Michael Shermer Quotes

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.

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. Let’s call this theRealistic Vision. If you believe that human nature is partly constrained inall respects—morally, physically, and intellectually—then you hold aRealistic Vision of human nature.

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.' William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial was a tragedy. The creationists and intelligent design theorists are a farce.

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