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I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.
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
Actually
Science
Tell
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Skeptic
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More quotes by Michael Shermer
We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
Michael Shermer
Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works.
Michael Shermer
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.
Michael Shermer
Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.
Michael Shermer
There is a significant difference between having no belief in a God and believing there is no God.
Michael Shermer
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
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
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
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
Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.
Michael Shermer
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
Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.
Michael Shermer
Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable altogether.
Michael Shermer
Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic.
Michael Shermer
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.
Michael Shermer
Mysteries once thought to be supernatural or paranormal happenings - such as astronomical or meteorological events - are incorporated into science once their causes are understood.
Michael Shermer
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.
Michael Shermer
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.
Michael Shermer
Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.
Michael Shermer
In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be.
Michael Shermer
