The religious right is gaining enormous power in the United States, thanks to a well-organized, media-savvy movement with powerful friends in high places. Yet many Americans — both observant and secular — are alarmed by this trend, especially by the religious right’s attempts to erase the boundary between church and state and re-make the U.S. into a Christian nation. But most Americans lack the tools for arguing with the religious right, especially when fundamentalist conservatives claim their tradition started with…
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The Skeptical Studies Curriculum Resource Center is a comprehensive, free repository of resources for teaching students how to think skeptically. This Center contains a selection of books, reading lists, course syllabi, in-class exercises, PowerPoint presentations, student projects, papers, and videos that you may download and use in your own classes. Lessons in these resources include:
- what science is, how it differs from pseudoscience, and why it matters
- the scientific method and how to use it to investigate and conduct skeptical analyses of extraordinary claims
- how to construct effective arguments and rhetorical strategies
- how to effectively use presentations and papers to present an argument
- reason, logic, and skeptical analysis
- the psychology of belief
- how ideas are presented within academia
- how peer review works
- and much more…
Fighting Words:
A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Suggested by: Innes Mitchell
- Written by: Robin Morgan
Attack of the Theocrats!
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Suggested by: Innes Mitchell
- Written by: Sean Faircloth
While much of the public debate in the United States over church-state issues has focused on the construction of nativity scenes in town squares and the addition of “under God” to the Pledge, Faircloth, who served ten years in the Maine legislature and is now Director of Strategy & Policy for the U.S. Richard Dawkins Foundation, moves beyond the symbolism to explore the many ways federal and state legal codes privilege religion in law.
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became
One of America’s Leading Atheists
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Suggested by: Innes Mitchell
- Written by: Dan Barker
My kids are in the process of learning about literature, and a rule of thumb they’ve picked up concerns how to recognize the protagonist of a Story: it’s the character who undergoes the greatest transformation. This makes sense, because one of the hardest things we confront is the need to change. By this criterion, in the enormous story of what we all do with our lives, Dan Barker is one of the most interesting and brave protagonists I know. Godless…
Baloney Detection Kit
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Suggested by: Pete Boghossian
- Written by: Michael Shermer & Pat Linse
This 16-page booklet is designed to hone your critical thinking skills. It includes suggestions on what questions to ask, what traps to avoid, specific examples of how the scientific method is used to test pseudoscience and paranormal claims, and a how-to guide for developing a class in critical thinking.
50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Suggested by: Pete Boghossian
- Written by: Guy Harrison
Many books that challenge religious belief from a sceptical point of view take a combative tone that is almost guaranteed to alienate believers or they present complex philosophical or scientific arguments that fail to reach the average reader. Journalist Guy P Harrison argues that this is an ineffective way of encouraging people to develop critical thinking about religion. In this unique approach to scepticism regarding God, Harrison concisely presents fifty commonly heard reasons people often give for believing in a…
Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on
Atheism and the Secular Life
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Book Edited by: Louise Anthony
- Suggested by: Pete Boghossian
Atheists are frequently demonized as arrogant intellectuals, antagonistic to religion, devoid of moral sentiments, advocates of an “anything goes” lifestyle. Now, in this revealing volume, nineteen leading philosophers open a window on the inner life of atheism, shattering these common stereotypes as they reveal how they came to turn away from religious belief.
Critical Thinking in Psychology:
Separating Sense from Nonsense
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Suggested by: Monica Greco
- Written by: John Ruscio
Do your students have the tools to distinguish between the true science of human thought and behavior from pop psychology? John Ruscio’s book provides a tangible and compelling framework for making that distinction. Because we are inundated with “scientific” claims, the author does not merely differentiate science and pseudoscience, but goes further to teach the fundamentals of scientific reasoning on which students can base their evaluation of information.
The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods
to Politics and Conspiracies
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Written by: Michael Shermer
In this, his magnum opus, Dr. Michael Shermer presents his comprehensive theory on how beliefs are born, formed, nourished, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. This book synthesizes Dr. Shermer’s 30 years of research to answer the questions of how and why we believe what we do in all aspects of our lives, from our suspicions and superstitions to our politics, economics, and social beliefs. In this book Dr. Shermer is interested in more than just why people believe weird things,…
The Better Angels of our Nature:
Why Violence has Declined
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Suggested by: Michael Shermer
- Written by: Steven Pinker
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’s existence.
