OMNI
CRITICAL
THINKING, SKEPTICISM NEWSLETTER #4, December 31, 2017. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a
Culture of Peace.
(#1 July 5, 2011; #2 October 18, 2012; #3 March 16, 2013).
http://omnicenter.org/donate/
What’s at stake: Several
years ago on the same day I read the latest no. of Skeptical
Inquirer and began reading the 2nd ed. of David Swanson's War
Is a Lie, I was struck yet
again by the similarities in the lies and myths that create fundamentalist
religious belief and belief in the paranormal, and the lies and myths that
cause and sustain wars. Resistance to both is also similar: particularly
strong education in questioning assumptions and claims and in the use of
evidence. Now myths and lies motivate or are exploited by deniers of
anthropogenic global warming, and the cure again includes critical thinking, of
which science is the foundation.
Nos. 1-3 at end
Here is the link to
all the newsletters in OMNI’s web site:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/
Contents:
Critical Thinking Newsletter #4,
December 31, 2017
US Culture
Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen
General
Guy
Harrison, Good Thinking
Shermer,
Belief versus Facts, “When Facts Fail”
Hobson,
“Think More”
Bartholomew,
Popular Delusions
Chomsky,
“Rescuing Memory,” Interview 2016: Racism, Anti-Semitism USA;
Spanish Civil War.
Spanish Civil War.
Science
McIntyre,
Willful Ignorance
Helfand,
A Survival Guide to the Misinformation
Age: Scientific Habits of Mind
Jamieson,
Reason in a Dark Time, Struggle Against
Climate Change
Griskevicus
and Kenrick, The Rational Animal
Mooney,
Unscientific America: How Scientific
Illiteracy Threatens Our Future
Prothero,
How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future
Teaching
Lilienfeld,
Teaching Critical Thinking Early Is Possible
Religion
Granados,
Twenty Rebels
Thomas,
“Discovery Institute Attack on Cosmos”
Freedom
from Religion Foundation
Center
for Inquiry (CFI) and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen. PenguinRandomHouse.com 2017.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/.../fantasyland...kurt-andersen/978140006721...
Fantasyland. How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History.
NEW
YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The single most important
explanation, and the fullest explanation, of how
Donald Trump became president of
the United States . . . nothing less than the most important book that I have
read this year.”—Lawrence O’Donnell
How did
we get here?
In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA.
In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA.
Over the
course of five centuries—from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the
Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the
anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish
for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials—our love of the fantastic has
made America exceptional in a way that we’ve never fully acknowledged. From the
start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic
fantasies—every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend
to be absolutely anybody. With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is
ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen
explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the
rails.
Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want to understand Donald Trump and the culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book.
Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want to understand Donald Trump and the culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book.
KURT
ANDERSEN. FANTASYLAND: HOW AMERICA WENT HAYWIRE: A 500-YEAR HISTORY. 2017.
Interview by
Michael Werner. “How the Loss of Critical Reasoning is Harming America.” The Humanist (Jan-Feb 2018)
https://thehumanist.com/magazine/january.../loss-critical-reasoning-harming-america
Dec
20, 2017. Your new book, Fantasyland:
How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, is a theory about how the
triumph of the radical right, and Donald Trump in particular, are only part of
the culmination of a long historical process. Can you explain? KURT ANDERSEN:
We began, of course, ...
GENERAL
Guy
Harrison. Good Thinking. Prometheus,
2015. 290pp. Briefly rev. in Skeptical Inquirer (Nov. Dec. 2015): A “guide based
on the view that skepticism is the
essential posture for the twenty-first century human being and critical thinking the indispensable
skill for living in modern society.” An
earlier book by this author: Think: Why You Should Question Everything. --Dick
On Think: “A clear and passionate book on
skepticism, clear thinking, and a wide range of juicy paranormal claims. A
great and fun read for everyone. Harrison succeeds at motivating, inspiring,
and indeed haunting the reader. As he says, ‘Think before you believe.’
Required reading for anyone who doesn’t want to waste time, health, money, and
dignity on things that probably are not real or true.” —Jonathan C. Smith, PhD, professor of
psychology, Chicago’s Roosevelt University; author of Pseudoscience and Extraordinary
Claims of the Paranormal
Guy P. Harrison is an award-winning journalist and the author of Think:
Why You Should Question Everything, 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian, 50
Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True, 50
Reasons People Give for Believing in a God, and Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know
about Our Biological Diversity. He
has won several international awards for his writing, including the World
Health Organization's award for health reporting and the Commonwealth Media
Award for Excellence in Journalism.
