The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Since humans are by nature tribal, the overall goal is to expand the concept of the tribe to include ALL members of… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition—thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
My thesis is that morality exists outside the human mind in the sense of being not just a trait of individual humans,… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Humans are, by nature, pattern-seeking, storytelling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns whether they exist or not. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
The natural inclination in all humans is to posit a force, a spirit, outside of us. That tendency toward superstitious magical thinking… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
In the past 10,000 years, humans have devised roughly 100,000 religions based on roughly 2,500 gods. So the only difference between myself… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
No such individual would find the Golden Rule surprising in any way because at its base lies the foundation of most human… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Humans evolved brains that are pattern-recognition machines, adept at detecting signals that enhance or threaten survival amid a very noisy world. ...… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life--birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. — Michael Shermer Copy Share
“According to Dembski, for example, “scientific creationism has prior religious commitments whereas intelligent design does not.” — Michael Shermer Copy Share
The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St. Thomas Aquinas in the fourteenth century (and brilliantly refuted by David Hume in the eighteenth… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
“Mind is just a word we use to describe neural activity in the brain. No brain, no mind. We know this because if a… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
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… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
I always accepted the libertarian position of minimum regulation in the sale and use of firearms because I placed guns under the beneficial rubric… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
If spirituality is the sense of awe and humility in the face of the creation, what could be more awesome and humbling than the… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A. natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
“Yet basically, libertarians are for freedom and liberty for individuals, while recognizing that in order to be free we must also be protected. Your… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
Scientists like Bjorn Lomborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist have, in my opinion, properly nailed environmental extremists for these exaggerated scenarios. — Michael Shermer Copy Share
When religious believers invoke miracles and acts of creation ex nihilo, that is the end of the search for them, whereas for scientists, the… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
What can be more soul shaking than peering through a 100-inch telescope at a distant galaxy, holding a 100-million-year-old fossil or a 500,000-year-old stone… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what. — Michael Shermer Copy Share
“Neuroscientist David Comings drew out the larger implications of such hallucinations for the relationship between our rational and spiritual brains: The psychedelic drugs like… — Michael Shermer Copy Share
