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
thinking firsts causes
The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St. Thomas Aquinas in the fourteenth century (and brilliantly refuted by David Hume in the eighteenth century), is easily turned aside with just one more question: Who or what caused and moved God?
matter sticks stakes
Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.
religious atheist believe
People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking, storytelling, mythmaking, religious, moral animals.
motivation inspiration believe
Belief is the natural state of things. It is the default option. We just believe. We believe all sorts of things. Belief is natural; disbelief, skepticism, science, is not natural.
ideas determine ifs
In science, if an idea is not falsifiable, it is not that it is wrong, it is that we cannot determine if it is wrong, and thus it is not even wrong.
way method claims
Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.
understanding world tools
Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works.
environmental opinion global-warming
Scientists like Bjorn Lomborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist have, in my opinion, properly nailed environmental extremists for these exaggerated scenarios.
atheist believe facts
The whole point of faith, in fact, is to believe regardless of the evidence, which is the very antithesis of science.
fate understanding horizon
The fate of the paranormal is to become the normal as our horizons of understanding expand.
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.
data fields portraits
We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.
believe mean thinking
Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.
mean may doe
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 spades.