Skeptic (Altadena, CA) articles from June 2007

Skeptic (Altadena, CA) archives from June 2007

Bioidentical hormones: estrogen is good. No, it's bad. No, it's good.(The SkepDoc)
June 22, 2007... MENOPAUSAL WOMEN USED TO have no escape from the sufferings of the dreaded "Change." In the mid-20th century, they were offered a reprieve--a pill to replace their missing hormones that allowed them to feel normal. In addition they found that...

The secret behind "The Secret": what is attracting millions to the "law of attraction"?(NEWS)(Critical essay)
June 22, 2007... PSST! HAVE YOU HEARD THE SECRET? If not, the first thing you need to know is that The Secret isn't a secret, and this in itself should set your skeptical alarm bells ringing, since whenever the very name of a thing is a contradiction of the...

Solomon's house: the deeper agenda of the new Creation Museum in Kentucky.(NEWS)
June 22, 2007... "HOW MANY SHEEP WOULD A dinosaur need to eat per day while living on the Ark?" This was the question I posed to Ken A. Ham, the director of the new Creation Museum in Kentucky, which I toured for SKEPTIC. My question harkened back to John...

Pooches may be smarter than we think.(FORUM)
June 22, 2007... Regarding April Pedersen's article on "Paranormal Pooches" (SKEPTIC Vol. 12, No. 3), she begins by attacking a recent study of dog linguistic ability and recall, which makes claims that she calls "preposterous" and "outlandish" about the...

Science will never explain everything--that is why it is so useful!(Essay)
June 22, 2007... MOST SCIENTISTS ARE QUITE WILLING TO acknowledge that science cannot explain everything. Certainly the human experience is full of many deep and unexplained mysteries. The nature of science, however, is to expand its boundaries continuously so...

The end of science revisited: the case for incrementalism in the future of science.(Essay)
June 22, 2007... "Science is emphatically not, as some have claimed, approaching its end; it is surging ahead at an accelerating rate."--Martin Rees, Our Final Hour (1) THE PHENOMENAL SUCCESS OF SCIENCE IN THE 19th and 20th centuries has given rise to two...

Why this universe? Toward a taxonomy of possible explanations.(Essay)
June 22, 2007... WHEN I WAS 12, IN THE SUMMER BETWEEN seventh and eighth grades, a sudden realization struck such fright that I strove desperately to blot it out, to eradicate the disruptive idea as if it were a lethal mind virus. My body shuddered with dread;...

The Dawkins v. Collins debate: a skeptical analysis of the Time magazine debate between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins.(Essay)
June 22, 2007... A "GOD v. SCIENCE" DEBATE WAS featured in the November 13, 2006 issue of Time magazine between well-known scientists Francis Collins, who is a Christian, and Richard Dawkins, who is an atheist. The article reported a lively exchange between...

The skeptic's chaplain: Richard Dawkins as a fountainhead of skepticism.(Essay)
June 22, 2007... OVER THE WEEKEND OF AUGUST 12-14, 2001, I participated in an event entitled "Humanity 3000," whose mission it was to bring together "prominent thinkers from around the world in a multidisciplinary framework to ponder issues that are most likely...

Two reviews of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 416pp. $29.00. ISBN-10: 0618680004. What a Friend We Have in Dawkins DISCOURSE IN THIS COUNTRY IS sometimes held in such a death-grip by religion that a genial "up yours!"...

An elemental impulse: religion is so powerful that even Soviet antireligious policy failed.(Essay)
June 22, 2007... "The separation of church and state was so construed by the state that the churches themselves and everything that hung in them, was installed in them, and painted in them belonged to the state, and the only church remaining was that church...

Who designed that? Creationism's doubts about intelligent design.(Essay)
June 22, 2007... IN A WIDELY-REPEATED TALE, PASSED down at least from the time of the ancient Greeks, a questioner challenges a learned man who possesses an orrery--a small mechanical model of the solar system--by asking "Who made that?" (1) The point of the...

The science of friendship: where evolutionary psychology fails.(Essay)
June 22, 2007... THERE WAS A MINOR ANNIVERSARY IN THE history of evolutionary psychology in 2006. It was 40 years since an embryonic theory of friendship first emerged. Darwin himself had speculated on the value of "aiding fellows" in The Descent of Man. He...

Mammoth in the garden: why harmonizing science and religion is a strong human need.(The Creationist Debate: The Encounter Between the Bible and the Historical Mind)(Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom)(The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Creationist Debate: The Encounter Between the Bible and the Historical Mind by Arthur McCalla. London: Continuum, 2006. 228pp. $38.95 ISBN10: 0826480020 ISBN13: 978-0826480026 Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom by...

Measuring the Deity.(The Measure of God: Our Century-Long Struggle to Reconcile Science and Religion)(Before Darwin: Reconciling God and Nature)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Measure of God. Our Century-Long Struggle to Reconcile Science & Religion. The Story of the Gifford Lectures by Larry Witham. HarperCollins 2005, 358 pp. $15.95 ISBN: 7980060858339 Before Darwin. Reconciling God and Nature by Keith...

God's mind and Alice's restaurant.(The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next)(Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin. Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 392 pp. 526.00 ISBN: 978-0-618-55105-7 Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for...

Dover, Pennsylvania: the battle for our children.(Monkey Girl)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Monkey Girl by Edward Humes, Ecco/HarperCollins, 2007. 400 pp. $25.95 ISBN-10: 0060885483, ISBN-13: 978-0060885489 "When I said I thought it would be kind of good to learn more about evolution, some other kids started calling me Monkey...

Conspicuous by his absence.(God: The Failed Hypothesis, How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... A Review of God: The Failed Hypothesis--How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger. Prometheus Books, 2007. 294 pp. ISBN 978-1-59102-4821-1. THERE'S GOOD NEWS FOR THOSE readers of Richard Dawkins' latest bestseller, The...

Frequently asked questions.(evolution)(Essay)
June 22, 2007... The natural world fits together so perfectly! How could nature organize itself into such an amazing balance? It would be hard to look at the ecological balance of the natural world and not be impressed. The more we learn, the more we see...