In the first chapter, Raymo, opens with talk of his childhood. He brings to thesurface the fact that children will believe just about anything they are told. In this chapterRaymo explains how people grow frm children into grown sdluts, peolpe somehow retainsome of a child’s ability to believe in the unbelievable. It is the True Believer that retains “an absolute in some forms of empirically unverifiable make-belive...” (13), wheras theSkeptic always “keeps a wary eye even on firmly established facts.”(14) For an example,Raymo uses the Shroud of Turin, which simplly a linen cloth that has the likeness of a manon it ( some belive this man to be Christ). He tells of a time when the Roman Catholicauthorities allowed scientists to radiocarbon date the Shroud. Small samples of the Shroudwhere sent with three samples controls of known age, to three independant labs. All threeproperly dated the controls and dated the Shroud to medieval time. Raymo concluededthat a Skeptic would have taken the evidence and belived it, while the True Beliver wouldfind no truth in what was found. In fact, he said that the True Beliver would come up withexplainations as to why the Shroud seems younger than it really is. In the next chapter, Raymo explains the main difference between Skeptics andTrue Believers is the opposite of what most people would think. He explains how“scientific concepts can be extraordinarily bizarre...” (27), wheras the True Believerbelieve what may seem much more sensible and somewhat down to earth. The exampleRaymo uses for this is DNA and its ability to reproduce itself. This tiny double-helixsomehow manages to spilt and make a copy of its self from chemical components fromwhatever is surrounding it. It may seem easier for one to believe in a Shroud with a man’sface in it, or the picture of God in the Sistine Chapel, but it is the Skeptics who believe inthe hard to concieve DNA. It is t...
