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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

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Michael Shermer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 8
Historian Of Science
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sport Cyclist
Writer
Glendale
California
USA
Michael Brant Shermer
Hope
Flawed
Science
Expressed
May
Secular
Best
Enlightenment
Survival
Western
Democracy
Values
Democracies

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For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.
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Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
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When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.
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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.
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No such individual would find the Golden Rule surprising in any way because at its base lies the foundation of most human interactions and exchanges and it can be found in countless texts throughout recorded history and from around the world - a testimony to its universality.
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But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.
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Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.
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People who espouse Intelligent Design believe nature is so complex as to require an intelligent designer-God. Similarly, liberals believe the economy is so complex as to require an intelligent designer-government.
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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.
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Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.
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We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.
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We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
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Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.
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Skepticism is not a position skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.
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Through no divine design or cosmic plan, we have inherited the mantle of life's caretaker on the earth, the only home we have ever known.
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Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.
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Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.
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If spirituality is the sense of awe and humility in the face of the creation, what could be more awesome and humbling than the deep space discovered by Hubble and the cosmologists, and the deep time discovered by Darwin and the evolutionists.
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Remember always that we are pattern-seeking primates who are especially adept at finding patterns with emotional meaning.
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Are science and religion compatible? It's like, are science and plumbing compatible? They're just two different things.
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