Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety [Hardcover]

Police departments are hiring psychics to investigate murders, and prosecuting sex crimes based on "recovered memories" of alleged victims; public school boards, even in the 1990s, are emboldened by community consensus to force sectarian religion on students.

Kaminer asks the obvious questions that everyone else seems afraid to ask. Why should religious ideas be above public criticism? Why is it OK to ridicule Sun Myung Moon or New Age channelers, but not Billy Graham or the Pope? Are their beliefs any less silly?

The jabs at irrationalism aren't limited to traditional religion. Kaminer has done her homework, sitting through self-help seminars of New Age gurus and tracing the history of positive-thinking, inner-child and codependency therapy, alien abduction accounts, and guardian angel garbage.

The biggest laughs in this book come in quotations from the psychobabble of the 12-step recovery industry, and from the bestsellers of pop spirituality, such as Conversations with God, and The Celestine Prophecy. In Embraced by the Light, readers learn that people's souls may volunteer to be victims of accidents and murders to further some greater part of God's will.

Thanks to the average American's scientific illiteracy, technological advances are viewed as "miracles," and New Age claims about "energy transformation" and "vibrations" seem as plausible as valid science. (As Elaine Boosler once observed, even popcorn is a miracle if you don't understand it.) New Age hucksters use terms adapted from vaguely-understood concepts like quantum mechanics to legitimize their speculations about life after death.

Following a particularly absurd sample of pseudoscience from Deepak Chopra, regarding a place where "your hand exists before the Big Bang and after the universe's end in the heat death of absolute zero...the pre-quantum region that has no dimensions and all dimensions," Kaminer observes, "enigmatic or utterly incomprehensible statements may assure people of his authority. Gurus are supposed to understand truths about the universe that most of us can only sense as mysteries."

Kaminer's wit makes this book a delight. As someone else said, she is a light in the fog. You will alternate between knee-slapping laughs and shaking your head over the numbness of our culture and the lost art of critical thinking.

Later on she dismisses out of hand any research into differences between men and women stating: "Of course, my own perspective on research on cognitive sex differences is bound to be colored by my belief in the justice of sexual equality.These are puzzling statements from one professing to make the case for rational thinking. To confuse equality with sameness is almost a point of disqualification for one professing to be an expert in this area. Of course, she could believe in sexual equality and still see that men and women have cognitive differences. She seems quick to dismiss any empirical evidence that she thinks might challenge one of her cherised beliefs, something she criticizes others for doing throughout the book. There is a ton of good solid research in this area (much of it being done by women, surprised?) that she ignores or dismisses out of hand as being sexist in nature.

The book on the whole is about average. If you have read or are familiar with much of the current thinking in the skeptics or rationalists movement most of her points will be old hat. There doesn't seem to be any central themes or points she wants to make, and it mostly comes off as one reviewer says here as a rant. It also comes off as books often do, as note cards strung together.

For a dollar or two more buy:

Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder By Richard Dawkins. It's a much better book and the writer does not confuse his on desires with rationalism.