The founding publisher of Skeptic magazine visits Elon University this week for a Whitley Auditorium lecture sponsored by the Liberal Arts Forum that is free and open to the public.
Tuesday, October 22
Michael Shermer, “Why People Believe Weird Things”
Whitley Auditorium, 7:30 p.m.
Most of us, most of the time, arrive at our beliefs for reasons having little to do with empirical evidence or logical thought. Instead, the facts of the world come to us through the colored filters of theories, hypotheses, hunches, biases and prejudices accumulated through life.
Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, does not judge the validity of beliefs but rather shares his interest in the question of how individuals came to them in the first place, and how they are perpetuated in the face of either no evidence or contradictory evidence.
Shermer is the executive director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the The Skeptics Society’s Distinguished Science Lecture Series, and an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University and Chapman University.
He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pepperdine University, a master’s degree in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his doctorate in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University. He was a college professor from 1979–1998, teaching psychology, evolution and the history of science at Occidental College, California State University Los Angeles, and Glendale College.
Since his creation of the Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, and The Skeptics Society’s Distinguished Science Lecture Series, he has appeared on such shows as The Colbert Report, 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, Tom Snyder, Donahue, Oprah, Leeza, Unsolved Mysteries, and other shows as a skeptic of weird and extraordinary claims, as well as interviews in countless documentaries aired on PBS, A&E, Discovery, The History Channel, The Science Channel, and The Learning Channel.
Shermer was the co-host and co-producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, Exploring the Unknown.