The Greatest Show on Earth:
The Evidence for Evolution
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Suggested by: Michael Shermer
- Written by: Richard Dawkins
Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence—from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics—to make the airtight case that “we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by…
Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Suggested by: Michael Shermer
- Written by: David Buss
Beginning with a historical introduction, the text logically progresses by discussing adaptive problems humans face and ends with a chapter showing how the new field of evolutionary psychology encompasses all branches of psychology. Each chapter is alive with the subjects that most occupy our minds: sex, mating, getting along, getting ahead, friends, enemies, and social hierarchies.
Legends, Lore, & Lies
- Resource added on: Saturday, October 27, 2012
- Submitted by: Mark Gifford
- Written by: Joseph Calabrese
Legends, Lore, and Lies: A Skeptic’s Stance presents intriguing readings in five sections–urban legends, alternative medicine, the media’s role in public gullibility, psychics and the paranormal, and pseudo science–to demonstrate the importance of critical examination and the differences between an opinion or assertion and a supported claim.
Critical Thinking Crash Course
- Resource added on: Thursday, October 25, 2012
- Submitted by: Peter Boghossian
This video is from a public lecture given by Dr. Peter Boghossian of Portland State University on May 11th, 2012 at the Intel Campus in Hillsboro, Oregon. This lecture provides a critical thinking crash course.
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal
- Resource added on: Wednesday, October 17, 2012
- Suggested by: Martin Bridgstock
- Written by: Lynne Kelly
Can a human being really spontaneously burst into flames? Just how deadly is the Bermuda Triangle? And what’s the real story behind all those alien abductions? The answers to these and many other questions lie within the covers of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal.
Beyond Belief: Skepticism, Science and the Paranormal
- Resource added on: Wednesday, September 26, 2012
- Written by: Martin Bridgstock
Whether ghosts, astrology or ESP, up to 80 per cent of the population believes in one or more aspects of the paranormal. Such beliefs are entertaining, and it is tempting to think of them as harmless. However, there is mounting evidence that paranormal beliefs can be dangerous – cases of children dying because parents rejected orthodox medicine in favour of alternative remedies, and ‘psychics’ who trade on the grief of the bereaved for personal profit and gain. Expenditure on the…
Pseudoscience and Extraordinary Claims
of the Paranormal
- Resource added on: Wednesday, September 26, 2012
- Suggested by: John Donovan, Michael Cassens & Bryan Farha
- Written by: Jonathan C. Smith
“Smith’s work is a valuable contribution to the field. It will certainly be of interest to psychologists interested in the consequences of cognitive errors, and it is no doubt the best textbook on the market for a course on the psychology of paranormal belief.
Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens
- Resource added on: Thursday, July 5, 2012
- Suggested by: Jeffrey Brookings
- Written by: Susan Clancy
They are tiny. They are tall. They are gray. They are green. They survey our world with enormous glowing eyes. To conduct their shocking experiments, they creep in at night to carry humans off to their spaceships. Yet there is no evidence that they exist at all. So how could anyone believe he or she was abducted by aliens? Or want to believe it? To answer these questions, psychologist Susan Clancy interviewed and evaluated “abductees”–old and young, male and female,…
Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries:
Science & Pseudoscience in Archaeology
- Resource added on: Thursday, July 5, 2012
- Suggested by: Jeffrey Behm
- Written by: Kenneth Feder
Committed to the scientific investigation of human antiquity, this indispensable supplementary text uses interesting archaeological hoaxes, myths, and mysteries to show how we can truly know things about the past through science. Examples of fantastic findings support the carefully, logically, and entertainingly described flaws in the purported evidence.
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
- Resource added on: Thursday, July 5, 2012
- Suggested by: Travis Knowles
- Written by: Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson
Backed by years of research and delivered in lively, energetic prose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception—how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it.
Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy
- Resource added on: Thursday, July 5, 2012
- Suggested by: Thomas Holtz & John Merck
- Written by: Robert Hazen & James Trefil
Knowledge of the basic ideas and principles of science is fundamental to cultural literacy. But most books on science are often too obscure or too specialized to do the general reader much good.
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