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Skeptic Summary #111

Amaz!ing, debunking, mirroring, butt-kicking, chipping, rushing and more!

The SFN would like to send Kil back to the Amaz!ing Meeting next January, and you can help!

Debunking a small-time psychic - Would anyone else like to help?

Mirrors — harmful? - Warning: posts are more banal than they appear.

Olbermann kicks major ass On MSNBC - Just ignore the hijack.

Editor’s Choice: Chips - you can’t have just one.

Rushing Off a Cliff - Bush’s legislation on interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects is a low point for American Democracy.

Sunday: JohnOAS mistakes Wednesday and Sunday Chat; Skepticality is out with a new episode; car stereos and portable MP3 players; Windows administration.

Wednesday: Game talk started everything off. Ricky ordered Guild Wars about a month ago and after three incorrect shipments has still not received it. It quickly switched over to inflation of the universe and then depression and similar mental disorders. Things were getting serious so we started, what else but, butt puns. Then of course greek and tire puns followed. Dave’s car gets misaligned tires, and some more on the Surface of the Sun, as well as a surprise visit from ByHisGrace88.

Come chat with us.

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Bad Science

Skepticality #034 — Interview: Dr. Michael Shermer and James Randi

What’s New by Bob Park

Got some skeptic news items? Send them to us, and we’ll think about adding them.

Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers, by Brooke Allen.



“In this study of the religious lives of six framers of the Constitution, which began as an article in The Nation, Allen (Twentieth-Century Attitudes) ably demonstrates the uncontroversial thesis that many of the founding fathers were not very devout. Franklin was a skeptic and a humanist who displayed outright ‘contempt for the niceties of Christian observance.’ Washington was, like other Virginia gentry, a vestryman in his local Episcopal church, but he was not especially pious. Adams’s Puritan heritage left him with a commitment to hard work but not to Calvinism. Jefferson, unsurprisingly, appears as a devotee of reason and a champion of religious freedom, a cause in which Madison joined him. Hamilton’s piety was mainly ‘opportunistic,’ and the religiosity he evinced on his deathbed had ‘no effect’ on his participation in American politics. In the concluding chapter, Allen summarizes the history of the Enlightenment, that philosophical watershed that ‘produced the founders,’ and she ends by warning that Enlightenment values are now under threat. Allen’s sparring partners are, of course, those representatives of the religious right who claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. Unfortunately, they are not likely to read this book, and those readers already generally inclined to agree with Allen — including most serious students of American history — won’t learn anything new.”

— Publishers Weekly

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