Michael Shermer: Why people believe strange things

No nhe doesn´t. All the things you mentioned have been proved over and over to have natural explanations. Why would he allow hismelf to think that they might be another explanation when it´s clear it isn´t?

No, actually he is one that helps science by thinking critically and not with a made up mind.

he's nothing more than an entertainer, what he brings up are things no sensible person would believe in anyway. skeptics can however put themselves in a box, saying, anything that might be outside this box (my current understanding of the world) is not real and is not worth considering. this is dangerous and counter-productive.

What's also hyprocritical is how the audience laughs at any of his jokes after most of them without a doubt haven't done any research of anything he's talking about. He talks about being "open" to new ideas yet ridicules so many things as his audiences just sit back and subjugate themselves to whatever he says like whatever he says is automatically true.

The very title of his magazine, "Skeptic" is classic hypocrisy. It's an oxymoron to investigate sketicly.

Its an oxy moron to investigate skeptically? No it is not, investigation has to do with thinking about a propositions claims, and skepticism (how Shermer means it) says that unless there is sufficient evidence, one should refrain from believing it....

So, you can look at a situation and say that you do not believe it based upon lack of evidence.

Skeptical knowledge would be an oxymoron.

Well it's clear Michael Shermer is going by a method of presupposing skepticism prehand. If you listen to him you can understand this. In other videos, for instance where he "investigated" out of body experiences, ghosts, acupuncture, among other things, he presents the things as false before even starting to investigate. Therefore he's creating a bias that is firewalling off any potential evidence towards lots of these things.

Wether ghosts, crop circles, etc. are true is not the point. The point it Shermer is automatically denying anything he first concieves to be "supernatural". He says his job is to "find natural explanations" for things, yet fails to mention he may be dealing with natural phenomena all along just not understood or accepted yet by mainstream science.

Clearly he's looking at things with a prejudice, and that pretty much negates anything he will say.

Shermer is just a road block in the world of "science" and it's a shame people like him have been given this kind of prestige and first say is so many things. How can you "advance" science while ridiculing things people believe? After all he's the one saying we're all the product of science and psychology, therefore wouldn't it be natural for people to end up believing these things? He's overlooking so much of his own hypocrisy.

lots of fluff in his talk, not much substance

Wow how hypocritical of this guy to say there are "bad ideas" right after the intro calls ideas "incalculably" valuable.

Michael Shermer has been hyprocritical in so many places and he's creating a firewall of any potential new truths. Instead he dismisses any theory almost purely on the basis of it being out of the ordinary. How counterproductive, yet he advocates the advancement of "science" with this arrogant and cynical attitude towards paranormal research and the like. Think for yoursel

you are a god on stage insofar as the things you say make sense, statistically things people whith phd-s say tend to make a whole lot more sense that other (predominantly) faith based people