Robert Todd Carroll Writer Was he a writer? Carroll is the author of Becoming a Critical Thinker, What was the book about? a textbook for introductory logic and critical thinking courses.
Did he write anything else?
Did Robert Todd Carroll write anything aside from "Becoming a Critical Thinker"?
Carroll is the author of Becoming a Critical Thinker, a textbook for introductory logic and critical thinking courses. It covers subjects such as language and critical thinking, the mass media and other sources of information, fallacies of reasoning, and inductive and deductive arguments. The book is subtitled A Guide for the New Millennium. Pearson Educational published the first edition in 2000 and the second edition was published in 2005. Becoming a Critical Thinker was born out of Carroll's classwork during his time in Sacramento City College.  The Skeptic's Dictionary is the print version of the website skepdic.com and is available in Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. It provides definitions, arguments, and essays on supernatural, occult, paranormal, and pseudo-scientific subjects. The book features many examples of pseudoscientific beliefs over its eight chapters. In the last chapter, Carroll provides ways to improve critical thinking and skepticism. Similar to the website, it takes a skeptical stance, typically assuming that something is false until proven otherwise. The book came about when Ted Weinstein, a literary agent, contacted Carroll about creating the book. The book was eventually published by John Wiley & Son in August 2003 as an inexpensive paperback. The book is intended to be biased towards the skeptical side; it is not targeted towards true believers.  Carroll also wrote a children's version of the Skeptic's dictionary which was released online on July 22, 2011. In 2013, it was published as a children's book under the title Mysteries and Science: Exploring Aliens, Ghosts, Monsters, the End of the World and Other Weird Things. He also wrote Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed! which was initially published by the James Randi Educational Foundation as an e-book in 2011. A paperback version is available from Lulu. The Critical Thinker's Dictionary was published in 2013. It features short articles about cognitive biases and logical fallacies. CANNOTANSWER
Carroll also wrote a children's version of the Skeptic's dictionary which was released online on July 22, 2011.
Robert Todd Carroll (May 18, 1945 – August 25, 2016) was an American writer and academic, best known for The Skeptic's Dictionary. In 2010 he was elected a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He described himself as a naturalist, an atheist, a materialist, a metaphysical libertarian, and a positivist.

His published books include Becoming a Critical Thinker; The Skeptic's Dictionary; The Skeptic's Dictionary for Kids; The Critical Thinker's Dictionary; Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!; The Commonsense Philosophy of Religion of Edward Stillingfleet; Student Success Guide: Writing Skills and Student Success Guide: Reading Skills.

He was a professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College from 1977 until his retirement in 2007.

Life 
Carroll was born in Joliet, Illinois, on May 18, 1945. His father worked in a coal processing plant. In 1954 the family moved to San Diego, where Carroll grew up. He described his early years in Ocean Beach as an ideal childhood. He was raised Catholic.

Carroll went to the University of San Diego High School and then received a Catholic education in the University of Notre Dame. He went into seminary in Notre Dame, but after a short time he left, in 1965, and went back to San Diego. Carroll earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1974 at the University of California, San Diego, writing his doctoral thesis under the direction of Richard H. Popkin on the religious philosophy of Edward Stillingfleet, who had defended the Anglican church passionately against Catholics, deists and atheists before becoming Bishop of Worcester.  Carroll's thesis was published in 1975. By then Carroll was married, with two daughters. The new family moved to Susanville, California, where he started teaching philosophy at Lassen Community College. He later moved to the Sacramento area and from 1977 lived in Davis.

Carroll said he never went through a religious deconversion moment but instead had a long journey to disbelief. He first started doubting Catholicism, he said, when he went into seminary in Notre Dame. After leaving the seminary he became intrigued by eastern religions and, inspired by Alan Watts, started looking at their holy books. Carroll became interested in Paramahansa Yogananda and attended meetings of his Self-Realization Fellowship to do yoga and chanting. At the time, he identified as agnostic. After leaving the Fellowship, he said, he spent years thinking about his religion. He later said, "The more I thought about religious ideas, the more false and absurd they seem to me." Carroll took up Kierkegaard's idea that religious beliefs require a leap of faith because they cannot be rationally proven. But Carroll decided to leap in the other direction. He said he "found many reasons for disbelief and absolutely no reasons for belief."

In May 2014, Carroll was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer and liver metastasis. In May 2016 he announced he would no longer be able to write the Skeptic's Dictionary monthly newsletter on account of his illness. On August 25, 2016, Carroll died in a local hospital in Davis, California. He was survived by his wife and his two daughters and two grandchildren.

Career

Professor 
Carroll started teaching philosophy part time at Lassen Community College. Then he taught philosophy of religion at American River College for two years. Thereafter he taught full time at Sacramento City College, where from 1977 through 2007 he taught introductory philosophy; logic and critical reasoning; law, justice, and punishment; and critical thinking about the paranormal. For several years he served as chairman of the philosophy department.

Writer 
Drawing on his classwork, Carroll wrote Becoming a Critical Thinker: A Guide for a New Millennium, an introductory textbook for logic and critical thinking. Pearson Educational published the first edition in 2000. A second edition was published in 2005.

In 2003 John Wiley & Son published a paperback edition of The Skeptic's Dictionary, derived from Carroll's website of the same name. The book provides essays on subjects Carroll considered supernatural, occult, paranormal, or pseudoscientific. He assumed that something is false until proven otherwise. In the last chapter, Carroll offered ways to improve critical thinking and skepticism. The book is also available in Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. 

In 2011 Carroll published online a children's version of The Skeptic's Dictionary. In 2013, it came out as a book under the title Mysteries and Science: Exploring Aliens, Ghosts, Monsters, the End of the World and Other Weird Things. Carroll also wrote Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!, which was published as an e-book in 2011 by the James Randi Educational Foundation. A paperback version is available from Lulu. In 2013 Carroll also published The Critical Thinker's Dictionary, which features short articles about cognitive biases and logical fallacies.

Skeptic 
Carroll said he had been investigating controversial beliefs since he was seven years old when he had doubts about Santa Claus. Carroll described the importance of critical thinking and open-mindedness thus: 

"If you are willing to be open minded, accept that reasonable probabilities rather than absolute certainties are the best information in many things that matter, and hold your most precious beliefs tentatively, then you can overcome some of the hindrances to critical thinking at least some of the time. And also that one's world view can be a major hindrance to being fair-minded. The minimum requirement of fair-mindedness is a willingness to take seriously viewpoints opposed to your own. In other words, you have to be willing to admit that you are wrong. Or that you might be wrong."

Carroll started writing skeptical content in 1992, when both his best friend and his father-in-law died within the same week. He later said, "It was like the deaths of these two people had forced me to start looking at everything and not take anything for granted."

After Carroll and his wife attended free training in 1994 in which they learned about the Internet and HTML code, Carroll started the Skeptic's Dictionary website (skepdic.com) with ten articles written for his students and expanded it from there. Although the website was a one-man project, volunteers later assisted in editing it and translated it into more than a dozen languages. The Skeptic's Dictionary, Carroll said, was inspired by Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary in both its name and its biased stance.

Carroll created skeptical blogs such as Mass Media Bunk and Mass Media Funk (they were replaced by Skeptimedia in 2007). In addition to skepdic.com, he also maintained blogs at Skeptimedia and Suburban Myths.

On March 27, 2012, Carroll began a regular segment on the podcast Skepticality entitled Unnatural Virtue in which he commented on topics in critical thinking and skepticism. The segment ran for thirty-one episodes, until April 29, 2014.

Carroll spoke at several skeptic conferences. In 2003 he spoke at the first Amaz!ng Meeting and at a conference of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal on frauds and hoaxes. In 2004 he spoke to the Irish Skeptics in Dublin. In 2007 he conducted a critical-thinking workshop at the 5th Amazing Meeting. In 2011 he led a discussion on "Five Myths About Skeptics" at the second annual SkeptiCalCon event, held in Berkeley, CA.

