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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.

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
Whether
Awe
Spiritual
Scientists
Sense
Buddhist
Thing
Scientist
Something
Wonder
People
Religious
Age
Buddhists
Talking
Grander

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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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Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.
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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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Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.
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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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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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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 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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We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
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We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.
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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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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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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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Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.
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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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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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But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.
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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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