Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.
For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.
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.
Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narrows one's focus and increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance.
Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.
The principal barrier to a general acceptance of the monist position is that it is counterintuitive.
Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic.
But the power of science lies in open publication, which, with the rise of the Internet, is no longer constrained by the price of paper.
In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious.
Skeptics question the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it.
In order to displace a prevailing theory or paradigm in science, it is not enough to merely point out what it cannot explain; you have to offer a new theory that explains more data, and do so in a testable way.
Ever since college, I have been a libertarian - socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility.
I always accepted the libertarian position of minimum regulation in the sale and use of firearms because I placed guns under the beneficial rubric of minimal restrictions on individuals.
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.
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.
