Skeptic (Altadena, CA) articles from March 2000

Skeptic (Altadena, CA) archives from March 2000

Twas Brillig...
March 22, 2000... Observations on a Bizarre World ARE SCIENCE AND RELIGION COMPATIBLE? Dr. Michael Guillen, ABC TV News Science Editor, has once again shown his limited understanding of what science is all about. He either doesn't know, or chooses not...

X-FILES AND X-FICTIONS.
March 22, 2000... THE SKEPTICAL REVOLUTION Will NOT BE TELEVISED--OR WILL IT? KILL YOUR TELEVISION. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. Everyone has heard these sentiments and many people agree with them. But how many people live...

ANCIENT HISTORY.
March 22, 2000... Robert Allen, editor of Pocket Fowler's Modem English Usage argues that Oedipus, the mythological Greek figure known for killing his father and marrying his mother, should probably be known for something more common: road rage. That's right, he...

BRING ME MEN.
March 22, 2000... U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Ryan Berry, 26, says he should not have to work with women. Berry is assigned to a nuclear missile silo at North Dakota's Minot Air Force Base. The job requires two officers to be present to launch missiles in case of...

VIRAL MARKETING.
March 22, 2000... Roger Freeman, an Encino, CA, dentist and lecturer on infectious diseases, wants to start an epidemic. Well, not really: his new company is pushing a line of neckties with magnified pictures of diseases from microscope slides. "The gonorrhea...

DAS BOOTS.
March 22, 2000... Police in Leipzig, Germany, have a problem with a 16-year-old boy. They say the alleged neo-Nazi is responsible for kicking people with his heavy, steel-toed boots, and for good measure then beating them with chains. The unnamed boy has been...

MY FATHER'S HOUSE.
March 22, 2000... Officials from the Federal National Mortgage Association were almost speechless when Norman and Melissa Cameron told them why they didn't plan to pay their $54,000 mortgage. "When I read it, I was taken aback," said Fannie Mae's lawyer. Read...

HISTORY LESSON.
March 22, 2000... Georgia School officials are aghast that the classic painting of "Washington Crossing the Delaware" in a fifth-grade textbook shows George Washington's pocket watch lying on his thigh. Dirty-minded school administrators think it looks like the...

WACO TRIAL ENDS GOVERNMENT IS NOT HELD RESPONSIBLE.
March 22, 2000... The Associated Press reported on July 14 from Waco, TX: An attorney for the Branch Davidians says it would be "a lost cause" to continue trying to convince a judge that federal agents fired on sect members as they tried to escape their burning...

FACILITATED COMMUNICATION DISCREDITED IN U.K.
March 22, 2000... The U.K.'s Electronic Telegraph reported on July 13, 2000: A father accused of sexually abusing his autistic son, based on evidence gained from a technique likened to using a Ouija board, was cleared by a judge yesterday Dame Elizabeth...

INTELLIGENT DESIGN MEETS CONGRESSIONAL DESIGNERS.
March 22, 2000... ON MAY 10TH, a House Judiciary Committee hearing room was the site of a three-hour briefing on paleontology, biology, and cosmology. Although presentations were at times quite technical, the speakers were not there to discuss the latest...

THE DEMOCRACY OF CHOICE: SCIENCE & RELIGION IN OREGON.
March 22, 2000... A USEFUL MODEL FOR CONFERENCES ON SCIENCE AND RELIGION IF YOU READ E-SKEPTIC, you have probably noticed more articles lately about conferences at universities throughout the U.S. on the interaction of science and religion. Michael Shermer's...

WHY WE SHOULD DEBATE CREATIONISTS.
March 22, 2000... WHY SHOULD WE DEBATE creationists? According to a Gallup Poll published a few years ago in the U.S. News and World Report of 23 Dec 1991, these percentages of Americans believe that: 1. God created man pretty much in his present form at one...

DESIGNING CRITICS.
March 22, 2000... A REVIEW OF THE "INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND ITS CRITICS" CONFERENCE I WAS A SPEAKER AT A CONFERENCE called "Intelligent Design and Its Critics," which examined Intelligent Design Theory (IDT), at Concordia University of Wisconsin, June 22-24,...

ID WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS.
March 22, 2000... A CRITIQUE OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN CLEARLY, WHEN IT COMES TO RELIGION everyone has an opinion and passions run deep. It is, therefore, especially important to express our thoughts on the subject with clarity and clarification, which I tried...

SKEPTICS' FORUM.
March 22, 2000... RECOVERED MEMORY STUDY NEW STUDY ON REPRESSED MEMORIES IS BAD SCIENCE In the last issue of SKEPTIC, you published a Reuters wire service report about a survey of British psychotherapists conducted for the British Psychological Society...

THE PUNDIT OF PRIMATE POLITICS.
March 22, 2000... AN INTERVIEW WITH FRANS DE WAAL Frans de Waal is no stranger to primate politics, both the human and non-human kind. Although he is a professor of psychology at Emory University, he is also Director of the Living Links Center for the...

WHY DOES SOMETHING EXIST RATHER THAN NOTHING?
March 22, 2000... THE ASTONISHING SUCCESS and great explanatory power of such modern scientific theories as quantum mechanics and relativity have left some readers more bewildered than enlightened. Many anxiously flip pages, delving into the scientific...

