ' tilt left'. It seems to me too there was too scanty coverage of Zionism.

This is a collection of articles.......2001-02-13

This book is a collection of articles and excerpts from many of the main sources of Jewish History from the 1700's until present. The articles are grouped by topic. The topics start with emancipation and end off with Zionism and the Holocaust. Each article has a nice mini-biography at the end telling who the author of the article was ( or is ), and includes explanatory notes for those who aren't familiar with that era of Jewish History. The editors were quite even handed and give all sides space in their book, the only group over represented is converted Jews. After all less than .25% of all Jews converted in the 1800's. My only complaint is that they neglected two subjects. One, the Tshuva movement of the 70's to present and also the Shas phenamana of the 80's and 90's.

Filled with great articles.......2000-01-30

You needn't read this book cover to cover. The book is a series of articles starting in the 1600's and progressing to recent times. Gives perspectives of people "dealing" with the Jews and perspectives of Jewish people. An article by the commandant of Auschwitz is followed by an article from a prisoner. Both will stay with me forever.

The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History

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The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History
Paul; Jehuda Reinharz (editors) Mendes-Flohr
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK911U

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The Jew In The Modern World: A Documentary History.
PAUL R.; REINHARZ, JEHUDA (EDITED BY). MENDES-FLOHR
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK6HFI

Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History. Second Edition.

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Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History. Second Edition.
Paul Mendes-Flohr
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000M4T0GE

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I once was blind..

Fascinating Look at god Belief

Personable, interesting, but sloppy and unpersuasive.

Shermer did it again

A skeptic repeats an urban legend as fact.... OOPS! - and a more serious objection

How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God (second edition)
Michael Shermer
Manufacturer: Owl Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Amazon.com

One hundred years ago social scientists predicted that belief in God would decrease by the year 2000. "In fact ... the opposite is has occurred," Shermer writes in his introduction. "Never in history have so many, and such a high percentage of the population, believed in God. Not only is God not dead as Nietzche proclaimed, but he has never been more alive."

Why do so many believe in the existence of something so inexplicable? That's exactly what Shermer answers in this comprehensive, intelligent, and highly readable discussion about the nature of faith. "People believe in God because the evidence of their senses tell them so," claims Shermer, who is the publisher of Skeptics magazine. Having been a believer and a student of the history of science, Shermer (now an agnostic) is more interested in knowing why and how people believe in God rather than trying to prove who's right or wrong. As a result, this book is not only even-handed and thorough, it is also destined to become a timeless contribution to spirituality as well as science. --Gail Hudson

Book Description

Recent polls report that 96 percent of Americans believe in God, and 73 percent believe that angels regularly visit Earth. Why is this? Why, despite the rise of science, technology, and secular education, are people turning to religion in greater numbers than ever before? Why do people believe in God at all? These provocative questions lie at the heart of How We Believe, an illuminating study of God, faith, and religion. Bestselling author Michael Shermer offers fresh and often startling insights into age-old questions, including how and why humans put their faith in a higher power, even in the face of scientific skepticism. Shermer has updated the book to explore the latest research and theories of psychiatrists, neuroscientists, epidemiologists, and philosophers, as well as the role of faith in our increasingly diverse modern world. Whether believers or nonbelievers, we are all driven by the need to understand the universe and our place in it. How We Believe is a brilliant scientific tour of this ancient and mysterious desire.

Customer Reviews:

I once was blind.........2007-06-06

This was one of the most fascinating books I have read, everyday I looked forward to it. I was most impressed with Shermer's mastery of multiple and diverse disciplines, my IQ must have gone up a few points from reading such a well written and elegant tome. Its comprehensive style reminded me of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" because it opened my mind to things I never considered and made me think. I find it difficult to point out what I liked about the book because it has so much to offer however I was moved as Shermer touchingly explained how he has found meaning in a world without god. I too was a Christian once and have gone though the same existential and philosophical struggles. I felt an intellectual and emotion freedom as I read of his appreciation in the awe of the natural world and his coming to understand his place in it as a "homo sapiens" or "wise man". Such considerate expression gave me a new understanding of what it means to be a freethinker.

Fascinating Look at god Belief.......2006-10-16

How We Believe is a nice read--very informative, often fascinating, and very timely. Written in a straightforward style somewhere between Dawkins and Sam Harris, How We Believe should be read right along with The God Delusion and Letter to a Christian Nation. Mr. Shermer publishes some very interesting information about the general characteristics of "believers" in the U.S. and who are those most likely to have no god belief. He does a nice job of succinctly describing messiah myths and the endemic nature of "end-times" thinking in cultures throughout the world.

