Our return episode shakes things up a bit, but I guess you’ll just have to listen to find out how.

#18 Yeah Right! Skeptics

#17 Yeah Right! Skeptics

Like baboons, our elected officials are addicted to power.

Scientists re-examine the life on Mars question.

Herbal remedy that actually causes cancer.

#16 Yeah Right! Skeptics

Arnold Schwarzenegger reloads a shotgun.

Conservapedia claims that dinosaurs were on the ark. Random woman claims they don’t even exist.

Will racism ever go away? Yes. Yes. No. Probably.

#15 Yeah Right! Skeptics

Have we uncovered a cure for cancer?

Baboons give neuroscientists something to think about.

Miracle baby is born in Argentina.

Ever wanted a master’s degree in metaphysics? Of course you have.

Sam Harris drops by (cuz we’re so friends) to talk about belief.

114 Yeah Right! Skeptics

A hilariously incoherent ghost story.

Pennsylvania declares 2012 Year of the Bible; is promptly sued.

Do astrological signs correspond with increased crime rate? No.

Celebrate Easter with a batshit crazy theory on the Shroud of Turin.

Discussion topic: Samantha Brick.

#13 Yeah Right! Skeptics

Where the stones in Stonehenge come from.

Six health myths that you’ll hear in a gym.

Sam’s brilliant discussion on free will.

#12 Yeah Right! Skeptics

Geraldo claims you can’t rehabilitate the hoodie.

Footage of a UFO over Chile

And more on the lack of historical evidence for Jesus [404 error - the Jesus you're looking for is not here]

Ep. #11

Kony co-founder loses his shit.

Arizona’s birth control law, and the article destroying it.

An overview of the Kalam Cosmological Argument along with Dr. Craig discussing a refutation.

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The official list of dumb shit celebrities said in 2011.

More evidence against the historicity of Jesus Christ.

Nonsensical astrology predictions.

The Kony 2012 video, a critique and their rebuttal.

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Did Jesus Christ actually exist?

Group of teens perform exorcisms.

Johann Beringer done in by various fossil fakes.

Incubus got me pregnant?

#8 Yeah Right! Skeptics

Check out “talking” animals here, here, here, here and here!

Failed psychic predictions by LaMont Hamilton.

#7 Yeah Right! Skeptics

In light of the podcast launching on iTunes, as well as some upcoming changes to the format, I thought I’d look inward for this week’s blog posting.

I’ve been calling myself an Atheist for about 18 months now and a Skeptic for slightly longer.

I remember the overwhelming feelings of doubt and insecurity as I voluntarily walked away from everything I considered sacred. It was a big, scary step at the time, though now it seems paltry and laughable. That’s personal growth for you.

I remember being nervous about ‘coming out’ as a non-believer because I was afraid I’d be confronted with an argument so airtight that I’d be forced to limp back across the line amidst the shaking heads and folded arms of my former community. But that’s where Skepticism saved the day.

Skepticism is one of my favorite things in the entire world because it is, in it’s own way, perfect. It’s perfect in the way that Natural Selection is perfect. Natural Selection is arguably inevitable in our universe. As long as there is change, and there always will be change, then Natural Selection is at work. It allows for every conceivable variant, outcome, intrusion and side effect. It even allows for the inconceivable versions. If you’re not totally familiar with the ins and outs of it all, it’s basically the idea that the things which exist today are the things which survived yesterday. Everything very easily could have turned out differently, but didn’t. There is no divine plan necessary, no intent, no secret will or destiny. If nothing had survived the dinosaurs meteor, then would look very different today if it had managed to come back at all. It has a failure rate of 99% when it comes to creating new life, which is what you’d expect from uncontrolled, random events affecting the evolution of life. The principles of Natural Selection can be seen in everyday life outside of biology. From the way the Market decides what is valuable to the way society polices it’s own behavior, the things which exist today are the things which were best suited to their environment at the time of their existence. Natural Selection is my second favorite thing.

Skepticism works on much the same self-correcting level. It certainly calls bullshit more often than most things, but it also never claims perfect knowledge. (Unlike some of those often on the receiving end of the Skeptic.) Skepticism allows for human emotions and ulterior motives to cloud the truth because ultimately it calls bullshit on itself when needed. It’s okay to be an imperfect Skeptic because the rest of the community won’t stand for it. You can interpret data incorrectly and so can 99% of others, but the number won’t add up correctly in the end and eventually someone will catch it or things will forever not make sense. Newton’s gravitational laws worked fine until we dealt with planets and light, then Einstein improved on them.

A dogmatic, religious approach would not only yield no new information but would actually hinder new discoveries. Imagine our current world without the aid of the theory of relativity. Imagine a world without space travel, without the internet, without any of the advances that we never even knew we could have.

Skepticism is self-correcting. It constantly seeks to prove itself wrong, it constantly checks what it thinks it knows. Not just double check or triple check, but thanks to the community of Thinkers, it essentially never stops checking itself. Nothings is too sacred to question, nothing is too valuable to be tossed for something better. There is no knowledge that exists that did not come from the application of skepticism in spite of the stigma applied to the word by some True Believers.

