The Quicksands of Belief: The Need for Skepticism (American University Studies)

__The Quicksands of Belief: The Need for Skepticism__ draws on history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences in an accessible, non-academic style in order to argue that humans don’t question enough. Instead, uncritically accepting the often absurd beliefs swirling around them, too many lack the skepticism needed to avoid global disaster. The claim of this book is that humans need to question everything they think they know. The way the human brain works is impressive and has taken __Homo sapiens__ a long way. However, it is also the source of our failure to doubt. Janet B. Winn explores consciousness first, then the sense of self and how it affects thought. Subsequent chapters deal with beliefs – about reality, politics, religion, pseudo-science – and attempts made to explain human behavior by the social sciences. This concept includes a consideration of the failure to grasp the meaning of evolution, the evolution of language, and how language distorts understanding, along with the role culture plays in these distortions. The remarkable human brain has made an extraordinary creativity possible, yet this ability is used to find ever-more powerful ways to destroy the planet and its inhabitants. Winn argues that this sequence follows primarily from absolutist thinking. In spite of the fact that we cannot know what is true with any certainty, we try to impose our certainties on each other, leading to the lies and chaos of the political world, to the destruction of the environment, and to war. Cover Contents v Introduction vii 1: Imperfect Brains 1 2: The Sense of Self 11 3: The Animal That Believes 25 4: Irrationality and Religion 41 5: Pseudo Science: Witches, Astrology, and Ufos 55 6: Social Science: Efforts to Explain Ourselves 71 7: Evolving: The Human and His Chimp Cousins 89 8: Humans Have Words 101 9: Language, Reality and the Hopi Indian 113 10: Culture as a Lens 131 11: Creativity, for Better and Worse 149 12: Absolute Certainties 169 13: The Political Animal 185 14: The Warring Animal 209 15: Survival 231 Notes 235 Bibliography 245