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Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.

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
Ahead
Position
Matter
Time
Stake
Skepticism
Stakes
Stick
Sticks

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We do not just blindly concede control to authorities instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave.
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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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Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.
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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.
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There is a significant difference between having no belief in a God and believing there is no God.
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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.
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Science is not a thing. It's a verb. It's a way of thinking about things. It's a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.
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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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Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.
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Anecdotal thinking comes naturally science requires training.
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For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.
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Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength.
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But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.
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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.
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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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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.
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Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.
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In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be.
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Belief is the natural state of things. It is the default option. We just believe. We believe all sorts of things. Belief is natural disbelief, skepticism, science, is not natural.
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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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