Michael Shermer Quotes About Evolution

Quotes about: Evolution

• Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from and where we are going.

  Michael Shermer

  Epic, Age, Stories

  Michael Shermer (2007). “Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design”, p.161, Macmillan

• Creationists have also changed their name ... to intelligent design theorists who study 'irreducible complexity' and the 'abrupt appearance' of life-yet more jargon for 'God did it.' ... Notice that they have no interest in replacing evolution with native American creation myths or including the Code of Hammarabi alongside the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

  Michael Shermer

  Native American, School, Science

• The concept of God is generated by a brain designed by evolution to find design in nature (a very recursive idea).

  Michael Shermer

  Ideas, Design, Brain

• 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

• ...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

• People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer--a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer--a government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer.

  Michael Shermer

  Intelligent, Simple, Hard Times

• We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.

  Michael Shermer

  Data, Portraits, Fields

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.232, Henry Holt and Company

• We want to be special. We want our place in the cosmos to be central. We want evolution-even godless evolution-to have been directed toward us so that we stand at the pinnacle of nature's ladder of progress. Rewind the tape of life and we want to believe that we (Homo Sapiens) would appear again and again. Would we? Probably not.

  Michael Shermer

  Believe, Special, Progress

• 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

• No single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process.

  Michael Shermer

  Discovery, Single Life, Together

• 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

• 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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