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Start: 2:00 pm
Collected Works Bookstore presents Professor Byron R. Johnson for a discussion of his latest book, More God, Less Crime: Why Faith Matters and How It Could Matter More (Templeton Press 2011), which examines how religion can be a powerful antidote to crime. In More God, Less Crime, Johnson argues that increasing religiosity not only reduces crime, it also promotes prosocial behavior. He contends that despite this, many experts rarely include the "faith factor" in discussions of possible solutions to crime, drug use, offender treatment, or ex-prisoners returning to society. This failing, Johnson says, can be attributed in equal measure to the secular criminal justice professionals who allow their own anti-religious prejudices to shape their judgments, as well as to religious volunteers who rely too heavily on their own beliefs.
Byron R. Johnson is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, where he also served as the Director of the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, and Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco, California.
He is recognized as a leading authority on the scientific study of religion, the efficacy of faith-based organizations, domestic violence, and criminal justice. His recent publications have examined the impact of faith-based programs on recidivism reduction and prisoner reentry. Johnson’s research has been used in consultation with the Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Department of Labor, and the National Institutes of Health.
Start: 6:00 pm
Collected Works Bookstore welcomes Dr. Michael Shermer for a presentation of his latest book, The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Conspiracies, How we Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them As Truths, which describes a comprehensive theory on how beliefs are born, formed, nourished, challenged, changed and extinguished. The book synthesizes Dr. Shermer's 30 years of research to answer the questions of why we believe what we do in all aspects of our lives, from our suspicions and superstitions to our politics, economics and social beliefs.
On The Believing Brain, New York Times bestselling author Sam Harris said, "Michael Shermer has long been one of our most committed champions of scientific thinking in the face of popular delusion. In The Beliving Brain, he has written a wonderfully lucid, accessible, and wide-ranging account of the boundary between justified and unjustified belief. We have all fallen more deeply in his debt."
Dr. Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine. He is also a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and Adjunct Professor at Claremont Graduate University. He also teaches at Chapman University, where he is currently leading a freshman foundations course called "Skepticism 101: How to Think Like a Scientist (Without Being a Geek)".
Dr. Shermer's previous books include Mind of the Market; Why Darwin Matters: Evolution and the Case Against Intelligent Design; and The Science of Good and Evil, on the evolutionary origins of morality and how to be good without God. His book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God presents his theory on the origins of religion and why people believe in God. He is also the author of Why People Believe Weird Things, on pseudoscience, superstitions, and other confusions of our time.
Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in Psychology from Pepperdine University, his M.A. in Experimental Psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the History of Science from Claremont Graduate University (1991).
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Start: 6:00 pm
Collected Works Bookstore presents Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Laughlin for a discussion of his latest book, Powering the Future: How We Will (Eventually) Solve the Energy Crisis and Fuel the Civilization of Tomorrow. In Powering the Future, Laughlin transports his readers two centuries forward, when fossil fuels have run out and seemingly outlandish notions have been tested --- like sending remotely controlled robots under the sea for pockets of geothermal heat, manipulating animal manure to produce microbe-generated fuels, even mining landfills as a carbon source.
Robert B. Laughlin is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Physics at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1985. In 1998 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for work on the Fractional Quantum Hall effect. As a theoretical physicist, he has broad research interests spanning physical science and engineering, and has made contributions to the theory of high-density plasmas, semiconductors, superconductivity, magnetism and quantum criticality. His current research focuses on high-density nonvolatile computer memory and energy storage.
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Start: 6:00 pm
Collected Works Bookstore presents Fox News commentator John R. Lott for a discussion of his book More Guns, Less Crime, in which he argues that states with the largest increase in gun ownership, including the right to carry concealed handguns, also have the largest drops in violent crimes. Criminals are deterred by higher penalties and just as higher arrest and conviction rates deter crime, so does the risk that someone committing a crime will confront someone able to defend him or herself. Lott supports this position with a statistical argument based on an exhaustive tabulation of various social and economic data drawn from census and other population surveys of 3,054 U.S. counties during 18 years from 1977 to 1994. He fits this data into a large multi-factorial mathematical model of crime rates that shows a reduction in violent crime associated with laws allowing people to freely carry concealed weapons.
John R. Lott is an economist and outspoken Fox News contributor who argues that gun ownership makes us all safer. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman once said that "John Lott has few equals as a perceptive analyst of controversial public policy issues." Newsweek has referred to Lott as "The Gun Crowd's Guru."
Lott earned his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA and has held research positions at academic institutions including the University of Chicago, Yale University, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland, College Park and at the non-academic conservative American Enterprise Institute.
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