Category Archives: Skepticism
Eugenie Scott is retiring from the NCSE
English: Eugenie Scott, Eugenie C. Scott, Eugenie Carol Scott, Genie Scott (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Eugenie Scott, for more than 26 years the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, has announced her retirement by the end of 2013. I remember hearing her first interview on the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe episode no. 42, and got a big kick out of hearing about the humorous Project Steve, which of course Creationists just didn’t “get,” with the silly song by the Steves (and Stephanies) at the end of the episode based on Monty Python’s “Spam.” Scott strikes me as being a rather likeable sort, and incredibly tough too, considering her work record over the years.
She commented:
“It’s a good time to retire, with our new climate change initiative off
to a strong start and with the staff energized and excited by the new
challenges ahead, The person who replaces me will find a strong staff, a strong set of programs, and a strong board of directors.”
I’m sure that the NCSE will choose a good successor, and I hope to hear more of her Eugenie after her retirement, but she’s done good work in the fight against creationism, its offshoot intelligent design, and climate change denial too.
Good show, ‘Genie. Get a well-deserved rest, and thanks for a job well done!
Truth isn’t Boring
The above was something I’d posted to Facebook earlier today, though in plain text, on the wonder felt even — no, better — especially by religious nonbelievers toward our connection to the universe, not the trivial sorts promised by mysticism or supernaturalism, but our actual, deeper connection and our awareness of it.
This feeling of the sublime I think is something that anyone who’s seen the night sky, or beheld a waterfall, seen the Earth from orbit, or better still, seen it from the orbit of another planet in our solar system though a spaceprobe’s camera, can relate to.
There’s the serious misconception (I think it’s myopic) that reality is dull, lifeless, drab, uninteresting, and that another world, an ideal perfect world beyond this one, is far better and much to be preferred over this life, this ‘vale of tears.’
I understand this, but I also think it’s wasteful and shameful — reality has both beauty and horror, not one or the other — and the phrase “none are so blind as those who will not see” applies just as easily to dogmatic belief as dogmatic denial, and many times in the same individuals.
The desire to believe fantasy as truth, to denigrate the real, and to spead this desire and denigration to others by indoctrinating the young and vulnerable, is one of the greatest — if you’ll excuse my use of the word — sins — against the human mind, crippling its ability to appreciate what actually is over what never was nor likely will be.
Supernaturalism promises wonders, but it only promises them — there is no instance it it ever having fulfilled that promise — and I think it would take better evidence than someone’s favored holy book to show otherwise.
In the entire recorded history of our species, brief flash of time though that’s been, no mystery that has ever been adequately looked into and explained has ever been shown to have an occult or supernatural cause, and the cases that haven’t been explained are just that — only unexplained, and only through a lack of data — not vindication of anyone’s pet doctrine.
Supernaturalism poisons the mind, and dulls the imagination, starving it of and blinding it to the real wonders and feeling of awe that comes from understanding of what is, supplanting these with unrealistic and unreasonable expectations of centrality to the universe, imposing on us a false sense of purpose and meaning rather than letting us find our own, endangering our personal integrity and intellectual honesty in uncritically accepting tales told originally by those ancients whose knowledge and understanding of the world pales before our own in the modern era.
To be frank, even with what little I’ve learned about the worlds discovered through science and philosophy, I find reality far more interesting and preferrable to believing the evidently unreal. As a former religionist, I’ve thrown off the chains of doctrine and dogma, freed my mind from its demons — and its gods — and my only regret is not having done it before I did.
I’ve no reason to believe in anyone’s god, least of all the one I walked with as a child and now without as a man, no idols, no gods, no devils, no celestial saviors nor tyrants, no myths except those I may free myself of whenever they are brought to my notice.
It seems so strange now, having been so focused on an imagined hereafter that both the awesomeness and terror of the world around me seemed dull and distant, but now seems so sharp and clear.
I’m not a scientist, not yet, but from what I see now, reality, however it turns out to be, is far preferrable, far stranger and for more interesting that anything any human mind can imagine.
Even mine….especially mine.
And to me, the unending search for truth is far more important than the supposed guardianship of it by those absolutely convinced they’ve already found it in millennia-old books or the claimed revelations of bronze-age hermits.
No one owns a sense of the numinous, no matter their belief or conviction. Appreciation of the truly wondrous can happen to anyone, and belongs to us all as a species.
It is with heavy heart…
English: Grainy B&W image of supposed UFO, Passaic, New Jersey Edited version of Image:PurportedUFO NewJersey 1952 07 31.gif. By Bach01. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
G’day. You all know me by my pseudo-pseudonymous handle, and for over four years now I’ve been posting on this blog on various matters, some skeptical, some personal, and sometimes atheistic, posts on these and other topics punctuated by my frequent, and to some, annoying, fractal posts.
But the drama that has shaken the Skeptical Community™ to its knees has shattered my resolve, nay, my Faith™ in Science, and sent me looking to more fertile ground for mental and spiritual sustenance that a cold, sterile, mechanistic, reductionistic, materialistic, and yes, Physicalist™ worldview cannot supply. I have sought a new paradigm to feed my hungry soul, that even the Great Old Ones could not besiege, and lo, the paradigm has shifted…The stars are right!
So, I have discovered my potential, tasted the forbidden fruit of the paranormal, and decided to renounce science, skepticism, ethics and intellectual honesty forever. No more being mean to psychics, no more Dogmatic Scientistic Closed-Mindedness™ about UFO’s™ and cryptozoological creatures, no more roundly mocking popular gurus about their lucrative book sales and seminars…I want in on the action too!
So, it is with heavy heart that I rededicate and retool this blog, saying goodbye to those I’ve met in the Skeptical Community™ and opening my mind so far as to step over that fine line I’ve drawn on the floor and embrace total, complete and utter madness!
MuaHaHaHaHa!
Yes, the stars art right, and henceforth, I shall blog on paranormal topics from a believer’s point of view and begin, without any journalistic training or professional writing ability whatsoever, and no real or relevant credentials (after all, having no qualifications on a topic means I can think outside the box and speak on it with authority, because I wasn’t conventionalized by the Establishment!), a series of books on Alternative Science™ and the start of my own religion based on my own feverish ravings of revelations from insane alien beings.
And finally, for those of you convinced I’ve finally gone over the edge and completely lost my mind…
May you all have a terrific 1st of April. 
G’day.
