Not long ago our friend Safari Man offered a cautiously positive review of Michael Shermer's book, Why People Believe Weird Things. Shermer is of that class of Skeptic sometimes useful to Christians for his expose' of such matters as Holocaust denial and UFOs. (James Randi is also in this category.)

That said, I have determined that it is only proper to briefly make note of some places where Shermer is less than helpful. I say briefly because Shermer for the most part does not stick his neck out on subjects germane to Tekton's mission area -- and it is easy to see why. He prefers to "hang out" in the subject area of creation vs. evolution, and the "existence of God" debate, and seems also to prefer venues where sound bites trump scholarship (such as oral/television debates and magazine articles). My own estimation of Shermer is that if he ever tried to engage in detailed, scholarly discourse with the likes of Tekton, he'd end up on the business end of the steamroller.

Cases in point, taken from a few quotes. Here is one of Shermer's arguments against the existence of God, taken from one of his debates, as summarized by him. He started by asking the mostly-believing audience who believed in God; the vote was practically unanimous. Then, Shermer says:

... [I] asked how many people believe in the Greek god Zeus, the Roman god Jupiter, the Norse god Odin, the Aztec god Titlacahuan, the Armenian god Tir, the Finnish god Egres, the Roman god Lactanus, or any of the Hindu gods. Not a hand went up. So, I pointed out, all of you are atheists when it comes to these gods...the only difference between me and the believers in the audience was that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We're only one God away from total agreement.

The only needed answer to this shell game is, "So what?" The argument is a sound bite that at its core begs the question. For any given truth there may be 2,499 or more similar arguments that are not true; simply pointing to the 2,499 is meaningless -- this is nought but sound-biting. (Shermer then went on to ask why no one believed in the Book of Mormon, referring to the gold plates, the testimony of Smith and his witnesses, etc. -- merely pointing to them, again, is not enough; let him rather do critical analysis of the claims in question. He also "launched into a discussion of how obvious it is that religion and belief in God is socially constructed, historically contingent, and psychologically driven." This argument is no more than the argument from alternatives, the assumption that by providing an alternate explanation, one provides "the" rebutting answer. To posit it in an extreme fashion, social constructions, et al are not mutually exclusive of divine revelation.)

Beyond that, it is clear why Shermer does not deign to stick his neck out on more "hard data" subjects. To the church audience, his sole venture on this matter was to refer to "two creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2" and the existence of "a lot more than four gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Love, the Gospel of Wisdom, etc." -- points which we have refuted in detail on this page. Elsewhere it is noted that he appeared on the television program Politically Incorrect (the ultimate non-scholarly, sound-bite venue) and argued that "outside of the New Testament there are almost no historical references to Jesus." Tacitus, for example, would be dismissed as referring not to Jesus, but that in referring to Christus, "this could be anyone claiming to be the Messiah, and there were several who made such claims, such as Apollonius of Tyana" (Anyone? Since Tacitus delimits the person to one who was in Judaea, and whose followers were called Christians, it is extremely unlikely that "anyone" could be in mind, especially since, contra Shermer, there is no evidence of anyone prior to Tacitus making Messianic claims -- and Apollonius certainly did not.)

Little else needs be said in the context of this page. Shermer is addicted to sound bites and is no threat to an informed Christian faith.