{"id":3015,"date":"2011-06-07T00:01:51","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T07:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2011\/06\/the-believing-brain\/"},"modified":"2011-06-16T09:46:02","modified_gmt":"2011-06-16T16:46:02","slug":"the-believing-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/07\/the-believing-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Believing Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/06\/08\/136896426\/insane-science-5-new-books-that-explain-the-brain\" target=\"_blank\">from NPR<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2011\/06\/02\/The%20Believing%20Brain_custom.jpg?t=1307047422&amp;s=12\" style=\"border-width: initial; border-color: initial; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 15px; width: 200px; border-style: none; margin: 0px\" alt=\"The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer\" title=\"The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer\" class=\"img200\" width=\"200\" \/> <strong>The Believing Brain: From Ghosts To Gods To Politics And Conspiracies \u2014 How We Construct Beliefs And Reinforce Them As Truths<\/strong><\/p>\n<h6 style=\"margin-top: 3px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; color: #666666; font-weight: normal; padding: 0px\" class=\"edTag\">By Michael Shermer, hardcover, 400 pages, Times Books, list price: $28<\/h6>\n<p>&#8220;Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.&#8221; That&#8217;s the argument professional skeptic Michael Shermer makes in\u00a0<em>The Believing Brain<\/em>, a book that fuses neuroscience, sociology and the author&#8217;s own biographical stories into a compelling and sometimes deeply personal read \u2014 even if you don&#8217;t agree with him on everything. And you won&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Shermer, a former evangelical Christian who became an agnostic in college, now dedicates his sprawling career to debunking what he sees as superstitions and failures of logic, from religion to alien abduction to Sept. 11 conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/06\/08\/136896426\/insane-science-5-new-books-that-explain-the-brain\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at NPR.org<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from NPR The Believing Brain: From Ghosts To Gods To Politics And Conspiracies \u2014 How We Construct Beliefs And Reinforce Them As Truths By Michael Shermer, hardcover, 400 pages, Times Books, list price: $28 &#8220;Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.&#8221; That&#8217;s the argument professional skeptic Michael Shermer makes in\u00a0The Believing Brain, a book that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}