Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer
Michael Brant Shermeris an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members. Shermer also engages in debates on topics pertaining to pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism...
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth8 September 1954
Michael Shermer quotes about
accepted beneficial firearms minimal minimum placed sale
I always accepted the libertarian position of minimum regulation in the sale and use of firearms because I placed guns under the beneficial rubric of minimal restrictions on individuals.
attributes family groups helped identify signals social survive whom
As a social primate species, we modulate our morals with signals from family, friends and social groups with whom we identify because in our evolutionary past, those attributes helped individuals to survive and reproduce.
smart believe people
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
spring hands years
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 tool in one's hand, standing before the immense chasm of space and time that is the Grand Canyon, or listening to a scientist who gazed upon the face of the universe's creation and did not blink?
morality intolerance absolutes
Absolute morality leads logically to absolute intolerance.
atheist believe facts
The whole point of faith, in fact, is to believe regardless of the evidence, which is the very antithesis of science.
agents principles moral
To be a fully functioning moral agent, one cannot passively accept moral principles handed down by fiat. Moral principles require moral reasoning.
atheist believe mean
I am an atheist. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If "atheist" means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am. But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like - humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic.
discovery together fields
No single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process.
flukes evolution quirks
We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
groups moral habit
Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.
plato historical facts
Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.
effectiveness skeptical supplements
One, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of nutritional supplements.
nonlinear unpredictable humans
Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.