How to Convince Someone When
Facts Fail Why worldview
threats undermine evidence By Michael Shermer | Scientific American January 2017 Issue
Have you ever
noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their
deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact,
people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming
evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be
under threat by the conflicting data.
Creationists,
for example, dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they
are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith. Anti-vaxxers
distrust big pharma and think that money corrupts medicine, which leads them to
believe that vaccines cause autism despite the inconvenient truth that the one
and only study claiming such a link was retracted and its lead author accused
of fraud. The 9/11 truthers focus on minutiae like the melting point of steel
in the World Trade Center buildings that caused their collapse because they
think the government lies and conducts “false flag” operations to create a New
World Order. Climate deniers study tree rings, ice cores and the ppm of
greenhouse gases because they are passionate about freedom, especially that of
markets and industries to operate unencumbered by restrictive government
regulations. Obama birthers desperately dissected the president's long-form
birth certificate in search of fraud because they believe that the nation's
first African-American president is a socialist bent on destroying the country. MORE |
Scientific American January 2017 Issue
This article
was originally published with the title "When Facts Backfire"
Michael
Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com). His book The
Moral Arc (Henry Holt, 2015) is out in paperback.
Art
Hobson, ahobson@uark.edu NWA Times. 25
August 2015 “Think more, believe less.”
All of us base
our actions on a mixture of beliefs and
conclusions. "Beliefs" are principles, generally inculcated by
upbringing and tradition, to which we are attached emotionally, fervently, and
certainly. "Conclusions" are more rational, more tentative, and based
on evidence from daily life or information sources such as newspapers. This
distinction is subtle, sometimes ambiguous, but crucial. There is ample
evidence in the turmoil and tragedy of nearly every Mideast nation today that a
population's strong attachment to extreme beliefs leads to disastrous public
policy. I would also argue that the social success of northern Europe
demonstrates that nations operating more on conclusions and less on beliefs are
more successful. I'm painting with a broad brush in the two preceding
sentences, and there are plenty of exceptions, but the general point is valid.
For just one example, a 2015 CNN poll of national happiness listed 7 northern
European nations plus Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as the 10 happiest
nations in the world. In my opinion, this is partly a consequence of the low
level of religious belief in northern Europe, along with their moderate and
rational politics (welfare state capitalism). America is an anomaly in that it
is rich, highly dysfunctional socially, and highly religious. There's strong
evidence the latter two are linked, much as they are in the Mideast. In 2009,
paleontologist and sociologist Gregory Paul published a study of religion and
dysfunctionality, based on existing statistics, of 17 prosperous nations
including most of western Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and
the U.S. He ranked nations on the basis of 25 social indicators such as
homicide rates, teenage abortion rates, and poverty rates, and 9 religiosity
indicators such as belief in God, frequency of prayer, and biblical literalism.
Paul found a high correlation between religiosity and social dysfunction. The
U.S. was an extreme outlier, being by far the most socially dysfunctional and
by far the most religious. Ireland and Italy were similar but less extreme. At
the other end of both scales were Japan, Sweden, and Denmark as least religious
and least dysfunctional. America is also exceptional in basing national policy
on beliefs rather than conclusions. Here are a few examples. Global warming: A
remarkable scientific consensus agrees global warming is real, it poses a
serious threat, and it's caused primarily by humans. Yet only 67 percent of
Americans think Earth is getting warmer. Breaking this figure down politically,
84 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of Republicans, and 25 percent of Tea Party
Republicans agree Earth is getting warmer. Thus we see a cultural divide
between "thinkers" and "believers" on this issue.
Biological evolution: Only 47 percent of Americans agree with the overwhelming
consensus among biological scientists that humans developed from earlier
species of animals. Incredibly, according to a 2014 Gallup poll, 42 percent of
Americans believe that God created humans within the past 10,000 years. Among
Gregory Paul's 16 other prosperous nations, agreement with the scientific
consensus ranges from 64 percent (Ireland) to 80 percent (Sweden, Japan,
Denmark, France). Abortion: It's superstitious dogma to argue that a new
fetus--a fertilized egg--is fully human and to argue, as for example Republican
candidate Mike Huckabee does, that it should be accorded full constitutional
rights. This would imply that abortion is always murder, in which case nature
or God would be the world's most prolific murderer, because most fertilized
eggs either do not implant in the uterus or else miscarry after implantation. A
fetus only begins to become fully human when organized brain waves appear,
which occurs in the seventh month of pregnancy. Ironically, the evidence shows
that legal restrictions on abortions actually increase abortions:
Internationally, the legality of abortion is negatively correlated with its
frequency. Thus those who oppose abortion should, rationally, support
organizations such as Planned Parenthood and oppose restrictions on the
procedure. Guns and violence: A committed core of true believers continues to
resist rational restrictions on gun ownership in America, despite massive
evidence that widespread gun ownership is strongly linked to homicide and
injury. Peer nations with much stronger gun restrictions have far lower
homicide rates, and Americans living in states such as Arkansas having high gun
ownership rates are four times more likely to be killed by a gun than are
Americans living in states having low gun ownership rates (see my August 4
column). Could America find solutions to its social dysfunctionality by relying
less on emotional beliefs and more on rational conclusions? The evidence seems
to answer "yes."
