Michael Shermer Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

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

  Michael Shermer

  Understanding, Tools, World

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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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• 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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• Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable altogether.

  Michael Shermer

  Machines, Unattainable, Human Nature

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• We want to be open-minded enough to accept radial new ideas when they occasionally come along, but we don't want to be so open-minded that our brains fall out.

  Michael Shermer

  Fall, Ideas, Brain

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• In science, if an idea is not falsifiable, it is not that it is wrong, it is that we cannot determine if it is wrong, and thus it is not even wrong.

  Michael Shermer

  Ideas, Determine, Ifs

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.41, Henry Holt and Company

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• Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today — the age of science — science fiction is our mythology.

  Michael Shermer

  Religious, Knowing, Tolerance

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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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• ... 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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• I am an atheist. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If "atheist" means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am. But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like - humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic.

  Michael Shermer

  Atheist, Believe, Mean

  "Why I Am An Atheist" by Michael Shermer, michaelshermer.com. June 23, 2005.

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• So, of course, Gish's presentation was well received, which it would have been the case had he only gotten up and said "praise the Lord" and sat back down.

  Michael Shermer

  Atheism, Praise, Lord

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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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• 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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• ...there ... remains a huge following [of Ayn Rand's philosophy] of those who ignore the indiscretions, infidelities, and moral inconsistencies of the founder and focus instead on the positive aspects of her philosophy. There is much in it to admire, if you do not have to accept the whole package... Criticism of the founder or followers of a philosophy does not, by itself, constitute a negation of any part of the philosophy... Criticism of part of a philosophy does not gainsay the whole.

  Michael Shermer

  Philosophy, Thinking, Focus

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The price of liberty is, in addition to eternal vigilance, eternal patience with the vacuous blather occasionally expressed from behind the shield of free speech.

  Michael Shermer

  Liberty, Speech, Libertarian

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