Why People Believe Weird Things, Featuring Dr. Michael Shermer October 2, 2009

WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS, FEATURING DR. MICHAEL SHERMER

Friday, October 2, 7pm
J.J.R. MacLeod Auditorium, Medical Sciences Building, University of Toronto (1 King's College Circle)

Ever wonder why people believe in UFO abductions, mind-reading, reincarnation, urban legends, not to mention "scientific creationism" and the pernicious myth that the Holocaust never happened?

Dr. Michael Shermer, the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, is a genuine ghost-buster, a relentless crusader against superstition and pseudoscience. Based on his bestselling book, Why People Believe Weird Things, Dr Shermer’s lecture will debunk junk science, bad science, voodoo science, pathological science, pseudoscience, and plain old nonsense. The event will be filled with humour,insight, and personal anecdotes - a highly entertaining wake-up call that has proved a hit on college campuses.

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University.

Admission
$8 regular, $5 students and Centre for Inquiry Members
This event is FREE to New and Renewing Centre for Inquiry members and
one guest.

Visit the event webpage at http://tinyurl.com/ntssw7 or contact 416-971-5676 or jtrottier@centerforinquiry.net

Biography of Michael Shermer

Dr. Shermer’s latest book is The Mind of the Market, on evolutionary economics. His last book was Why Darwin Matters: Evolution and the Case Against Intelligent Design, and he is the author of Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown, about how the mind works and how thinking goes wrong. His book The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Share Care, and Follow the Golden Rule, is on the evolutionary origins of morality and how to be good without God. He wrote a biography, In Darwin’s Shadow, about the life and science of the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. He also wrote The Borderlands of Science, about the fuzzy land between science and pseudoscience, and Denying History, on Holocaust denial and other forms of pseudohistory. His book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, presents his theory on the origins of religion and why people believe in God. He is also the author of Why People Believe Weird Things on pseudoscience, superstitions, and other confusions of our time.

Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University (1991). He was a college professor for 20 years (1979–1998), teaching psychology, evolution, and the history of science at Occidental College (1989–1998), California State University Los Angeles, and Glendale College. Since his creation of the Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, and the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, he has appeared on such shows as The Colbert Report, 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, Tom Snyder, Donahue, Oprah, Lezza, Unsolved Mysteries (but, proudly, never Jerry Springer!), 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.