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

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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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But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.
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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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Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.
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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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The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition — thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.
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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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Scientists like Bjorn Lomborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist have, in my opinion, properly nailed environmental extremists for these exaggerated scenarios.
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Anecdotal thinking comes naturally science requires training.
Michael Shermer
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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.
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)
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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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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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