PERSONAL GODS, DEISM, & THE LIMITS OF SKEPTICISM.
March 22, 2000... "The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." -H.L. Menken THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION (S&R), and even the one between skepticism and...

SHERMER'S AGNOSTICISM.
March 22, 2000... A PHILOSOPHICAL EXAMINATION IN HOW WE BELIEVE: The Search for God in an Age of Science, Michael Shermer tries to explain why people believe in God. [1] Along the way and as a preparatory task, he presents a challenging case for agnosticism...

CAN A SKEPTIC HAVE FAITH?
March 22, 2000... TO THE EXTENT THAT SKEPTICS AS A GROUP can be said to be of a single mind, all share a deep commitment to the application of reason to any and all ideas. Invariably, this commitment is expressed in the form of an abiding confidence in the...

THE BIBLE BELTING OF AMERICA.
March 22, 2000... THOUGHTFUL SKEPTICS distrust stereotypes. Besides being superficial, they are often vicious. I had long assumed that the stereotype of Bible Belt Christians was remote from reality. As north Louisiana's resident atheist, I changed my mind after...

BROUGHT INTO THE FOLD.
March 22, 2000... SCIENTOLOGY AS A CASE STUDY ON INFLUENCE AND PERSUASION IN RELIGION THE USE OF TECHNIQUES OF INFLUENCE AND PERSUASION on potential religious recruits is as old as religion itself, and the reason is obvious--in order to survive and compete...

REVISITING THE MONKEY TRIAL.
March 22, 2000... MR. BRYAN'S CROSS-EXAMINATION OF THE DEFENSE A SPECULATIVE CASE STUDY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION July 2000 marked the 75th anniversary of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which raised issues such as academic freedom and...

GOD'S HMO.
March 22, 2000... PRAYER, FAITH, BELIEF & PHYSICAL WELL-BEING A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, I (WIM) was visiting the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, and was being taken around to the various sites in a horse drawn cart by one of the locals. When we...

PARADIGM SHIFTS AND BIBLE PERSPECTIVES.
March 22, 2000... How New Views of Nature Impact Culture WE LIVE IN A TIME WHEN OUR VIEWS of nature are undergoing a far-reaching paradigm shift, namely, a common evolutionary and ecological view that is cuffing across the lines of individual sciences. This...

THE MEANING OF LIFE.
March 22, 2000... A PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE THE QUESTION ABOUT WHAT IS THE meaning of life makes many people uncomfortable. Perhaps this discomfort arises because the question makes us feel vulnerable: it forces us to question our reason for living. And what...

BOTH SIDES NOW.
March 22, 2000... A review of Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould, 1999, New York: Ballantine. ISBN 0-345-43009-3 STEPHEN JAY GOULD is justly honored not only for his contributions to science but also for his...

THE NATURAL & THE SUPERNATURAL: SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND THEIR DEFENDERS.
March 22, 2000... Further commentary about Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould FIND MYSELF IN GENERAL agreement with Michael Ruse's assessment of Gould's NOMA model of the relationship of science and religion,...

GOD AND DARWIN.
March 22, 2000... A review of Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution, by Kenneth R. Miller. New York: Harper Collins Inc, 1999, 338 pages. ISBN 0-06-017593-1 And: God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution by...

HOLY MAN, HOLY WAR, WHOLLY FICTION.
March 22, 2000... A review of Holy Man, Holy War, by Fred Berry, Jr. 1997. Houston, TX: Emerald Ink Publishing, 144 pages. ISBN 1885373104 PERHAPS THE FACT THAT we have no reliable portrait of Jesus of Nazareth--that he was in certain early mosaics depicted...

OF SCIENCE, POETRY, AND AWE.
March 22, 2000... A Review of Skeptics and True Believers: the Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion, by Chet Raymo, Walker: New York, NY, 1998. $23.00. ISBN 0-8027-1338-6 I "MET" CHET RAYMO ONLINE during a chat about his book arranged by the...

WHAT WOULD FATHER DO?
March 22, 2000... A Review of Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology Of Atheism by Paul C. Vitz. Spence Publishers. 200pp., ISBN: 189062252. $14.95 IN FAITH OF THE FATHERLESS, Paul C. Vitz joins the ranks of Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box) and Michael...

DESPERATELY SEEKING SPIRITUALISM.
March 22, 2000... A review of The Buddha From Brooklyn, by Martha Sherrill, Random House, 2000, $25.00, pp. 378. ISBN 0-679-45275-3 THERE IS A HUMOROUS scene in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters when his unfulfilled and neurotically Jewish character tails...

THE MYSTERY OF THE PYRAMIDS.
March 22, 2000... EVERY YEAR 2 MILLION TOURISTS TRAVEL TO NORTHERN AFRICA TO A LIMESTONE PLATEAU a few miles west of Egypt's mighty Nile river. There they gaze in wonder at ancient ruins that have amazed people for almost 5000 years--the Pyramids of Giza. ...

BOB FRIEDHOFFER MADMAN OF MAGIC.
March 22, 2000... MYSTIC TUBES OF CAIRO EFFECT: Egyptian tubes move in a mysterious way. ROUTINE: "Many years ago, when the Egyptian pyramids were being searched, strange items were unearthed. I'm going to show you two of the oddest items that were...