Michael Shermer Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• The evening was very professionally organized, and most of the people were exceptionally polite, although it did make me a little nervous when one church official told me after the debate when a big crowd of people surrounded me that he had assigned me a body guard "just in case." Just in case what? I thought Christians were suppose to be exceptionally tolerant. Well, in any case, I guess I was grateful for the gesture, "just in case."

  Michael Shermer

  Christian, Grateful, People

  4 Copy quote

• We do not just blindly concede control to authorities; instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave.

  Michael Shermer

  Community, Moral, Authority

  9 Copy quote

• Scientists like Bjorn Lomborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist have, in my opinion, properly nailed environmental extremists for these exaggerated scenarios.

  Michael Shermer

  Environmental, Opinion, Global Warming

  8 Copy quote

• Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. (125)

  Michael Shermer

  Reality, Long, Science And Religion

  Michael Shermer (2007). “Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design”, p.125, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• The concept of God is generated by a brain designed by evolution to find design in nature (a very recursive idea).

  Michael Shermer

  Ideas, Design, Brain

  10 Copy quote

• The question itself [of UFOs] I think is legitimate. It's interesting, it's fascinating. It's mythic in scale and one of the grand questions. It's like the God question or, you know, the meaning-of-life question. It's one of those, on that scale. So you'd have to be made of wood not to be interested and, you know, have they come here? Are they up there?

  Michael Shermer

  Thinking, Interesting, Meaning Of Life

  5 Copy quote

• Perceiving the world as well designed and thus the product of a designer, and even seeing divine providence in the daily affairs of life, may be the product of a brain adapted to finding patterns in nature. (38)

  Michael Shermer

  Brain, World, May

  Michael Shermer (2007). “Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design”, p.38, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.

  Michael Shermer

  Prayer, Religion, Labs

  7 Copy quote

• We want to be special. We want our place in the cosmos to be central. We want evolution-even godless evolution-to have been directed toward us so that we stand at the pinnacle of nature's ladder of progress. Rewind the tape of life and we want to believe that we (Homo Sapiens) would appear again and again. Would we? Probably not.

  Michael Shermer

  Believe, Special, Progress

  5 Copy quote

• But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.

  Michael Shermer

  Science, Age, Preoccupation

  7 Copy quote

• When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.

  Michael Shermer

  Real, Ethos, Stories

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.134, Henry Holt and Company

  8 Copy quote

• Are science and religion compatible? It's like, are science and plumbing compatible? They're just two different things.

  Michael Shermer

  God, Two, Soul

  "Why people believe weird things". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February, 2006.

  8 Copy quote

• Conspiracies are a perennial favorite for television producers because there is always a receptive audience.

  Michael Shermer

  Television, Conspiracy, Producers

  7 Copy quote

• Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.

  Michael Shermer

  Matter, Sticks, Stakes

  "What Is Skepticism, Anyway?" by Michael Shermer, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 31, 2013.

  7 Copy quote

• Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.

  Michael Shermer

  Groups, Moral, Habit

  4 Copy quote

• Dualists hold that body and soul are separate entities and that the soul will continue beyond the existence of the physical body.

  Michael Shermer

  Soul, Body, Entity

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.260, Henry Holt and Company

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Numbers, Google, Use

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.177, Henry Holt and Company

  24 Copy quote

• It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark.

  Michael Shermer

  Moving, Angel, Animal

  Michael Shermer (2002). “Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time”, p.141, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Foundation, World

  Michael Shermer (2005). “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule”, p.64, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.

  Michael Shermer

  Plato, Historical, Facts

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.113, Henry Holt and Company

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Environmental, Flip, Global Warming

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.36, Henry Holt and Company

  4 Copy quote

• For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.

  Michael Shermer

  Numbers, Crowds, Problem

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.175, Henry Holt and Company

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Mind, Morality, Individual

  Michael Shermer (2005). “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule”, p.51, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Spiritual, Religious, Buddhist

  "The Joys of Life Without God". Interview with Kevin Berger, www.salon.com. August 23, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

• The reason is that in a group, individual errors on either side of the true figure cancel each other out.

  Michael Shermer

  Errors, Groups, Sides

  6 Copy quote

Page 4 of 5

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin