Guess quote

Michael Shermer [1954-0] American

Rank: 102
Writer

Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims.

Science, Religion, Age, Design, Experience, Faith, Famous, Food, Intelligence, Nature, Space

Quote	Tags	Rank
Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.		101
The natural inclination in all humans is to posit a force, a spirit, outside of us. That tendency toward superstitious magical thinking is just built into our nature.	Nature	102
In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious.		103
Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narrows one's focus and increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance.		104
I say you don't need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful.	Religion, Science	105
In my experience, people are usually fired for reasons having to do with budgetary constraints, incompetence or not fulfilling the terms of a contract.	Experience	106
Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.	Religion, Science	107
But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.	Science	108
Myths are stories that express meaning, morality or motivation. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant.		109
But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.	Age, Science	110
Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic.	Faith	111
We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.		112
Mysteries once thought to be supernatural or paranormal happenings - such as astronomical or meteorological events - are incorporated into science once their causes are understood.	Science	113
The case for exploiting animals for food, clothing and entertainment often relies on our superior intelligence, language and self-awareness: the rights of the superior being trump those of the inferior.	Food, Intelligence	114
In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be.		115
A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral.	Space	116
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.	Design	117
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.		118
Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.		119
Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life.		120
Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word 'skeptic' has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful inquiry.		121
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.		122
In order to displace a prevailing theory or paradigm in science, it is not enough to merely point out what it cannot explain; you have to offer a new theory that explains more data, and do so in a testable way.		123
Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.		124
We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization.		125
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.		126
When religious believers invoke miracles and acts of creation ex nihilo, that is the end of the search for them, whereas for scientists, the identification of such mysteries is only the beginning. Science picks up where theology leaves off.		201
The reason people turn to supernatural explanations is that the mind abhors a vacuum of explanation. Because we do not yet have a fully natural explanation for mind and consciousness, people turn to supernatural explanations to fill the void.		202
We do not just blindly concede control to authorities; instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave.		203
Conspiracies are a perennial favorite for television producers because there is always a receptive audience.		204
One, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of nutritional supplements.		205
Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.		206
We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.		207
For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.		208
The reason is that in a group, individual errors on either side of the true figure cancel each other out.		209
The actual atoms and molecules that make up my brain and body today are not the same ones that I was born with on September 8, 1954, a half-century ago this month.		210
Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.		211
Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.		212
Skeptics question the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it.		213
Science operates in the natural, not the supernatural. In fact, I go so far as to state that there is no such thing as the supernatural or the paranormal.		214
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.		215
One of the features of a democracy is the disentanglement of the sacred from the secular because in religiously pluralistic countries, no one can legitimately claim special status by faith membership.		216
Ever since college, I have been a libertarian - socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility.		217
As a social primate species, we modulate our morals with signals from family, friends and social groups with whom we identify because in our evolutionary past, those attributes helped individuals to survive and reproduce.		218
You have to know evolution to understand the natural world. And that cannot be a threat to people of faith. There's a serious problem if you are forced by your faith to reject the most well-supported theory in all of science.		219
There are checks and balances in science. There's somebody checking the people doing the science, and then there's somebody who checks the checkers and somebody who checks the checker's checkers.		220
Having a Nobel Prize or being a famous scientist will get you a week to a week and a half, metaphorically speaking, of a hearing for your new idea, but after that, it's going to tank if you don't have the evidence and support for it.	Famous	221
When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.		222
Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.		223
Dualists hold that body and soul are separate entities and that the soul will continue beyond the existence of the physical body.		224
The principal barrier to a general acceptance of the monist position is that it is counterintuitive.		225
But the power of science lies in open publication, which, with the rise of the Internet, is no longer constrained by the price of paper.		226
My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts.		301
I always accepted the libertarian position of minimum regulation in the sale and use of firearms because I placed guns under the beneficial rubric of minimal restrictions on individuals.		302
Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.		303

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