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Skeptic Summary #272

Darwin, homeopathy, presuppositions, Bill Nye, information, disillusion and more!

Happy Darwin’s birthday - And see the book, below.

Overdosing on homeopathic remedies? - How do they come up with the dosage, anyways?

What is ‘Presuppositional’ apologetics? - “I suppose everything I believe in is true.”

Editor’s Choice: Bill Nye, the Science Guy… - …offers a political statement with which I fully agree.

From the Archives: ‘Information,’ ID, and evolution - Dealing with ID-proponent (and marketing guru!) Perry Marshall.

Get to know Captain Disillusion by watching this series of five videos, mostly about his trip to TAM 7.

And then go watch Captain Disillusion’s other videos, made mostly for kids and kid-like skeptics. That would be me, I think. The videos are smart and goofy and lots of fun. Like this one that exposes a UFO hoax that believers tried to un-debunk, even after how the video was made was revealed.

Enjoy!

SkeptiQuote: …[N]o testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish. — David Hume

Wednesday: With tax season just around the corner, chat began with monetary issues. Taxes and rebates first, and then banks versus credit unions. Apparently some banks have minimum balances (before they start charging you fees) on the order of $25,000. For those in the middle of this debate, check out Bank Lady. The bank conversation continued, including Chase, WaMu, Providian, and even a bank fail. Eventually we moved on to English and math errors, which are far too horrible to ever repeat, and then using sick days at work. Some people got fired with over 400 hours of sick time still unused. Toward the end of the night things got a bit more serious when a discussion came about over whether Randi should have announced that the JREF is not an atheist organization. The argument was that such an announcement disassociates atheists from the organization, and the counter argument was that he is simply correcting a commonly held, and erroneous, belief. By this time it was almost 2 in the morning (EST), and chat came to an end.

Come chat with us.

noor789

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American Charged in Haiti Had Some Troubles in Idaho

Bad Science: Accidents of birth and incidence of trigger-happy puppies

Bird-from-Dinosaur Theory of Evolution Challenged: Was It the Other Way Around?

Birther Speaker Takes Heat at Tea Party Convention

Breeding Ancient Cattle Back from Extinction

Climate change causes more severe weather

Here’s something Kevin Trudeau wants you to know: he’s contemptible

J.B. Handley wants to touch Andrew Wakefield’s monkey(s)

OJ Knows: The Four Corners of the World

The Texas Nurse Trial — How Did We Get Here?

Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist?

Two chimps walked into a bar…

What’s New by Bob Park

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

Thomas Henry Huxley: The Evolution of a Scientist, by Sherrie L. Lyons.



“In this investigation of Huxley’s motivations in science, author Sherrie L. Lyons shows him to be, first and foremost, an advocate of scientific reasoning, his commitment to which resulted in Huxley voicing public skepticism regarding two basic tenets of Darwin’s theory: natural selection and gradualism. His criticism of Darwin’s view — far from what critics of evolution imagine — led to a strengthening of evolutionary theory, rather than a weakening of it. Huxley’s dedication to scientific method and critical assessment of evidence spurred him to assist in confirming the evolutionary hypothesis.”

— Book Description

Forum Topics:

1. The Supper
2. PZ expelled from Expelled — Dawkins slips in!
3. Funny FAILS
4. The shallow end of the gene pool…
5. Scattershots: gargoyles & grotesques
6. Where has this Obama been?
7. What is ‘Presuppositional’ apologetics?
8. Quote Mine warning propaganda poster
9. Combat Ki?
10. Beelzebufo ampinga

Articles:

1. Fundamentalists Hate Noah’s Ark
2. Evolving a Venom or Two
3. Your Visit with Gish
4. Scientific Truth
5. Miracle Thaw — The Bogus Miracle
6. TAM5
7. Astrology
8. The Bible’s Bad Fruits
9. Come & Receive your Miracle: A Sunday Afternoon at a Robert Tilton Crusade
10. Miracle Thaw Tray

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