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Michael Shermer Quotes

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. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members. Shermer engages in debates on topics pertaining to pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism.

Shermer is producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television series Exploring the Unknown which was broadcast in 1999. From April 2001 to January 2019, he was a monthly contributor to Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column. He is also a scientific advisor to the American Council on Science and Health .Shermer was once a fundamentalist Christian, but ceased to believe in the existence of God during his graduate studies. He accepts the labels agnostic, nontheist, atheist and others. He has expressed reservations about such labels for his lack of belief in a God, however, as he sees them being used in the service of "pigeonholing", and prefers to simply be called a skeptic. He also describes himself as an advocate for humanist philosophy as well as the science of morality.



Wikipedia  

✵ 8. September 1954
Michael Shermer photo

Works

The Science of Good and Evil
Michael Shermer: 10 quotes0 likes

Famous Michael Shermer Quotes

“Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.”

Michael Shermer

Source: Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design

“Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not.”

Michael Shermer

“Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”

Michael Shermer

“There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades.”

Michael Shermer

“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

quoted in [Berger, Kevin, August 23, 2006, http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/08/23/shermer/print.html, "The joys of life without God", Salon.com, 2006-08-26]

“So, of course, Gish's presentation was well received, which it would have been the case had he only gotten up and said "praise the Lord" and sat back down.”

Michael Shermer

Describing "Young-Earth" Creationist Duane T Gish's last debate of his career (which was against Shermer), in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 3, 2001, quoted from E-Skeptic http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/quote-s4.htm for June 3, 2001

Michael Shermer Quotes

“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 book The Science of Good and Evil

[Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Share, Gossip, and Follow the Golden Rule, 1st edition, 2004, Times Books, New York, ISBN 0805075208, 18]

“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

[Shermer, Michael, July, 2008, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-anecdotal-evidence-can-undermine-scientific-results, How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results, Scientific American, 2008-07-24]

“Within a decade, maybe two or three, Christians will come around to treating gays no differently than they now treat other groups whom they previously persecuted — women, Jews, blacks — but not because of some new interpretation of a biblical passage, or because of a new revelation from God. These changes will come about the same way that they always do: by the oppressed minority fighting for the right to be treated equally, and by a few enlightened members of the oppressing majority supporting their cause. Then what will happen is that Christians will take credit for the civil liberation of gays, dig through the historical record and find a few Christian bloggers or preachers who had the courage and the character to stand up for Gay rights when their fellow Christians would not, and then cite those as evidence that were it not for Christianity gays would not be equal.”

Michael Shermer

Shermer (2007), Is Christianity Good for the World? http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-10-24.html

“… 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

Speaking of one who has never heard of the Golden Rule, as mentioned in John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[Shermer, Science of Good and Evil, 2004, 25]

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