Volume 17 Number 4, Winter 2004

Features

Psychoanalysing God: Freud on Religion
Ian Fairholm discusses Freud, neuroticism and religion

Motivated Distortion of Personal Memory for Trauma
At the Remembering Trauma Conference held in London in September 2003, Mark Pendergrast described how people can develop false memories for terrible events

How (not) to talk to aliens
Mark Newbrook ponders the complexities of extraterrestrial languages

Scepticism and the Kennedy Assassination
Jeremy Bojczuk disposes of some of the more ludicrous theories surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination

Humour

Sprite, by Donald Rooum, the ongoing saga of an ethereal being who has the misfortune to fall for a confirmed skeptic.
Cartoons by Tim Pearce and The Parking Lot is Full
Pictures from Hilary Evans’ Paranormal Picture Gallery

Book reviews

Defending Science - Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism by Susan Haack
Fundamentalist World: The New Dark Age of Dogma by Stuart Sim
Intuition: its powers and perils by David G. Myers
Only One Sky to Fly in: Embracing the Reptiles by Jacqueline Maria Longstaff
Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour by Kevin N. Laland and Gillian R. Brown

News and comment

Editorial
Chris French and Victoria Hamilton

Skeptical Stats
A column based on the observation that sometimes statistics don’t lie - they’re just plain crazy...

Hits and Misses
All change
Movie science
Why Johnny can’t evolve
The dating game
Reality may be out there
Psychic development

Skeptic at large: Creating ‘science’
Wendy M Grossman

Philosopher’s Corner
Julian Baggini

Rhyme and Reason: The meaning of life…
Steve Donnelly

From Michael Heap
Chairman of the Association for Skeptical Enquiry

Letters from our readers
Faith versus atheism: Each to their own…
How much of Neuro-Linguistic Programming is ‘linguistic’?
Too sceptical of NLP?