Michael Shermer

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

— Michael Shermer

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know.

— Michael Shermer

Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.

— Michael Shermer

Skepticism is not a position; it's a process.

— Michael Shermer

We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.

— Michael Shermer

'Are science and religion compatible?' It's like [asking]: 'Are science and plumbing compatible?' They're just two different things.

— Michael Shermer

“An uncertain and doubting mind leads to fresh world visions and the possibility of new and ever-changing realities.”

— Michael Shermer

Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence…

— Michael Shermer

Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal,…

— Michael Shermer

Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.

— Michael Shermer

Through no divine design or cosmic plan, we have inherited the mantle of life's caretaker on the earth, the only home we…

— Michael Shermer

So, of course, Gish's presentation was well received, which it would have been the case had he only gotten up and said…

— Michael Shermer

Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.

— 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…

— Michael Shermer

Play hard, work hard, love hard. . . .The bottom line for me is to live life to the fullest in the…

— Michael Shermer

... In a free society, skeptics are the watchdogs against irrationalism - the consumer advocates of ideas. Debunking is not simply the…

— Michael Shermer

The case for exploiting animals for food, clothing and entertainment often relies on our superior intelligence, language and self-awareness: the rights of…

— Michael Shermer

“The Realistic Vision recognizes the need for strict moral education through parents, family, friends, and community because people have a dual nature…

— Michael Shermer

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

“Yet basically, libertarians are for freedom and liberty for individuals, while recognizing that in order to be free we must also be…

— Michael Shermer

We want to be special. We want our place in the cosmos to be central. We want evolution-even godless evolution-to have been…

— Michael Shermer

“The release of dopamine is a form of information, a message that tells the organism “Do that again.” Dopamine produces the sensation…

— Michael Shermer

“What science tells us is that we are but one among hundreds of millions of species that evolved over the course of…

— Michael Shermer

“7. The principle of reciprocal altruism—I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine”—is universal; people do not by nature give generously unless…

— Michael Shermer

People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive.…

— Michael Shermer

“Mind is just a word we use to describe neural activity in the brain. No brain, no mind. We know this because…

— Michael Shermer

“The almost universal desire of people to trade with one another, not for the selfless benefit of others or the society, but…

— Michael Shermer

How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of…

— Michael Shermer

“...my hope is that whatever it is you decide to believe about whatever subject, you have thought through carefully each of those…

— Michael Shermer

“The connection between dopamine and belief was established by experiments conducted by Peter Brugger and his colleague Christine Mohr at the University…

— Michael Shermer

“The postmodernist belief in the relativism of truth, coupled with the clicker culture of mass media, in which attention spans are measured…

— Michael Shermer

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

— Michael Shermer

Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.

— Michael Shermer

“There is no such thing as the supernatural or the paranormal. There is only the natural, the normal, and mysteries we have…

— Michael Shermer

I say you don't need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish,…

— Michael Shermer

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

— Michael Shermer

My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often,…

— Michael Shermer

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

— Michael Shermer

The whole point of faith, in fact, is to believe regardless of the evidence, which is the very antithesis of science.

— Michael Shermer

Remember always that we are pattern-seeking primates who are especially adept at finding patterns with emotional meaning.

— Michael Shermer