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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

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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
Nature
Liberals
Government
Require
Believe
Designer
People
Complexes
Complex
Intelligent
Design
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Economy
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Since humans are by nature tribal, the overall goal is to expand the concept of the tribe to include ALL members of the species, in a global free society.
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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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Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works.
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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.
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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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I just witnessed an event so mysterious that it shook my skepticism.
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Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.
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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.
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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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Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.
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We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
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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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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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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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For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.
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Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.
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Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.
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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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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.
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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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