Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs. — 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
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… — 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
... In a free society, skeptics are the watchdogs against irrationalism - the consumer advocates of ideas. Debunking is not simply the… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St. Thomas Aquinas in the fourteenth century (and brilliantly refuted by David Hume in… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
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… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
...there ... remains a huge following [of Ayn Rand's philosophy] of those who ignore the indiscretions, infidelities, and moral inconsistencies of the… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
As Enlightenment philosophers and scholars consciously adopted the methods of science to establish such abstract concepts as rights, liberty, and justice, successive… — 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
![“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…” quote by Michael Shermer](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/24a/michael-shermer-2567_fascinating_the-question-itself-of-ufos-i-think-is-l_493052.jpg)
![“...there ... remains a huge following [of Ayn Rand's philosophy] of those who ignore the indiscretions, infidelities, and moral inconsistencies of the founder and focus instead on the positive aspects of her philosophy. There is much in it to admire, if you do not have to accept the whole…” quote by Michael Shermer](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/a26/michael-shermer-2567_accepting_there-remains-a-huge-following-of-ayn-ra_735810.jpg)
