Faking it

A discussion of faking religious beliefs and other parts of your life to please people. How often do skeptics and atheists have to do this in their lives?

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/freakonomics-radio-faking-it/

Meetup Friday the 9th at the Stonehouse Grille 6pm

George Hrab - Trebuchet

Congratulations to George Hrab on his 6th studio album Trebuchet, you can give it a listen by downloading the Geologic podcast episode number 170.

http://www.geologicpodcast.com/the_geologic_podcast_episode_170

For those of you who haven't heard of George, he is a white skeptical funk guitarist.  Which is about halfway between "differently-abled Inuit bisexual" and "folk-dancing Aboriginal philosopher" on the minority scale.

Here's a video of George doing his thing live in Texas:

Why are skeptics so often misanthropic?

Why are skeptics so often misanthropic?

I would bet that most, if not all, of my skeptic/atheist type friends would consider themselves on some level misanthropic. I know I say it a lot, I hate people and I really do mean it. People as a group are stupid, they don’t react to anything rationally or even accomplish anything good as far as I can tell.

But....
I do have friends, I interact with people all the time and mostly its not that bad. There will always be certain people that I could live without, but the people that I spend most of my time with I really do like. I enjoy our drinking skeptically and spending time with other skeptical people. Most of the skeptics I know are genuinely nice people. They truly care about people and want the best for them. They are helpful and generous and generally fun to be around.

Hanging around our skeptics group you would never know that all of us hate people in general and have probably spent more time reading than hanging out with people (and prefer it that way). So why is this? Its obvious that we aren’t just evil people that can’t stand the sight of another human being, so what makes us dislike the human race so much?

There are easy answers to this of course. People act like sheep and don’t act rationally. Many people you meet (especially in middle school and high school) are just plain mean and tend to pick on the smart kids who tend to grow up to be skeptics. But is there something more to it? Is there something inherent in being a skeptic that makes us dislike or distrust other people? Or is there something inherent in people that only those skeptical of the world pick up on?

Are skeptics really as misanthropic as they would like to think? Why would Skeptics in the Pub be so popular if they were truly misanthropic? Skeptics is an international organization that provides skeptics a way to socialize with people. Skeptics also have things like TAM (the amazing meeting) and skepticamp. So what makes us think that we are misanthropic when obviously we aren’t (at least toward certain kinds of people).

I think its that we distrust those people that do not think for themselves and since for most of our lives, few people around us actually have thought for themselves, we tend to assume that everyone is like these people. People by their nature dislike the things they do not trust and so we as skeptics decide that we dislike people. I propose that we do not dislike people, we dislike people’s thoughts and actions but if they were able to change those and prove to us that they were thinking and acting rationally, we would like them as much as we like the other skeptics we have found. I know that as soon as too many people start agreeing with an idea, I start to question it immediately and distance myself from that group until I know more about the idea.

I know that to my non-skeptical friends I come off as not friendly and rather closed off to the world, but to my skeptical friends (as far as I know) I am a very friendly and open person. I know that skeptics in general have this problem as well, so how do we make ourselves seem more friendly and open to people and their ideas? This group started because a certain “skeptic” decided that she knew everything about everything and wouldn’t let any other idea survive. She came off as almost “religious” in her skepticism because she had decided that her ideas were right before even considering other’s opinions or sources of knowledge. So how can we prevent ourselves from coming off as “religious” while still finding certain ideas and opinions to be more worthy of merit than others? And how can we teach others that we are not trying to disprove everything another person says, but that we are trying to learn from them where the idea came from, why they hold that idea, and if the idea stands to logic and reason?

On that note, I will end with a quote from my favorite author Douglas Adams:

Well, in history, even though the understanding of events, of cause and effect, is a matter of interpretation, and even though interpretation is in many ways a matter of opinion, nevertheless those opinions and interpretations are honed to within an inch of their lives in the withering crossfire of argument and counterargument, and those that are still standing are then subjected to a whole new round of challenges of fact and logic from the next generation of historians - and so on. All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others. (as found at http://www.atheists.org/interview:__douglas_adams)

Banana Madness

For some reason I keep stumbling across Ray Comfort everywhere I seem to turn so I felt the need to share something I found on the Skepchick blog from last christmas...

Notice the recipe at the bottom... I think it may need to make regular appearances at skeptics meetups lol

Occam's Razor

Occam's Razor. A simple, yet arguably one of the most powerful tools in any critical thinker's toolbox. Recently I had to explain the sheer improbability of the moon landing conspiracy and faking to a coworker who is convinced that humans have never landed on the moon. I explained that the simpler explanation is usually the best. Which is a gross oversimplification but I felt that "Plurality should not be posited without necessity" or even "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" would both be beyond the level of conversation of someone whose greatest conversation has finished with some of the worst fart jokes I have EVER heard. So I stuck with "the most simple solution is most likely the answer". I discussed with him the sheer size and complexity of the space program up to and including the Apollo program (and even the up-until-recently cancelled Constellation program). The hundreds of thousands of people that were involved in design and engineering, the mission planning and mission control, and not to mention the kind fellows like Niel Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. I feel obligated to include this video

Buzz, you are among a very select, lucky few who deserve every ounce of that punch

Now, which seems to be more likely, that all these people legitimately worked on an actual project, Built the rockets, capsules, rover, landers, command module, and computers that sadly are well outpaced by any cellphone even after it goes through a spin or two in the washing machine. Or that at least a large portion of these people were either payed off or given the Jimmy Hoffa treatment. Not to mention that in the almost 40 years since, not one family member has come forward with evidence even remotely suggesting that it was faked.

And finally I pointed out that at the time we were in the heat of the space race... Russia (USSR) was watching every move we made with insane intensity, had they had even the remotest inkling that anything was hinky they would have gone to town and taken NASA to task over it.

Now on the positive side of things it seemed that I didn't have to go into all of the other arguments that the nutters toss out such as radiation, or the flag waving, dust falling etc etc etc...

So to return to my original premise, Occam's razor comes to the rescue. As a tool for rational and critical thinking, Occam's razor is quite possibly unsurpassed in it's usefulness.

Rand Paul Doesn't Know the Age of the Earth

Recently, when addressing the Christian Home Schooler’s Conference, Republican candidate for senate and MEDICAL DOCTOR Rand Paul passed when directly asked the age of the earth (it happens at about one minute twelve seconds into the video, I like to play a game where I see if I can hear the nation losing respect for him during the deafening silence).



Now, Rand Paul is a fair and honest man, he would never deny the people of Kentucky a piece of information that would help them to make an informed decision about the type of person they were electing. Given that, I am forced to conclude he actually doesn’t know the answer. This had me worried at first, if he was lacking this basic piece of science knowledge. . . WHAT ELSE MIGHT HE BE CONFUSED ABOUT!!! It’s a terrifying thought, but fortunately I think I have found the perfect tutors to take him by the hand and teach him about our world, the universe and all its wonders!



Screw it! Eric Idle for president in 2012!