1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not skeptical enough, March 23, 2008
This review is from: Science Versus Pseudoscience (Impact Books) (Library Binding)
This is an okay little book, concisely written as a handy guide to recognizing and debunking the world of pseudoscience. It's a fast read, contains a number of interesting anecdotes, is decently organized, and seems, for the most part, logical. For the most part....
The book's target audience seems to be young adults--perhaps kids of middle school age--but I honestly don't know that I would recommend it to them because of the weird religiosity that pervades the entire text.
The author doesn't strike me at all as a true skeptic, or even a truly science-minded individual. He says, for instance, that "Some arrogant scientists have overstepped their bounds in claiming that science is all that matters in evaluating human existence. ...This attitude fails to recognize the overwhelming conviction among humans that there is a spiritual side to life that cannot be denied."
Who cares if people have an overwhelming conviction of something? People's feelings are an all-right place to start research, but if no empirical evidence ever surfaces to prove a claim, that claim will need to be modified or abandoned altogether. The book's author even goes as far as to blame science for interesting people in pseudoscience simply because science doesn't incorporate more spirituality--basically, then, because science isn't more like pseudoscience!
I dog-eared the pages of this book whenever its author's perspective veered into the pseudoscientific, and I think I ended up marking at least a dozen pages. For instance, you just know he had Christian end-times theology in mind when he wrote, "Someday shocking new evidence may reveal that evolutionary theory is all wrong. If that happens, biologists will have to change their minds. That is how science works."
And how about, "While evidence for and against the Big Bang may be scientifically gathered, such things as the purpose of life and who or what ultimately set in motion the series of events that led to creation of the universe cannot be addressed by science. These questions can be addressed only by religion and philosophy."
Huh? Someone needs to tell that to Stephen Hawking, then. This goes way beyond Stephen Jay Gould's Nonoverlapping Magisteria--the idea of just keeping science and religion comfortably seperate. This kind of thinking goes as far as allowing religion to take away jurisdiction from science, wherever examining certain areas would make the author, the true believer, uncomfortable.
It's one thing to be skeptical about UFOs and ESP. Whatever. Those topics can be safely dismissed, without a person's personal life being affected. It's another thing altogether to turn the lights of skepticism and critical thinking onto one's own beliefs, and this author, Nathan Aaseng, is never really bold enough to do so.
It's too bad, too, because I was really hoping for a good skeptical book I could have my kids read when they're a bit older.
This one, though, isn't it.
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