Robert
Bartholomew and Peter Hassall. A Colorful History of Popular
Delusions. Prometheus, 2015. 352pp.
Conceptualizes
two main categories—social panics and enthusiasms—and 12 topics. –Dick
Surfaces and
Essences BY Douglas R. HofstadterEmmanuel Sander. Basic
Books, 2013.
From
the simplest forms (a single word, category, or phrase) to infinitely complex
constructions (an idiom, or proverb, or algorithm) analogies are the
tools our brains use to interpret and master daily life. This book argues that analogy
is the basis for all human thoughts.
Full description
Full description
“Rescuing Memory. The Humanist Interview with Noam Chomsky” by Jorge Majfud. The
Humanist (July-Aug. 2016).
At the age of
eighty-seven, the renowned linguist, philosopher, historian, cognitive scientist,
and critic Noam Chomsky maintains the same clarity found in any of his books,
lectures, or television appearances dating back to the 1970s. While in a
face-to-face conversation he might adopt an informal and humorous tone towards
relevant topics, he is very much that same serious and detailed thinker we all
recognize from the conferences and different interviews—one of those
individuals history will remember for centuries. MORE http://thehumanist.com/magazine/july-august-2016/features/rescuing-memory
SCIENCE
Lee
McIntyre. Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the I nternet Age.
Routledge, 2015. 150pp. Briefly rev. in Skeptical Inquirer (Nov. Dec. 2015): The natural
sciences are under attack by people who routinely reject “the findings of science they find inconvenient.” --D
, A
Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind. By David J. Helfand. Columbia
Univ, $29.95 (336p)
We live in the Information Age, with billions of bytes of data all
just two swipes away. But how much of this is of value? How much is mis-, or
even dis-information? Lots. And your search engine can’t tell the difference.
As a result, an avalanche of misinformation threatens to overwhelm the rational
discourse we so desperately need to address complex social problems such as
climate change, the food and water crises, biodiversity collapse, and emerging
threats to public health. This book provides an inoculation against the
misinformation epidemic by cultivating scientific habits of mind. Anyone can do
it — indeed, everyone must do it if our species is to long survive on this
crowded and finite planet.
"A Survival Guide for the Misinformation Age is
an impassioned plea for science literacy. Given the state of the world today,
in which scientifically under-informed voters elect scientifically illiterate
politicians, Professor David Helfand has written the right book at the right
time with the right message. Read it now. The future of our civilization may
depend on it."
--Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist
--Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist
|
Publishers Weekly
|
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-231-16872-4 Feb. 10, 2016.
|
 |
Advertisers, public figures, and
the media in general regularly misinform the public, but the Internet has taken
this to a new level, reports Helfand, former chair of Columbia University’s
department of astronomy. This cheerful corrective defines and demolishes many
categories of nonsense. Warning that the brain is programmed to find patterns
where none exist and to prefer simple, vivid explanations for reality, Helfand
proceeds to show how competent scientists work and how to tell good evidence
from bad. This turns out to be no simple task. Even scientists fail regularly,
and readers must be prepared for meticulous explanations of scatter plots,
Gaussian and Poisson distributions, proxies, and probability. Popular science
writers traditionally boast that they will go light on mathematics, but Helfand
will have none of that. As Jonathan Swift wrote, “Reasoning will never make a
man correct an ill opinion which by reasoning he never acquired,” so this book
will not attract climate-change deniers, anti-vaccine activists, creationists,
astrology lovers, and the like. Darrell Huff’s delightful 1954 classic How
to Lie with Statistics may be more accessible, but Helfand’s work is
an admirable response to a long-standing problem of sloppy thinking. (Mar.
2016)
DALE JAMIESON, REASON IN A
DARK TIME: WHY THE STRUGGLE AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE FAILED—AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR
OUR FUTURE. OXFORD UP, 2014.
Description
Description
·
Not a "save the earth" book but a sober diagnosis of
why we have failed and a proposal for concrete steps for how to move ahead. Argues that common sense notions of
responsibility are inadequate for moralizing acts that contribute to climate
change. Reflects on how we, as
individuals, can live meaningful lives in the face of climate change. Treats the scientific, historical, economic,
and political dimensions of climate changes as well as the philosophical ones.
