Yes it’s time for Skeptic vodcast number 4… which features a Darwinian adventure you can’t afford to miss.

Dany

dany@skeptic.org

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This week features news, events, my super speedy science and sceptical book review, plus a mini film I made during my trip to see the play Inherit the Wind with Kevin Spacey. Plus, see whether Christian comedian Andrew Watts loses his religion…

Skeptic Vodcast 3
Here are the links related to this vodcast:
http://www.oldvictheatre.com
http://www.lse.ac.uk/events
http://www.starsuckersmovie.com/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp/0007256523
http://www.indiansceptic.in
http://www.cfilondon.org/2009/04/20/monsters-from-the-deep/
http://www.dublinparacon.com/

If you want to hear more of me, my light-hearted skeptical podcast can be linked to through iTunes here or you can find it through http://thebigcigarette.com

Dany

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The Christian Bible and the Muslim Quran are used as “handbooks for life” by millions of people around the world. These books are used to find guidance in how to lead a “good” life, how to resolve conflicts, or how to become happy and fulfilled. Skeptics, rationalists, and atheists typically reject the authority of these books; they belief that these books were simply written by people, and that most of the guidelines of these books are outdated.

Nevertheless, all human beings have a desire “to know” how to become a fulfilled and happy human being. The lack of belief in supernatural beings does not diminish such desires. But which books can skeptics, rationalists, or atheists turn to to find guidance? Do Dawkins or Darwin offer the same sort of insights that believers get from their holy books? Does science actually say anything about daily life issues and fulfillment? What guidelines for life would follow from a rational analysis of life?
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This month’s talk is by Dr Antony Lempert of the Secular Medical Forum will be entitled “Prescribing Religion: What’s the harm?”

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The Boston Phoenix

By GEORGIANA COHEN | March 19, 2009

EVIDENTLY, MY DEAR WATSON? Rebecca Watson’s Boston Skeptics group isn’t all about casting aspersions — there’s critical thinking and the occasional pi(e)-throwing contest, too.

It’s a few days after Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, and Rebecca Watson is posted up at the Asgard, a popular bar down the road from MIT, passing out leaflets promoting an upcoming “Skeptics in the Pub” event. The flyers suggest evolutionary-themed pickup lines: “I’d like to sail my HMS Beagle right into your Galapagos” and “If I were an enzyme, I would be DNA Helicase so I could unzip your genes.” The last time the Boston Skeptics gathered for Sunday brunch, they consumed 28 pancakes. (They keep records.) This time, they’ve been joined by members of the Boston Atheists group, so more than 40 diners overflow two long tables in the back room of the Asgard, guzzling coffee, ordering breakfast, and chatting about Battlestar Galactica — poised to break the pancake record.

But in the end, the flapjack tally somehow falls short. The tab, nevertheless, comes to $554 (including tip). People start tossing cash around. Then Scott Frazer, a 23-year-old software engineer from Brighton, throws down a credit card, complicating everything.

“I’m okay with being an asshole,” he says.

Fellow skeptic Jared Juliano reassures him: “You’re in the right crowd.”

Skeptics aren’t just assholes, though. When they’re not counting pancakes or making natural-selection puns, the Boston Skeptics double as public advocates for the cause of critical reasoning. They worship the scientific method and insist on filtering everything, from religion to the color of the sky, through experimental verification and critical reasoning.

“A lot of people, I think, get the false impression that science is something that only happens in a lab,” says Watson, “when, in fact, science is just a really great way of sorting things out, of stripping away your own senses, which can be fooled, and understanding how you can be fooled.”

They host talks at local bars — where guest speakers hold forth on topics ranging from atheism to the abuse of quantum mechanics — and organize field trips. They attend Harvard’s Humanist of the Year award ceremonies together. In December, 40 skeptics descended on Boston’s Museum of Science to browse the cryptozoology exhibits. They also just screw around.

On March 14, antic BSers held a “pi(e)” fight on the Boston Common. And this May, a group is heading down to Foxwoods to see Penn and Teller, minor deities in the skeptics’ world, perform.

The pies, pancakes, and pilsners are the skeptics’ comforting props — the glue of a community reinforcing what can be a lonely, challenging way to look at things. Members frequently discuss “interfacing” (i.e., coping) with a world that runs on blind faith.

Enter the Skepchick
Watson, a T-shirt-and-jeans kind of girl with geeky glasses and an ebullient demeanor, worked her way through Boston University as a magician. In 2005, while attending the Amaz!ng Meeting — an annual skeptics conference organized by magician and paranormal debunker James Randi — Watson was inspired to start a blog called Skepchick, which focuses on psychics, self-image, and “anything on Oprah, pretty much,” sorting fact from fiction, especially in areas where women may be targeted. Like a lot of skeptical activity, it’s done with a sense of humor; one of Skepchick’s early successes was a pin-up calendar featuring scantily clad female skeptics, Watson included.

