Truth

Michael Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine, the executive director of the Skeptics Society, and the host of the popular podcast The Michael Shermer Show. He is the author of Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational; Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time; and The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths.

• Prologue. Why Truth MattersSkepticism as an Agent of Reason Against Organized IrrationalismPart I. Known KnownsChapter 1. The Truth About Post-Truth TruthinessWhy We Are Not Living in a Post-Truth, Postmodern, Fact-Free WorldChapter 2. What Is Truth, Anyway?Justified True Belief, the Principle of Universal Realism, and Why Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary EvidenceChapter 3. The Truth About WhyCausation, Correlation, Bayesian Reasoning, Signal Detection Theory, and the Determination of Cause and EffectChapter 4. The Truth About Coincidences and MiraclesHow to Think About Highly Unlikely EventsPart II. Known UnknownsChapter 5. Religious and Mythic TruthsHow to Think About the Resurrection and Other MythsChapter 6. Historical TruthsThe Noble Dream of Pursuing Objective Truth About the PastChapter 7. Moral TruthsScience and the Search for Objective Universal ValuesChapter 8. Alien TruthsUFOs and the Search for Sky GodsPart III. Known UnknowablesChapter 9. The Truth About ConsciousnessWhat Is It Like to Be You?Chapter 10. The Truth About Free WillDeterminism, Self-Determinism, and Your Future SelfChapter 11. The Truth About GodArguments For and Against the DivineChapter 12. The Truth About ExistenceWhy There Is Something Rather Than NothingEpilogue. Like GodsThe Expanding Sphere of Knowledge and My God GambitAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex