Michael Shermer Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Humans evolved brains that are pattern-recognition machines, adept at detecting signals that enhance or threaten survival amid a very noisy world. ... But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.

  Michael Shermer

  Brain, Survival, Machines

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• ... In a free society, skeptics are the watchdogs against irrationalism - the consumer advocates of ideas. Debunking is not simply the divestment of bunk; its utility is in offering a better alternative, along with a lesson on how thinking goes wrong.

  Michael Shermer

  Thinking, Offering, Ideas

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• Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.

  Michael Shermer

  Past, Rejection, Religion

  Michael Shermer (2002). “Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time”, p.145, Holt Paperbacks

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• A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral.

  Michael Shermer

  Glasses, Light, Space

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• The fate of the paranormal is to become the normal as our horizons of understanding expand.

  Michael Shermer

  Fate, Understanding, Horizon

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• In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious.

  Michael Shermer

  Cynical, Principles, Curious

  "What Is Skepticism, Anyway?" by Michael Shermer, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 31, 2013.

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• As Karl Marx once noted: 'Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.' William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial was a tragedy. The creationists and intelligent design theorists are a farce.

  Michael Shermer

  Science, Intelligent, History

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• Play hard, work hard, love hard. . . .The bottom line for me is to live life to the fullest in the here-and-now instead of a hoped-for hereafter, and make every day count in some meaningful way and do something-no matter how small it is-to make the world a better place.

  Michael Shermer

  Meaningful, Atheist, Live Life

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• The actual atoms and molecules that make up my brain and body today are not the same ones that I was born with on September 8, 1954, a half-century ago this month.

  Michael Shermer

  Brain, Molecules, Atoms

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• To be a fully functioning moral agent, one cannot passively accept moral principles handed down by fiat. Moral principles require moral reasoning.

  Michael Shermer

  Agents, Principles, Moral

  Michael Shermer (2005). “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule”, p.16, Macmillan

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• Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works.

  Michael Shermer

  Understanding, Tools, World

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• I care what is actually true, even more than what I hope is true.

  Michael Shermer

  Truth, Care, I Care

  Michael Shermer (2011). “The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths”, p.162, Macmillan

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• The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition — thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.

  Michael Shermer

  Thinking, Autism, Doe

  "How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results". www.scientificamerican.com. August 01, 2008.

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• There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades.

  Michael Shermer

  Mean, Doe, May

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• What can be more soul shaking than peering through a 100-inch telescope at a distant galaxy, holding a 100-million-year-old fossil or a 500,000-year-old stone tool in one's hand, standing before the immense chasm of space and time that is the Grand Canyon, or listening to a scientist who gazed upon the face of the universe's creation and did not blink?

  Michael Shermer

  Spring, Space, Hands

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• Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.

  Michael Shermer

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

  "What Is Skepticism, Anyway?" by Michael Shermer, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 31, 2013.

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• We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.

  Michael Shermer

  Flukes, Evolution, Quirks

  Michael Shermer (2003). “How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God”, p.706, Macmillan

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• Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.

  Michael Shermer

  Doe, Ethics, Moral

  Michael Shermer (2007). “Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design”, p.29, Macmillan

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• Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.

  Michael Shermer

  Survival, Democracy, Enlightenment

  Michael Shermer (2012). “The Believing Brain: From Spiritual Faiths to Political Convictions – How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths.”, p.122, Hachette UK

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• ...evolution is not a religious tenet, to which one swears allegiance or belief as a matter of faith.. It is a factual reality of the empirical world. Just as one would not say 'I believe in gravity," one should not proclaim 'I believe in evolution.

  Michael Shermer

  Religious, Believe, Reality

  Michael Shermer (2007). “Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design”, p.30, Macmillan

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• The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St. Thomas Aquinas in the fourteenth century (and brilliantly refuted by David Hume in the eighteenth century), is easily turned aside with just one more question: Who or what caused and moved God?

  Michael Shermer

  Thinking, Firsts, Causes

  Michael Shermer (2002). “Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time”, p.146, Macmillan

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• We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.

  Michael Shermer

  Eye, Thinking, Games

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• We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A. natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and many more.

  Michael Shermer

  Anatomy And Physiology, Paleontology, Molecular Biology

  Michael Shermer (2007). “Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design”, p.51, Macmillan

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• The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering.

  Michael Shermer

  Self, Belief, Capacity

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.136, Henry Holt and Company

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• Mammals are sentient beings that want to live and are afraid to die. Evolution vouchsafed us all with an instinct to survive, reproduce and flourish.

  Michael Shermer

  Mammals, Want, Evolution

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