When religious believers invoke miracles and acts of creation ex nihilo, that is the end of the search for them, whereas for… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking, storytelling, mythmaking, religious, moral animals. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
“Evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, and by accepting–and embracing–the theory of evolution,… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
'Are science and religion compatible?' It's like [asking]: 'Are science and plumbing compatible?' They're just two different things. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
In science , all conclusions are provisional, subject to new evidence and better arguments, the very antithesis of religious faith. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
One of the features of a democracy is the disentanglement of the sacred from the secular because in religiously pluralistic countries, no… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
...evolution is not a religious tenet, to which one swears allegiance or belief as a matter of faith.. It is a factual… — 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
There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Remember always that we are pattern-seeking primates who are especially adept at finding patterns with emotional meaning. — 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
Are science and religion compatible? It's like, are science and plumbing compatible? They're just two different things. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
The whole point of faith, in fact, is to believe regardless of the evidence, which is the very antithesis of science. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
The concept of God is generated by a brain designed by evolution to find design in nature (a very recursive idea). — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, and aimed at building… — 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
Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
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 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 Image
“According to Dembski, for example, “scientific creationism has prior religious commitments whereas intelligent design does not.” — 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 the eighteenth… — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
Scientists like Bjorn Lomborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist have, in my opinion, properly nailed environmental extremists for these exaggerated scenarios. — Michael Shermer Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image