There are a few small problems with this book, however. The first is its lack of cohesion. Is Mr. Shermer writing a general interest nonfiction book about god belief in the U.S. or is he addressing specific pet peeves that he's come across in his research? For example; in chapter 6, we are subjected to long quotations from Pope John Paul II and Shermer's feelings about these excerpts. I really didn't care much for this, and I didn't think it was that relevant to the book's theme. The second main problem is similar--Shermer finishes the book discussing contingency theory, and this is as good a way to end the book as any. Unfortunately, this segment is overlong and too focused on responding to Daniel Dennett's response to Stephen Jay Gould.

Mr. Shermer could have even left these ideas in his book, but he should have trimmed them down considerably. Keeping all this in mind, How We Believe is a vital and needed addition to the nontheist library. I highlighted (highlit?) many passages as very pertinent to our society's blanket acceptance of patently ridiculous mythology and the reasons behind its folly. Put this one high on your list!

Personable, interesting, but sloppy and unpersuasive........2006-01-19

Having just finished two other books by skeptics (Sam Harris and Pascal Boyer) who want to explain and / or abolish religion, Shermer's easy style and cheerful approach were a welcome change of pace. Sure, he meanders a bit, but in the process covers many interesting topics, and offers some great quotes. Unlike Harris or Boyer, Shermer is not afraid to credit faith with good influence on occasion (making his argument far more credible), and he has a pretty decent grounding, overall, in Christianity, the "orthodoxy" he goes after most often. (Though he also discusses the Bible Code, NDEs, Ghost Dances, Nation of Islam, and other Messianic cults -- most of which I found fascinating.) I also liked the last chapter, on Steven Jay Gould and historical contingency -- the butterfly effect. As an historian, I think the theory helps explain both the pattern of Chinese dynastic power, and the way schools of thought mix as they form, then congeal into orthodoxies.

Elsewhere, though, I found Shermer's arguments unsuccessful, and often confused.

For one thing, sloppiness often undermines Shermer's credibility. He flubs the story of Augustine's famous conversion - the verse quoted in Confessions did not tell Augustine to sell all he had and give to the poor, but to avoid sexual immorality! No one who has read Pensees should talk as if "The Wager" were Pascal's only argument for Christianity. Shermer's ten arguments for God, and his responses, are as others remark embarrassing - not only because they are short and therefore inadequate, but they often also miss the point. Shermer introduces Michael Behe as his primary antagonist on ID, but then most of his arguments seem to argue past Behe.

Shermer also fails to critique his own arguments objectively. Shermer often tells us, "People are pattern-seeking animals." True, but we can also be pattern-avoiding, overlooking signs of cancer or an affair. The question is which faculty is most in play when it comes to religion. One cannot simply assume that faith in God means connecting too many dots, rather than disbelieving, means not connecting enough. This is the weakness of a psychological approach to religion without an adequate discussion of objective evidence. After all, math and logic and science and history also connect dots.

Shermer relies on Burton Mack on Jesus. This is a poor choice. See my Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could, for a critique of Mack, Crossan, Borg, and Funk, among others. I argue that Mack is more a maker of myths than a believable historian.

Shermer's surveys of why people believe, or do not believe, were probably the most interesting part of the book for me. He summarizes the data at the end of the book in a series of useful graphs. He finds that skeptics are more likely to be well-educated, open-minded, male, and to conflict with their parents. But here too, his analysis is premature. First of all, he assumes that a person who describes himself as "inventive, curious, original," is these things - which seems a bit naïve. Secondly, the only society he surveys is America. He does not therefore control for the sociological difference between orthodox views and new sects. A different kind of person is likely to convert than stick with the views of his ancestors. To decide what difference theism itself makes, it would be necessary to take similar surveys in (say) communist China or Russia, Tibet, Iran, and Japan. If Shermer did so, having studied culture and religion all my adult life, I am sure he would get quite different results. While education may make Americans a bit less likely to believe in God, it seems to make Taiwanese or Singaporean far more likely to become Christians. And this, Rodney Stark shows, was also the case in Medieval Europe, among the first scientists.

Shermer asks, "How can one set of people find no evidence for God's existence, while another set finds quite the opposite? Both are observing the same world. The answer, as we shall see, lies in the psychology of belief." To be fair, he should also consider whether the answer might lie instead in (1) the psychology of unbelief (see Paul Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless); (2) the sociology of unbelief (see Stark, For the Glory of God); (3) the fact that people observe different parts of the world; (4) the possibility that science has become a rival god (there is evidence for that in this book); (5) sex on campus (see Tom Wolfe!); (6) different ways in which people on different levels of society falsify or deny God (see Cornelius Plantinga, A Bestiary of Sin); (7) public education may discriminate against faith. (Shermer himself says, "It is not acceptable in science" to offer supernatural explanations. And indeed, many of us have learned, even a hint of openness to the supernatural can be bad for one's academic health;) (8) the public education system may have become a propaganda machine for humanism, as envisioned by Dewey; or (9) the sociological tendencies described by Stark. Each hypothesis, I say, should be considered.

