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Are science and religion compatible? It's like, are science and plumbing compatible? They're just two different things.

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
Religion
Science
Two
Soul
Plumbing
Different
Compatible
Things
Spirituality
Like
God
Asking

More quotes by Michael Shermer

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My thesis is that morality exists outside the human mind in the sense of being not just a trait of individual humans, but a human trait that is, a human universal.
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
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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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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.
Michael Shermer
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Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works.
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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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.
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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In science, if an idea is not falsifiable, it is not that it is wrong, it is that we cannot determine if it is wrong, and thus it is not even wrong.
Michael Shermer
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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.
Michael Shermer
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Remember always that we are pattern-seeking primates who are especially adept at finding patterns with emotional meaning.
Michael Shermer
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Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.
Michael Shermer
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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.
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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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.
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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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
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We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.
Michael Shermer
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For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.
Michael Shermer
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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.
Michael Shermer