Quotes by Michael Shermer

About Michael Shermer:

Michael Brant Shermer is 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Michael Shermer

How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one’s place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond oneself. . . . Does scientific explanation of the world dimi...

Michael Shermer

Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A -A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. (125)

Michael Shermer

Evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, and by accepting–and embracing–the theory of evolution, Christians and conservatives strengthen their religion, their politics, and scienc...

Michael Shermer

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 is on its scientists to discover the mechanisms used...

Michael Shermer

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

Michael Shermer

In my experience, people are usually fired for reasons having to do with budgetary constraints, incompetence or not fulfilling the terms of a contract.

Michael Shermer

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

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 the superior being trump those of the inferior.

Michael Shermer

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.

Michael Shermer

Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life.

Michael Shermer

Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.

Michael Shermer

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

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 have ever known.

Michael Shermer

Having a Nobel Prize or being a famous scientist will get you a week to a week and a half, metaphorically speaking, of a hearing for your new idea, but after that, it's going to tank if you don't have the evidence and support for it.

Michael Shermer

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

Michael Shermer

You have to know evolution to understand the natural world. And that cannot be a threat to people of faith. There's a serious problem if you are forced by your faith to reject the most well-supported theory in all of science.

Michael Shermer

One of the features of a democracy is the disentanglement of the sacred from the secular because in religiously pluralistic countries, no one can legitimately claim special status by faith membership.

Michael Shermer

We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.

Michael Shermer

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.

Michael Shermer

Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.

Michael Shermer

Author Bio

  • NameMichael Shermer
  • DescriptionAmerican science writer
  • BornSeptember 8, 1954
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Scientist