He was also interviewed by groups promoting scientific skepticism, such as the New England Skeptical Society and Media Man Australia. In January 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

In an interview with Point of Inquiry's Karen Stollznow, Carroll said he did not earn much money from his skeptical work: "If we talk about the money we make from skepticism we might set a record for the shortest interview ever." But everybody should be a skeptic, he said, because it is a healthy way of approaching life. He said that skeptics' meetups and conferences, as well as the positive feedback he received on his work, were his main motivations.

Criticism

Richard Milton 
After Carroll published a piece online labelling Richard Milton's writings on alternative science "Internet Bunk," Milton responded by accusing Carroll of being a "pseudo-skeptic" and said that Carroll had fabricated quotations and misrepresented his arguments. Carroll replied to these accusations in an addendum to his piece.

Rupert Sheldrake 
Carroll wrote two Skeptic's Dictionary entries that criticize Rupert Sheldrake's ideas. The first criticized Sheldrake's N'kisi Project, a set of experiments meant to test the possibility of a telepathic link between N'kisi (a grey parrot) and its owner, Aimee Morgana. Carroll charged that when calculating the statistical significance of the parrot's responses, Sheldrake had omitted 60% of the data. Carroll also criticized Jane Goodall for her involvement in the Project. The second entry challenged Sheldrake's morphic resonance idea, in which Sheldrake proposed that, in addition to genetic influences, a "morphogenetic field" for each species evolves similarly to how the species' genes might evolve, that these fields organize the nervous system's activity and can act as a collective memory for the whole species, and that these fields get passed down into the species.

Sheldrake replied to Carroll's criticism by defending his own arguments and accusing Carroll of committing several logical fallacies, including using false dilemmas and misrepresenting Sheldrake's position. He also criticized The Skeptic's Dictionary, claiming that it would not survive had it been subject to independent peer reviews.

Publications 
 Becoming a Critical Thinker – A Guide for the New Millennium, 2nd ed., .
 "Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!", Los Angeles: James Randi Educational Foundation, 2011, .
 the Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003, .
 The Common-sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet 1635–1699, . (1974 doctoral dissertation, under the direction of Richard Popkin, University of California at San Diego).

References

External links

The Skeptic's Dictionary

1945 births
2016 deaths
American philosophers
American skeptics
Critics of alternative medicine
Critics of parapsychology
Writers from Joliet, Illinois
Writers from San Diego
University of California, San Diego alumni
Former Roman Catholics
"If You Can Do Anything Else" is a song written by Billy Livsey and Don Schlitz, and recorded by American country music artist George Strait.  It was released in February 2001 as the third and final single from his self-titled album.  The song reached number 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart in July 2001. It also peaked at number 51 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Content
The song is about man who is giving his woman the option to leave him. He gives her many different options for all the things she can do. At the end he gives her the option to stay with him if she really can’t find anything else to do. He says he will be alright if she leaves, but really it seems he wants her to stay.

Chart performance
"If You Can Do Anything Else" debuted at number 60 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the week of March 3, 2001.

Year-end charts

References

2001 singles
2000 songs
George Strait songs
Songs written by Billy Livsey
Songs written by Don Schlitz
Song recordings produced by Tony Brown (record producer)
MCA Nashville Records singles Say Anything may refer to:

Film and television
 Say Anything..., a 1989 American film by Cameron Crowe
 "Say Anything" (BoJack Horseman), a television episode

Music
 Say Anything (band), an American rock band
 Say Anything (album), a 2009 album by the band
 "Say Anything", a 2012 song by Say Anything from Anarchy, My Dear
 "Say Anything" (Marianas Trench song), 2006
 "Say Anything" (X Japan song), 1991
 "Say Anything", a song by Aimee Mann from Whatever, 1993
 "Say Anything", a song by the Bouncing Souls from The Bouncing Souls, 1997
 "Say Anything", a song by Good Charlotte from The Young and the Hopeless, 2002
 "Say Anything", a song by Girl in Red, 2018
 "Say Anything", a song by Will Young from Lexicon, 2019
 "Say Anything (Else)", a song by Cartel from Chroma, 2005

Other uses
 Say Anything (party game), a 2008 board game published by North Star Games
 "Say Anything", a column in YM magazine

See also
 Say Something (disambiguation)