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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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Michael Shermer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 8
Historian Of Science
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sport Cyclist
Writer
Glendale
California
USA
Michael Brant Shermer
State
Disbelief
Natural
Default
Science
Option
States
Skepticism
Believe
Sorts
Things
Motivation
Inspiration
Belief

More quotes by Michael Shermer

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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.
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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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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When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.
Michael Shermer
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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.
Michael Shermer
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But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.
Michael Shermer
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We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.
Michael Shermer
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Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.
Michael Shermer
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In comparison, Google is brilliant because it uses an algorithm that ranks Web pages by the number of links to them, with those links themselves valued by the number of links to their page of origin.
Michael Shermer
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Anecdotal thinking comes naturally science requires training.
Michael Shermer
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Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.
Michael Shermer
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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.
Michael Shermer
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There is a significant difference between having no belief in a God and believing there is no God.
Michael Shermer
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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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Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
Michael Shermer
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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.
Michael Shermer
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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.
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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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.
Michael Shermer