Finally, Shermer puzzles much over the relationship between faith and reason. His survey shows that the most common reason for faith is intellectual. He thinks this is a modern heresy, an inappropriate response to skepticism on the part of Christians, who should admit that they believe because they want to, end of story. He praises the pope for writing, "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." But when the pope describes faith and reason as both "inseparable" and "distinct," he complains: "Either faith and reason are inseparable or they are distinct." Why? It does not occurr to him that the poetry he has just praised shows that it is possible for two things to be both "inseparable" and "distinct." Both wings on a bird are inseparable in the sense of being joined through its body, and in being required for flight - yet are distinct as well. The world is full of objects both "inseparable" in that sense and "distinct:" electron and proton, head and shoulders, mother and child. Skeptics often assume "faith" means "blind faith:" it is to Shermer's credit that he digs up evidence to the contrary. But the evidence takes him by surprise, and he resorts to the improbable assumption that Pope John Paul does not properly understand the Christian tradition, and educated Christians have heretical notions of epistemology. He is, of course, mistaken. Far from a modern heresy, however, John Paul (and Pascal!) accurately understood that faith and reason complement one another in the Christian tradition. (See the anthology on Faith and Reason on my web site, christthetao.com, for quotes on faith and reason from leading Christian thinkers over the centuries.) So while I credit Shermer for being open-minded enough to learn new things about religion, it remains to be seen how open and self-critical he really is.

Shermer did it again.......2006-01-10

Michael Shermer is awesome, thats pretty much all there is too it.

The book is jam packed full of interesting facts about... well... how we believe. Shermer nicely outlines why religious and magical thinking was helpful from an evolutionary perspective. Besides at looking at things such as scientific and philosophical arguments for and against Gods existance, "intelligent design" and the "bible code", Shermer delves into all sorts of things to show how belief and experiencing God points to nothing outside of our own brains.

This is the untimate God book.

A skeptic repeats an urban legend as fact.... OOPS! - and a more serious objection.......2005-12-10

On page 220, Shermer repeats one version of the QWERTY myth when he says the normal typewriter layout was "designed for nineteenth-century typewriters whose key striking mechanisms were too slow for human finger speed." He then goes on to point out the sequence DFGHJKL on the home row and says, "It appears that the original key arrangement was just a straight alphabetical sequence, which made sense in early experiments before testing was done to determine a faster alignment. The vowels were removed to slow the typist down to prevent key jamming."

The first quote is partially wrong or confusing, and the second is incomplete, as illustrated by an entry on the typewriter at one of the two main urban legends-refutation websites, About.com's Urban Legend Reference Pages.

From About:

"For years, popular writers have accused Sholes of deliberately arranging his keyboard to slow down fast typists who would otherwise jam up his sluggish machine. In fact, his motives were just the opposite. ...

"If two typebars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as "TH" and make sure their typebars hung at safe distances."

So, the modern key spread was not done to slow down typists; it simply was, in a phrase Shermer should appreciate, a near-optimal evolutionary adaptation of the original keyboard layout to mechanical constraints of the time.

And, as for his implication that an alternative layout might be better? (Something believed by many others, not just him.) About answers that one, too:

"The Dvorak keyboard sounds very good. However, a keyboard need to do more than just 'sound' good, and unfortunately, Dvorak has failed to prove itself superior to QWERTY. ... A U.S. General Services Administration study of 1953 appears to have been more objective. It found that it really didn't matter what keyboard you used."

Not a huge deal, but a professional skeptic should get this one right.

====

Now, on to the more serious objection.

Shermer, in my opinion, explains HOW religious belief may have come into being, but not WHY.

Man the pattern-seeing, or even man the pattern-making out of white-noise seeing, I agree with. But, why do the seen patterns have to have a religious vision to them?

THAT's the question Shermer doesn't answer. To attempt an answer, he would have to delve into psychology of religion, as well as cognitive science, even more than he did, IMO. Paleoanthropology of early homo sapiens would also be needed.

Also, pattern-seeing falls somewhat short on the "how," in my opinion. Rather, I believe that religious belief was developed in part to FORCE patterns onto massively contingent medium-term temporal patterns.

For example, some ancient culture asks why it has a drought, which is NOT part of the normal rain patterns.

Answer... the seen pattern of some divinity, malevolent or angry.

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