About the Author

Michael Shermer is the author of The Believing Brain, Why People Believe Weird Things, The Science of Good and Evil, The Mind Of The Market, Why Darwin Matters, Science Friction, How We Believe and other books on the evolution of human beliefs and behavior. He is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the editor of Skeptic.com, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University. He lives in Southern California.

Reviews

"Shermer does know his enemy, and it gives him a decided advantage in writing a book such as this, which aims to demonstrate that we don't need God at all to be moral human beings, that in fact human evolution has built a tendency toward moral behavior into our brains... A seeker who has found the best answers he can find in skepticism and a purely rational approach to life."

..".for a very soundly documented and reasoned set of specifics, I know of no better single volume than this one. Give it to everyone you know whose head and heart you respect, but who is flirting with irrationality."

In this concluding volume of his trilogy on the science of belief (following Why People Believe Weird Things and How We Believe), Shermer applies evolutionary psychology and fuzzy logic to moral questions. Moral behavior, he argues, evolved among the earliest humans as a form of social control, which eventually expanded into an ethical code that allowed greater freedom and more humane treatment for more human beings. People, then, are not simply "good or bad," which calls for a "provisional" morality and ethics, as opposed to a binary (yes/no; good/evil) or absolute ethical system. The author has extensively researched his topic, citing in particular current literature in anthropology (for example, controversies surrounding studies of the Yanomami tribe in Venezuela) and cognitive science (neuroimaging experiments that explore regions of the brain affected by moral challenges); he synthesizes results from disciplines with which he has considerable familiarity. This reach extends across cultures and history to support his argument that while not all moral systems apply to all cultures, this doesn't open the way to moral relativism. Instead, Shermer proposes several principles to test the morality of a particular action. Does it restrict the rights, happiness, and liberty of the other? And since it is so often an individual issue, can one "ask first"? At the same time, the author relies on a rigorous application of statistics and evolutionary logic; there's no place here for a Kierkegaardian "leap of faith." Challenging but engaging reading; recommended for most academic and larger public libraries.-Garrett Eastman, Rowland Inst., Harvard Univ. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

"Shermer does know his enemy, and it gives him a decided advantage in writing a book such as this, which aims to demonstrate that we don't need God at all to be moral human beings, that in fact human evolution has built a tendency toward moral behavior into our brains... A seeker who has found the best answers he can find in skepticism and a purely rational approach to life."
..".for a very soundly documented and reasoned set of specifics, I know of no better single volume than this one. Give it to everyone you know whose head and heart you respect, but who is flirting with irrationality."