Why people believe weird things by Michael Shermer

Author:Michael Shermer
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Tags: extraterrestrials, Science, superstition, pseudoscience, weird things, irrationality, ghosts, creationism
Published: 2008-03-07T01:34:44+00:00

PART 4

We believe we can construct a past that is veritable, that is accurate in

terms of actual past events, since the past has left its mark in the present.

The message of this book has been that, while there are many different

possibilities, not all of these constructed pasts—not all of the possibili-

ties—are equally plausible. Ultimately, then, we get the past we deserve. In

every generation, thinkers, writers, scholars, charlatans, and kooks (these

are not necessarily mutually exclusive categories) attempt to cast the past in

an image either they or the public desire or find comforting. We deserve

better and can do better than weave a past from the whole cloth of fantasy

and fiction.

—Kenneth L. Feder, Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries:

Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, 1986

173

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