quotes by Michael Shermer

"Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not."
— Michael Shermer

"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.
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— Michael Shermer

"Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy."
— Michael Shermer (Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design)

"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 and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today — the age of science — science fiction is our mythology."
— 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 gravity," one should not proclaim 'I believe in evolution.'"
— Michael Shermer

"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 inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer--a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer--a government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer."
— Michael Shermer