“It’s a weird overlap,” says Watson, who also co-hosts the popular podcast “The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe” and contributes skeptic-centric articles to the blog Bostonist (bostonist.com). “When you’re a magician, you learn all the secrets behind everything. You see psychics like John Edward or Sylvia Brown doing magic tricks, but they’re calling them magical supernatural powers. They’re using that lie to manipulate people’s emotions or take their money.” Magicians like Watson see that as a call to action; Penn and Teller’s Showtime series Bullshit!, a skeptic touchstone, embodies that ethos.

But Watson saw the need for more. Taking a cue from friend Sid Rodrigues’s London-based Skeptics in the Pub organization, she started a Boston version a year ago. About 70 people showed up for the first event, a talk with local blogger Mike the Mad Biologist. Out of that effort, the Boston Skeptics were born. Since then, similar events have been launched in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Calgary, Phoenix, Atlanta, and elsewhere around the world.

Oh yeah?!
So who joins Boston Skeptics? And why?

“There are a lot of people out there who struggle with certain questions about how the world works, and they don’t know that there are other people out there who feel the same way,” says Watson.

Tressa Breed, a 42-year-old administrative assistant from Gardner, sees the group as an opportunity to make up for having “spent too much time living too quietly.” For Claudia Flores, a 32-year-old government researcher from Falmouth, the best part of the group experience is “realizing that I’m not alone, that your off-the-wall thinking is not unique.”

Others have professional objectives. “The more I can learn about [science versus pseudoscience],” says Elizabeth Grimm, a 26-year-old science-and-health-regulations lawyer, “the better I’ll be able to help folks separate fact from fiction.”

Groups like Boston Skeptics are also resources for people who may just be emerging from the shadow of a “long-held belief,” which suggests such things as a religious conviction, social prejudice, or superstition.

And some skeptics are activists. Atlanta-based software engineer and one-time pub-night guest speaker Tim Farley took the call to advocacy to heart. His Web site, whatstheharm.net, compiles accounts of the financial and physical victims of homeopathy, detoxification, psychics, chiropractic medicine, exorcisms, and more. (The site has been praised by no less than doubter-royalty Penn Jillette himself.) By Farley’s current tally — drawn from 790 sampled and documented cases — 368,379 people have been killed and more than $2.8 billion lost as a result of pseudoscientific practices.

“Why are we skeptics? Are we just complainers who sit in the corner and make snide remarks?” Farley asks rhetorically. “I needed to do something and not just be another skeptic.”

Another common denominator among many skeptics is atheism. That said, skeptics claim to be more concerned with separating church and state and the dangers of fundamentalism than with convincing someone there is no God. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to have a discussion.

“We tend to think that your religion or your beliefs about astrology are just as open to criticism as, say, the political party you’re in,” says Jackie Lavache, co-founder of Boston Atheists.

“Nobody’s going to tell you that you shouldn’t believe in whatever you believe in,” says Watson. “It’s more like, ‘Why do you believe that?’ ”

So, in a room full of godless heathens, what sayeth a person of faith? Catholic and self-described “pop-culture girl” Jen DeChristofaro works with Watson and spends a lot of time hanging with the Skeptics. “You have to be pretty willing to step outside your box,” DeChristofaro admits, adding that listening to Watson made her consider for the first time why somebody would be an atheist. “If you respect other people’s ideas, you’re going to learn something. Even if you don’t agree with it 100 percent, you’re going to know something you didn’t know before.”

Yes, mutual respect is a big part of the skeptics’ creed, despite the common perception that they’re a bunch of know-it-all jerks. Or assholes.

“A lot of people just take things on faith. I don’t come out and confront them about it,” says Scott Frazer. He has a friend who believes in shamanism — which Frazer calls “legitimate BS” — but he doesn’t call him out. “There’s no point in an argument. I’ll lose him as a friend.”

Georgiana Cohen doesn’t believe a thing Rebecca Watson told her — especially about the high price of pancakes at the Asgard. She can be reached at georgy.cohen@gmail.com. Maybe.

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This is your final reminder that Susan Blackmore is kicking off the APRU’s Invited Speaker Series today at 6.10 pm in Room 256, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW (for maps, directions, etc., visit the College web site: www.goldsmiths.ac.uk NB: if you do not know your way around Goldsmiths, allow enough time to find the room. Note that it is NOT the room we used last year!)

All talks are open to everyone.

Attendance is free and there is no need to book in advance. For further information, visit http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru/speakers.php

The title of Susan’s talk is “Is God a Dangerous Meme?” and here is her abstract:

God is certainly a meme; an idea (or set of loosely related ideas) that is copied from person to person, and shows a fascinating variety of survival tricks. Not only does the God meme satisfy minds that were not evolved to accurately assess the origins of the universe or the likelihood of life after death, but wraps itself up in religious memeplexes that use threats and promises to ensure their own propagation. But is it dangerous? Taking a memetic perspective we can ask how religious memes manage to infect so many people and how this infection affects individuals, societies, or indeed the whole planet.