The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us
Smarter Than We Think by Vladas Griskevicius and Douglas Kenrick uses evolutionary lens to explain irrational
decisions.
New Book from University of
Minnesota Business Professor Suggests We’re Not Really That Stupid.
https://www.aps.org/units/fed/newsletters/fall2009/hobson.cfm
by
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum (Basic Books, New York,
NY, 2009); 132 pages of text plus 66 pages of notes, ISBN 978-0-465001305-0. Reviewed
by Art Hobson. The rift between science and mainstream American culture
is growing ever wider, says this book. Chris Mooney should
know; his 2005 book The ...
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Table of Contents
Related
Links
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TEACHING
2017 is a good time, when
people are so aware of political chicanery, to advocate teaching critical
thinking in the public schools, not only in specific courses by that title, but
the encouragement of all teachers in all classes to ask frequent questions
about the content of their classes. And it could begin in K. Dick
Scott
O. Lilienfeld. “Teaching Skepticism
[critical thinking]: How Early Can We Begin?”
Skeptical Inquirer (Sept.-Oct.
2017). Cautiously optimistic. --Dick
|
Public skepticism of psychology: why
many people … - Lilienfeld -
Cited by 121
The teaching of courses in the science
and … - Lilienfeld -
Cited by 43
… the Hopkinsville Goblins: using pseudoscience
to teach … - Schmaltz - Cited
by 14
|
|
www.apa.org
› ... › Precollege and Undergraduate › Psychology Teacher Network
by
SO Lilienfeld - Related articles
Key teaching tip:
Provide students with research that contradicts each of these claims (see Lilienfeld et
al., 2010) and repeatedly test students on these claims' ...
journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00459/full
by
RM Schmaltz - 2017 - Related articles
Mar
13, 2017 - Teaching skepticism via
the CRITIC acronym and the skeptical inquirer. Skeptical ....Lilienfeld,
S. O., Ammirati, R., and David, M. (2012).
RELIGION
Advocating
progressive values and equality for humanists, atheists, and freethinkers
LUIS GRANADOS, DAMNED GOOD COMPANY: TWENTY REBELS WHO
BUCKED THE GOD EXPERTS. Humanist P,
2012.
Latest Humanist Press Ebook Includes Online Reader Commentary,
Linked Videos
(Washington, DC – July
31, 2012) – The power that comes from religious authority has been at the
center of all human societies from time immemorial–but those claims of
sovereignty have been disputed for just as long. In Damned Good Company: Twenty Rebels Who Bucked the God Experts,
author Luis Granados explores twenty cases, from Socrates to Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
of brave challenges against those claiming a special authority from God.
Damned Good Company is a book about
people, not about God. People who have preached about God, taken money for
sharing what they say they know about God, and ordered others about to enforce
what they claim to be God’s will–and a small band of heroes who stood up to
them.
In short, Damned Good Company is
a Profiles in Courage for humanists.
Some of the twenty heroes of Damned Good Company are
well-known: Erasmus, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Clarence Darrow, Atatürk, Nehru,
Steve Biko. Others are not: people like Han Yü, banished from the 9th century Chinese court for questioning the
worship of the Buddha’s finger, and Lucy Harris, who came within an inch of
deflating Mormonism before it got off the ground.
Each hero is contrasted with a
villain of his or her time and place: either a God expert like Martin Luther or
Joseph Smith or a cynical politician like Mussolini, who never believed in God
but exploited religion shamelessly to advance his political ambition.
The stories in Damned Good Company will
inspire those today who want to stand up to the Christian Right, the Muslim
fanatics, the oppressiveness of Catholic and Jewish orthodoxy, the rising Hindu
Taliban, and everyone else who claims a God-given right to tell the rest of us
what to do.
This enhanced ebook has been
extensively researched, with over 1,100 footnotes. It takes full advantage of
state-of-the-art features with over 100 photographs, online reader comments,
linked videos, and hundreds of useful web links.
Damned Good Company is available
from HumanistPress.com and
all major online ebook retailers.
A chapter excerpt can be found
here: http://wdn.ipublishcentral.net/american_humanist_association/viewinside/37848926609202
Brief video summaries of each
chapter can be found here: https://vimeo.com/album/2002877
Humanist Press is the publishing house of the American Humanist
Association, providing material for the humanist/freethought/atheist market
since 1995. The American Humanist Association (www.americanhumanist.org) advocates for
the rights and viewpoints of humanists and atheists in the United States.
Founded in 1941 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., its work is extended
through more than 150 local chapters and affiliates across America. Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life
that, without theism, affirms our responsibility to lead ethical lives of value
to self and humanity.
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