Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Michael Shermer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 8
Historian Of Science
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sport Cyclist
Writer
Glendale
California
USA
Michael Brant Shermer
Thus
Wrong
Idea
Science
Cannot
Ideas
Even
Determine

More quotes by Michael Shermer

Image
Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.
Michael Shermer
Image
We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.
Michael Shermer
Image
Are science and religion compatible? It's like, are science and plumbing compatible? They're just two different things.
Michael Shermer
Image
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
Image
My thesis is that morality exists outside the human mind in the sense of being not just a trait of individual humans, but a human trait that is, a human universal.
Michael Shermer
Image
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
Image
Anecdotal thinking comes naturally science requires training.
Michael Shermer
Image
When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.
Michael Shermer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is a significant difference between having no belief in a God and believing there is no God.
Michael Shermer
Image
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
Michael Shermer
Image
Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works.
Michael Shermer
Image
But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.
Michael Shermer
Image
Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.
Michael Shermer
Image
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
Image
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.
Michael Shermer
Image
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.
Michael Shermer
Image
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
Image
The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition — thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.
Michael Shermer