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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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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
Patterns
Remember
Findings
Always
Finding
Seeking
Atheism
Meaning
Primates
Especially
Adept
Emotional
Pattern

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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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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 single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process.
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But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.
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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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Mysteries once thought to be supernatural or paranormal happenings - such as astronomical or meteorological events - are incorporated into science once their causes are understood.
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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.
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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.
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Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.
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Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic.
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We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
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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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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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Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.
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Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.
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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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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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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.
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We're all talking about the same thing, whether it's religious people or New Age spiritual people or Buddhists or scientists. We're all talking about having a sense of awe and wonder at something grander than ourselves.
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In the past 10,000 years, humans have devised roughly 100,000 religions based on roughly 2,500 gods. So the only difference between myself and the believers is that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We're only one God away from total agreement.
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