Michael Shermer quotes - page 3

We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization. (Michael Shermer)

Science operates in the natural, not the supernatural. In fact, I go so far as to state that there is no such thing as the supernatural or the paranormal.

Michael Shermer

We do not just blindly concede control to authorities; instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave.

Michael Shermer

Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.

Michael Shermer

You have to know evolution to understand the natural world. And that cannot be a threat to people of faith. There's a serious problem if you are forced by your faith to reject the most well-supported theory in all of science.

Michael Shermer

There are checks and balances in science. There's somebody checking the people doing the science, and then there's somebody who checks the checkers and somebody who checks the checker's checkers.

Michael Shermer

In the past 10,000 years, humans have devised roughly 100,000 religions based on roughly 2,500 gods. So the only difference between myself and the believers is that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We're only one God away from total agreement.

Michael Shermer

I'm a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

Michael Shermer

There is a significant difference between having no belief in a God and believing there is no God.

Michael Shermer

In science, all conclusions are provisional, subject to new evidence and better arguments, the very antithesis of religious faith.

Michael Shermer

Absolute morality leads logically to absolute intolerance. (Michael Shermer)

The whole point of faith, in fact, is to believe regardless of the evidence, which is the very antithesis of science.

Michael Shermer

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

Michael Shermer

Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.

Michael Shermer

...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

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

Michael Shermer

Believing that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is only the wind does not cost much, but believing that a dangerous predator is the wind may cost an animal its life.

Michael Shermer

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

Michael Shermer

Skepticism is not a position; it's a process.

Michael Shermer

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

I care what is actually true, even more than what I hope is true. (Michael Shermer)

Remember always that we are pattern-seeking primates who are especially adept at finding patterns with emotional meaning.

Michael Shermer

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

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

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

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Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer - Image

Photo: David Patton, CC BY 3.0

Occupation: American Writer
Born: September 8, 1954
Quotes count: 82
Wikipedia: Michael Shermer

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