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Michael Shermer Quotes - IQDb - Internet Quotes Database

Quotes from Michael Shermer


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


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.


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


The principal barrier to a general acceptance of the monist position is that it is counterintuitive.


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


Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.


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


Ever since college, I have been a libertarian - socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility.


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.


We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.


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.


Skeptics question the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it.


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


One, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of nutritional supplements.


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.


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


Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.


Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.


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.


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.