Discover the Best Books Written by Michael Shermer

Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The author of over a dozen books, Shermer is known for engaging in debates on pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism.

Shermer was the co-producer and co-host of Exploring the Unknown, a 13-hour Fox Family television series broadcast in 1999. From April 2001 to January 2019, he contributed a monthly Skeptic column to Scientific American magazine.

Shermer was raised in a non-religious household before converting to Christian fundamentalism as a teenager. He stopped believing in God during graduate school, influenced by a traumatic accident that left his then-girlfriend paralyzed. He identifies as an agnostic and an atheist but prefers "skeptic." He also advocates for humanism.

Shermer was born on September 8, 1954, in Los Angeles. He is part of Greek and German ancestry. Shermer was raised in Southern California, primarily in the La Cañada Flintridge area. His parents divorced when he was four and later remarried. He has a step-sister, two step-brothers, and two half-sisters.

Although Shermer went to Sunday school, he said that neither his biological parents, stepparents, nor siblings were religious nor non-religious. They did not discuss that topic often or attend church or pray together. He began his senior year of high school in 1971 when the evangelical movement in the United States was growing in popularity. At the behest of a friend, Shermer embraced Christianity. He attended the Presbyterian Church in Glendale, California. He observed a sermon delivered by "a very dynamic and histrionic preacher who inspired me to come forward at the end of the sermon to be saved." For seven years, Shermer evangelized door-to-door.

Shermer attended an informal Christian fellowship at "The Barn" in La Crescenta, California, which he described as "a quintessential 1970s-era hang-out with a long-haired hippie-type, guitar-playing leader". At the Barn, Shermer describes enjoying the social aspects of religion, especially theological debates.

Shermer graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in 1972. He enrolled at Pepperdine University that year, intending to pursue Christian theology. He accepted the university's teachings despite restrictions, such as a ban on dancing and visiting opposite-sex dorms. When he learned a doctorate in theology required proficiency in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic, he changed majors to psychology. He completed his BA in psychology at Pepperdine in 1976.

Shermer went on to study experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton. Discussions with his professors and studies in the natural and social sciences led him to question his religious beliefs. Fueled by what he perceived to be the intolerance generated by the absolute morality taught in his religious studies; the hypocrisy in what many believers preached and what they practiced; and a growing awareness of other religious beliefs that were determined by the temporal, geographic, and cultural circumstances in which their adherents were born, he abandoned his religious views. Halfway through graduate school, he stopped wearing his Christian silver ichthys medallion.

Shermer attributed the paralysis of his college girlfriend as a key point when he lost faith. After she was in an automobile accident that broke her back and rendered her paralyzed from the waist down, Shermer relayed, "If anyone deserved to be healed, it was her, and nothing happened, so I just thought there was probably no God at all." Shermer earned an MA degree in psychology from California State University, Fullerton, in 1978.