Biography
Sue Blackmore is a freelance writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She has a degree in psychology and physiology from Oxford University (1973) and a PhD in parapsychology from the University of Surrey (1980). Her research interests include memes, evolutionary theory, consciousness, and meditation. She practices Zen and campaigns for drug legalization. Sue Blackmore no longer works on the paranormal

Best wishes,

Chris French

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at Conway Hall

Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain presents its first international conference:
Political Islam, Sharia Law, and Civil Society

Friday 10 October 2008
International day against the Death Penalty
10am-6pm
(Registration begins at 9am)

Speakers: Mina Ahadi, Mahin Alipour, Roy Brown, Andrew Copson, Richard Dawkins, Giles Enders, AC Grayling, Johann Hari, Ehsan Jami, Houzan Mahmoud, Rony Miah, Maryam Namazie,Taslima Nasreen, Fariborz Pooya, Terry Sanderson, Joan Smith, Bahram Soroush, Hanne Stinson, Hamid Taqvaee, Ibn Warraq, Keith Porteous Wood and Zia Zaffar. Event includes a comedy act by Nick Doody, Fitna Remade by Reza Moradi and Breaking the Taboo by Patty Debonitas.

£40 statutory organisations/businesses; £20 voluntary sector; £10 individuals. Donations are welcome.

For a booking form, please contact:
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, BM Box 1919, London WC1N 3XX, UK
Tel: 07719166731, E-mail: exmuslimcouncil[@]gmail.com or download it from http://www.ex-muslim.org.uk/indexEvents.html.

Date: Friday, October 10, 2008

Time: 10:00 AM

Location:
Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
London, UK WC1R 4RL

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/sharialawuk/

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The Society for Psychical Research has organised a study day with the above title to take place at St Philip’s Church, Earl’s Court Road, London W8 on Saturday, 25th October 2008 from 10 am to 5 pm
(see http://www.spr.ac.uk/expcms/index.php?section=4).

From the SPR web site:

“Cost: Members £30 / Non-Members £35. / Students, Over 60s or Unwaged: £2 discount.
Tea, coffee and biscuits will be served, but bring your own lunch [or go to a local restaurant or pub!].
Advance booking is recommended, as space is limited.”

If the cost doesn’t put you off (and I hope it doesn’t), the speakers for the day are as follows:

Guy Lyon Playfair: “The rise and fall of organised scepticism”.
Robert McLuhan: “The psychology of the skeptic: What militant skeptics feel and how they think”
Rupert Sheldrake: “How skeptics work: Some case studies”

The meeting is described as follows: “From the earliest days psychical researchers, some of them experienced investigators and experimenters, some with expertise in related disciplines, some just apparently honest people who have reported incidents personally witnessed by them, all have had to endure some ill-informed and hostile attacks from critics who often seem prepared to say anything, however insecurely based, to discredit findings that favour the reality of paranormal phenomena. This will be the theme addressed by our three speakers.”

I have been invited to comment on the presentations and join with the speakers in leading the general discussion. Given that description the meeting, those speakers and those titles, it is just possible that a little bit of “skeptic bashing” might occur (just a tad!). Sceptics might like to come along in order to ensure that the picture of sceptics that is painted is a true one – and to respond appropriately if it isn’t. While there is no doubt that sceptics can sometimes behave in unacceptable ways in debates with their opponents (and I know Rupert will be able to give us lots of examples!), there are also many, many examples of a sceptical approach being 100% vindicated. It would be good if this meeting was a step towards mutual understanding rather than a slanging match – but I guess it’ll be interesting however it turns out!

If you want to attend:

“Please return a cheque for your fee as soon as possible, marking the envelope ‘S.P.R. Study Day’. Receipts will not be sent, but confirmation of receipt of your fee will be available by telephone from the SPR office. Alternatively, you may telephone the SPR office to pay with a credit card: 020-7957-8984. Advance booking is recommended, as space is limited.

Send to:- The Secretary, Society for Psychical Research, 49 Marloes Road, Kensington, LONDON, W8 6LA”

Hope to see you there, whether you’re a believer or a sceptic!

Cheers,

Chris French

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Two messages of potential interest to pass on to you today. The first, from Sid Rodrigues, focuses on two events this month at London Skeptics in the Pub but also mentions a couple of other interesting events including shows by Philip Escoffey (highly recommended!). The second is a message from Simon Perry regarding the next event organised by Leicester Skeptics in the Pub – none other than Nick Puller, who ran the London branch of SitP for 5 years in his own inimitable style!

Best wishes,
Chris French

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