‘Skeptic’ magazine founder to address science vs. religion April 19

Noted scholar and skeptic Michael Shermer, PhD, will present the free lecture, “Why Darwin Matters: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Battle for Science and Religion” at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 19, in the Bilyeu Theatre in Frazier Hall on the Idaho State University Pocatello campus.

Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the co-host and producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, “Exploring the Unknown.”

Shermer will be available after the talk to sign his books: “Why People Believe Weird Things, How we Believe,” “Borderlands of Science,” and “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule.”

Co-sponsors of Shermer’s talk are ISU College of Arts and Sciences, Associated Students of ISU, ISU Cultural Affairs Committee, ISU Office of Research, ISU Department of Geosciences, ISU Department of Psychology and Idaho Museum of Natural History.

He also is the author of “Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown,” about how the mind works and how thinking goes wrong. 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  “Denying History,” on Holocaust denial and other forms of pseudo history. 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 and superstitions.

“Michael Shermer, as head of one of America’s leading skeptic organizations, and as a powerful activist and essayist in the service of this operational form of reason, is an important figure in American public life,” noted the late Stephen Jay Gould in his Foreword to “Why People Believe Weird Things.”

Shermer received his Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Pepperdine University, Master of Arts degree in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his PhD from Caltech. He has appeared on such shows as “20/20,” “Dateline,” “Charlie Rose,” “Larry King Live,” “Tom Snyder,” “Donahue,” “Oprah,” “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.