Quote

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally science requires training.

Michael Shermer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Michael Shermer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 8
Historian Of Science
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sport Cyclist
Writer
Glendale
California
USA
Michael Brant Shermer
Training
Comes
Science
Thinking
Anecdotal
Naturally
Requires

More quotes by Michael Shermer

Image
For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.
Michael Shermer
Image
We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
Michael Shermer
Image
Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.
Michael Shermer
Image
Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.
Michael Shermer
Image
Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.
Michael Shermer
Image
Intelligent Design is a remarkably uncreative theory that abandons the search for understanding at the very point where it is most needed. If Intelligent Design is really a science, then the burden is on its scientists to discover the mechanisms used by the Intelligent Designer. (80)
Michael Shermer
Image
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
Image
Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.
Michael Shermer
Image
But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.
Michael Shermer
Image
Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.
Michael Shermer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is a significant difference between having no belief in a God and believing there is no God.
Michael Shermer
Image
In comparison, Google is brilliant because it uses an algorithm that ranks Web pages by the number of links to them, with those links themselves valued by the number of links to their page of origin.
Michael Shermer
Image
Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic.
Michael Shermer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Since humans are by nature tribal, the overall goal is to expand the concept of the tribe to include ALL members of the species, in a global free society.
Michael Shermer