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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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Michael Shermer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 8
Historian Of Science
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sport Cyclist
Writer
Glendale
California
USA
Michael Brant Shermer
May
Predator
Much
Believing
Believe
Grass
Cost
Life
Wind
Dangerous
Animal
Doe
Rustle

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Through no divine design or cosmic plan, we have inherited the mantle of life's caretaker on the earth, the only home we have 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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Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.
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But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.
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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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For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.
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Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.
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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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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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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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Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.
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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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Remember always that we are pattern-seeking primates who are especially adept at finding patterns with emotional meaning.
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Humans are, by nature, pattern-seeking, storytelling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns whether they exist or not.
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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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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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Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works.
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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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We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
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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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