Quotes by Michael Shermer

“...evolution is not a religious tenet, to which one swears allegiance or belief as a matter of faith.. It is a factual reality of the empirical world. Just as one would not say 'I believe in gravit...”

“There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in...”

“Evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, and by acceptingand embracingthe theory of evolution, Christians and conservatives streng...”

“Of all the chemical transmitter substances sloshing around in your brain, it appears that dopamine may be the most directly related to the neural correlates of belief. Dopamine, in fact, is critica...”

“Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.”

“Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity ...”

“How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of ones place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond oneself. ....”

“Intelligent Design is a remarkably uncreative theory that abandons the search for understanding at the very point where it is most needed. If Intelligent Design is really a science, then the burden...”

“...Spinozas Conjecture:Belief comes quickly and naturally, skepticism is slow and unnatural, and most people have a low tolerance for ambiguity.The scientific principle that a claim is untrue unles...”

“Yet basically, libertarians are for freedom and liberty forindividuals, while recognizing that in order to be free we must also beprotected. Your freedom to swing your arms ends at my nose.”

“People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural incl...”

“Perceiving the world as well designed and thus the product of a designer, and even seeing divine providence in the daily affairs of life, may be the product of a brain adapted to finding patterns i...”

“Rather than there being two distinct and unambiguous categories ofconstrained and unconstrained (or tragic and utopian) visions of humannature, I think there is just one vision with a sliding scale...”

“Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not.”

“Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.”

“Creationists have also changed their name ... to intelligent design theorists who study 'irreducible complexity' and the 'abrupt appearance' of lifeyet more jargon for 'God did it.' ... Notice that...”

“As Karl Marx once noted: 'Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.' ...”

“Any preference for my group's interests over yours must be justified by some unbiased, disinterested ethic. Which sounds simple but, given that we're dealing with Humans and not Vulcans, it's somet...”

“Checking a box on a form for race"Caucasian," "Hispanic," "African-American," "Native American," or "Asian-American"is untenable and ridiculous. For one thing, "American" is not a race, so labels s...”

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