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Michael Shermer QUOTES

Michael Shermer QUOTES

181 " Hannah Arendt once wrote, “Truth carries within itself an element of coercion. "

― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

182 " His whole face was already red with lascivious excitement. His hands were plunged deep in his trouser pockets, and it was quite clear that he was masturbating throughout, apparently unembarrassed by the watching crowd. Having ‘finished himself off’ and reached satisfaction, he turned on his heel and disappeared; perverse swine that he was, he lost interest at this point in the further development of the proceedings.” In fact, this witness added, “on more than thirty occasions, I myself have witnessed SS camp commanders masturbating during floggings. "

― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

183 " Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?”4 It’s a good question. "

― Michael Shermer , Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design

184 " Burden of Proof, or, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. "

― Michael Shermer , Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design

185 " According to Dembski, for example, “scientific creationism has prior religious commitments whereas intelligent design does not. "

― Michael Shermer , Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design

186 " Modern whales retain a tiny pelvis for hind legs that existed in their land mammal ancestors but have disappeared today. "

― Michael Shermer , Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design

187 " [A]s often as not, science is not under debate; it is under attack. "

― Michael Shermer , Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design

188 " This is what bothers people about evolutionary theory, not the technical details of the science. Most folks don’t give one whit about adaptive radiation, allopatric speciation, phenotypic variation, assortative mating, allometry and heterochrony, adaptation and exaptation, gradualism and punctuated equilibrium, and the like. What they do care about is whether teaching evolution will make their kids reject God, allow criminals and sinners to blame their genes for their actions, and generally cause society to fall apart. Where did they get such an idea? "

― Michael Shermer , Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design

189 " In a 2009 Harris Poll of 2,303 adult Americans, people were asked to “indicate for each [category below] if you believe in it, or not.” The results were revealing.1 God 82 % Miracles 76 % Heaven 75 % Jesus is God or the Son of God 73 % Angels 72 % Survival of the soul after death 71 % "

― Michael Shermer , The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

190 " The Leviathan reduces violence by asserting a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, thereby replacing what criminologists call “self-help justice”—in which individuals settle their own scores and disputes, often violently (such as the Mafia)—with criminal justice, leading overall to a decrease in violence. "

― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

191 " Religion is a social institution that evolved as an integral mechanism of human culture to create and promote myths, to encourage altruism and reciprocal altruism, and to reveal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of the community. That is to say, religion evolved as the social structure that enforced the rules of human interactions before there were such institutions as the state or such concepts as laws and rights. "

― Michael Shermer , How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God

192 " This research confirms a classic experiment from the 1960s conducted by a third-grade schoolteacher named Jane Elliott on her class in the small, all-white rural town of Riceville, Iowa. Elliott began her experiment by dividing her class into two groups by eye color—blue and brown—then presented the kids with examples of blue-eyed good people and brown-eyed bad people. In addition, the blue-eyed kids in the class were told that they were superior and were given special privileges, while the brown-eyed kids were called inferior and treated as second-class citizens. "

― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

193 " These were all tragic misconceptions—factual errors that, had they been checked against reality, would have come up short. Nevertheless, they were sincerely believed; thus extermination had a kind of inescapable internal logic to it, however grotesque. "

― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

194 " To experience something, you must be alive, so we cannot personally experience death. Yet we know it is real because every one of the hundred billion people who lived before us is gone. That presents us with something of a paradox. "

― Michael Shermer , Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia

195 " Perspective-taking is the psychological foundation underlying the capacity for empathy. To judge the rightness or wrongness of an action against another, one must first take the perspective of that other sentient being. "

― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

196 " Although both men and women philander, get jealous, mate-guard, and mate-poach, in the context of expanding women’s reproductive rights and men’s attempt to restrict them, male jealousy and mate guarding—whether through vigilance or violence—are strong causal factors. (Studies show, for example, that in the United States more than twice as many women were shot and killed by their husband or intimate acquaintance than were murdered by strangers using guns, knives, or any other means,47 and that women make up the majority of victims of intimate partner/family-related homicides.48) "

― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

197 " This is not to minimize the emotional undercurrent of mindless bigotry, but merely to suggest that if you sincerely (however wrongly) believe that X is responsible for the ruination of all and everything that you hold dear, stamping out X follows like night follows day. "

― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

198 " As the belletrist extraordinaire Christopher Hitchens once told me, mastering the pen and the podium means never having to dine or sleep alone. "

― Michael Shermer , Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia

199 " highly secularised countries like Sweden and Denmark, where rates of religiosity are among the lowest in the world, seem not to have much death anxiety at all, "

― Michael Shermer , Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia

200 " What about the flip side of the economic ledger – the poor? Even Jesus gave up hope for them and offered only early entrance to heaven. "

― Michael Shermer , Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia