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books; they belief that these books were simply written by people, and that most of the guidelines of these books are outdated.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?”

Google

MapQuest

Microsoft

Yahoo

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Today saw the March edition of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub. Norm had decided to pull out last week so Daryl bravely stepped up at the last minute to present his talk. There were quite a few new faces down there which was good to see, hopefully the word is starting to spread.

Daryl’s talk was amazing, it was about the power of exponentials and the technological singularity which obviously was of great interest to me as a computer scientist. It was interesting because we also carried out usual hat of skeptism but nobody could really pick any major wholes in the latest thoughts outlined by Ray Kurzweil in his book “the singularity is near.”

In the book he outlines that the technological singularity is both achievable and near given that technological growth is exponential. It really is a facinating area and one that I will be keeping a much closer eye on in future.

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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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He said: “Some of these tours claim Edinburgh is the most haunted city in Europe, but it doesn’t even register as the most haunted in Britain. York has more alleged ghost ‘sightings’.

“However, regardless of the number of sightings, once you put these things under the microscope, they just don’t stand up to scrutiny.

“When I was out doing the ghost tours, I was presenting stories as fact, when most of the time they had several interpretations and on many occasions had no historical basis whatsoever.

“With a bit of research, I was able to discover that the truth was often more exciting than the myths.”

Mr Pryce e-mailed his ideas to Dr French, head of the University of London’s Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, who suggested that a good way to gauge the popularity of such tours would be to set up an Edinburgh chapter of the growing Skeptics in the Pub phenomenon.

Dr French said: “Skeptics in the Pub has been going for about ten years in London, but in the last 18 months it’s grown from a hard core of around 30 people to a group of over 200 who meet over a pint to hear regular presentations and discuss alternative explanations for supernatural phenomena.

“There are now Skeptics groups springing up all over England, but to the best of my knowledge no one’s tried a walking tour before.”

Dr French was among the 30 people who attended the first Edinburgh Skeptics meeting at Nicol Edwards pub on Niddry Street last week – billed as “Edinburgh’s most haunted pub”.

He believes the popularity of the inaugural meeting is a testament to the potential market for Mr Pryce’s tours.

However, Mr Pryce hasn’t got the city’s ghost tour operators rattling in their ghostly chains just yet.

Ian McKain, manager of Auld Reekie Tours, said: “We’re not worried in the slightest! What we do is intended to be tongue-in-cheek and is supposed to be entertaining.

“Alex Pryce has tried to set up tours in the city before with little success – probably because he takes life too seriously.”

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It will be held at The Penderel’s Oak, 283-288 High Holborn, London, WC1V 7HP. The phone number there is 020 7242 5669. I hope to see more of you left-side-of-the-road drivers there!

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/04/18/uk-skeptics-in-the-pub/

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Hi all,

There are a couple of articles in today’s Observer which may be of interest to you if you’re thinking of coming to the talk. (Sorry if you received a similar message from me already, but I am having [Facebook] problems…)

On the impending repeal of the Fraudulent Mediums Act see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/06/eu

This article gets the law generally(-ish) correct and it appears the journalist had help on this. The anonymous lawyer quoted at the end has got it about right: mediums charging for their services will now be treated like any other (dodgy) tradesperson.

On blasphemy, see:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2271373,00.html .

The Wingrove case ended up with the European Court of Human Rights holding (astonishingly) that blashpemy was a legitmate exception to the right of free expression.

I will be discussing both these developments at the talk.

Give me a shout with any comments.

Best wishes,

David Allen Green

http://www.skeptic.org.uk/pub

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This is a long one as there’s lots on in April…

Firstly, we’re all happy to announce that we’ve had successful year so far. SitP has had an article in both Nature and the Londonist’s websites and have also been awarded “Top 50 best London websites” and “Top 10 best London communities” by Time Out magazine. Thanks to everyone who has helped us over the last 9 years, 100 Skeptics in the Pubs and have lent support by coming each month to make us one of the best communities in all Ye Olde London towne.

On the 15th April, our resident lawyer and skeptic, David Green, will be giving us the lowdown on how the law handles the issues of belief and non-belief through the courts. It will range from The repeal of The Fraudulent Mediums Act to blasphemy. Full details below.

Date: 15th April
Time: 7.00pm
Location: The Penderels Oak (Cellar Bar), Holborn
Title:
The Skeptic in the Courtroom

This talk will address, in an objective and balanced manner, how the law deals with certain controversial issues of belief and non-belief. Prompted by recent developments, the talk wil explore whether the courtroom is really the appropriate forum for settling disputes that relate to controversial issues of belief and non-belief.

For example, the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, the last remnant of the old witchcraft legislation, is to be repealed in April 2008. Mediums and psychics will now be under a new and modern legal regime in respect of any unfair commercial practices. But how will these new sanctions work in practice? Will mediums and psychics who adopt questionable practices be more or less likely to face legal action?

The ancient common law offence of blasphemy may also soon be abolished. A recent High Court decision has effectively narrowed its scope in any case. There is the new offence of incitement to religious hatred. But can the legal process really deal with what can be questions of religious dispute?

Other examples of where the law grapples with issues of belief and non-belief include the “Evolution” trials in United States, the Holocaust denial trials, and when religious groups seek to incorporate aspects of religious law into more general legal systems.

The talk will describe and assess these and other legal developments, using practical examples. It will also offer practical suggestions for both skeptics and non-skeptics on how legal regimes may affect them.

David is a solicitor in London with wide experience of the communications, media and public sector fields. He is the author of the chapters on the restrictions that criminal law places on free speech in the current edition of Law and the Media.

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As I mentioned at our April Fools’ special, James Randi will be giving a lecture at Conway Hall on the 19th April.

Guest Speakers will include:

Simon Singh

Ben Goldacre

Chris French

Susan Blackmore

Richard Wiseman

Details and tickets can be booked from here: http://skeptic.org.uk/randi/

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Last, but not least; TAM regular, Phil Plait – otherwise know as the “Bad Astronomer” – will be having a get together in London while he’s over here filming about the particle accelerator at CERN (LHC) with Prof. Brian Cox of the University of Manchester. When I get details of the meeting place I’ll post them on The Skeptic Magazine News page.

Please feel free to forward this email on to anyone who would be interested in coming to any of these events.
You can always subscribe and unsubscribe from our website: http://www.skeptic.org.uk/pub

See you all soon.

Sid Rodrigues

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