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Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

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
Things
Beliefs
People
Weird
Reasons
Smart
Belief
Skilled
Religion
Defending
Reason
Arrived
Believe
Openness

More quotes by Michael Shermer

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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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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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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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Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.
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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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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.
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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
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Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.
Michael Shermer
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When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.
Michael Shermer
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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.
Michael Shermer
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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.
Michael Shermer
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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
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But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.
Michael Shermer
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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
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Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.
Michael Shermer
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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.
Michael Shermer
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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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Play hard, work hard, love hard. . . .The bottom line for me is to live life to the fullest in the here-and-now instead of a hoped-for hereafter, and make every day count in some meaningful way and do something-no matter how small it is-to make the world a better place.
Michael Shermer
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There is a significant difference between having no belief in a God and believing there is no God.
Michael Shermer
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Scientists like Bjorn Lomborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist have, in my opinion, properly nailed environmental extremists for these exaggerated scenarios.
Michael Shermer