All Michael Shermer Quotes
- Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic. Depends
- Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion. Bad
- But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths. Age
- For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals. Crowds
- The reason is that in a group, individual errors on either side of the true figure cancel each other out. Cancel
- We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs. Blank
- Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training. Anecdotal
- Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing. Believe
- But the power of science lies in open publication, which, with the rise of the Internet, is no longer constrained by the price of paper. Constrained
- But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science. Method
- Conspiracies are a perennial favorite for television producers because there is always a receptive audience. Audience
- Dualists hold that body and soul are separate entities and that the soul will continue beyond the existence of the physical body. Beyond
- Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does. Death
- Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival. Best
- Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable. Highly
- In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious. Cautious
- In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be. Better
- Mammals are sentient beings that want to live and are afraid to die. Evolution vouchsafed us all with an instinct to survive, reproduce and flourish. Afraid
- One, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of nutritional supplements. Effectiveness
- Plato wove historical fact into literary myth. Fact