Skepticism taught me how to question Alien Abductions, Ghost Stories, Alternative Medicine and life in general. I learned that very rarely are things as they seem, and most people don’t really know what they’re talking about, including myself. Accurate information has become a valuable commodity. Learning Critical Thinking is perhaps the most valuable life skill I have ever acquired.

Religion hardly stood a chance as anecdotal evidence, unfounded supernatural claims and faulty reasoning evaporated before the bulldozing power of logic and reason.

But there is a catch. Humans are incapable of ever being truly skeptical. No matter how certain one feels about a conclusion, the answer is hardly ever definite. There is always another doubt, another question, another stone unturned. There are limits to human knowledge and this is where pseudoscience lays its stakes and sets up camp: the Unknown.

Since there is always another scenario imaginable, regardless of how unlikely, no answer can ever be all encompassing. Yes, Newton’s Laws worked until we found the realm where they were insufficient. Evolution works extraordinarily well to explain the natural world but perhaps someday we’ll find a way that it too proves insufficient. It’s possible that an all natural perspective of the world will someday fall flat on it’s face before the bulldozing power of logic and reason. If that day ever comes, I will be happy to welcome any such change as long as it can be shown to be true beyond reasonable doubt.

The limits of Skepticism are real, but it doesn’t automatically mean that everything on the other side of said limit is on equal footing with any and all current explanations. All explanations are subject to the same level of scrutiny, and much like Natural Selection, only the good ones survive. It’s possible that the God Hypothesis has simply appeared ahead of the evidence that will prove it, but until that day, there is little need to pay any attention to it.

I don’t feel any doubt about Atheism anymore, my Skepticism has reassured me.

Language itself is a lot like me when I try to play baseball with people who are actually good at baseball. I even played a little baseball in school, I was on the team and everything. I swear! If we played 20 games that season, I rode the pine for 17 of them, but goddammit I was on the team! Now that I think about it, I’m not sure what it was actually even worth. I didn’t get any girls because of it, I didn’t become cool(er), I wasn’t a jock, I wasn’t a nerd. If anything, it only underscored the fact that I had no real group, no perfect fit, no easily applied label. I’m quite proud of this now, but at the time it was confusing and I spent of lot of high school trying not to seem insecure and no doubt failing miserably. So, if I was good enough to make the team, why didn’t I play?

It’s pretty simple: I fucking suck at baseball. I understand the game well enough, I know what to do with the ball, I know the rules and I can actually bat pretty well given the chance, but I just don’t have the focus required of an athlete. I get bored extremely quick. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’m currently reading six books at once, in the sense that I haven’t yet finished any of them. I haven’t even started nearly 50% of the books that I’ve purchased. It’s not that I don’t want to, I just lose interest in reading for weeks at a time. My mind is active like a pinball machine, its focus shifting rapidly from one thing to the next. So imagine planting that mind out in left field, facing the often sluggish pace of baseball itself and the fact that there are so many things to look at when you’re outside: from the crowd, to the players, so many thoughts, the uniforms, the last names, the crowd, the bugs, the grass…what was I saying? Oh! Baseball, right! In addition to being so easily distracted, I can’t throw the ball for shit, do not love the game anywhere near enough to sacrifice my body for anything, and thanks to an incident in little league, am deathly afraid of taking a grounder to the shin…. So what does this unfocused analogy have to do with Language? Plenty.

Much like me, Language is a laughably imperfect tool for the job it is assigned: communication. Language has rules, it can be quite eloquent given the right orator, but it doesn’t have the objectivity required for the perfect transfer of ideas and it can most certainly be made into whatever the speaker wants it to be at the time. Language is not a science, it is note reliable, but unless cave painting catch on again, we’re sort of stuck with it.

Let me give you an example: regardless of your opinion on the morality of the situation, Roman Polanski has an outstanding warrant for his arrest in the United States for statutory rape. Now, very few of us would disagree that rape is horrific and not at all a grey area, but the problem is that the word rape hascontradictory definitions. Most people think of rape in the normal way:

Pictured above: Rape. (No, really)

"Then after three days, his rose was dead. I know, I didn't get it either."

Is that a woolly mammoth??

#6 Yeah Right! Skeptics

Is this a woolly mammoth?

Alain de Botton talks atheism 2.0 and his new book.

Do conservative movies make more money?

#5 Yeah Right! Skeptics

• A brief overview of the science of hair, a guide to haircare, as well as the solution to repairing damaged hair.
• Is coconut oil a miracle cure for Alzheimer’s?
• Thousands of prostitutes trek to major sporting events, or do they?
• A mysterious fireball appears over Texas. Video footage here.
• First footage of the moon’s dark side from NASA’s Ebb and Flow spacecrafts.

Happy skepticism!

Reblogged from Richard Wiseman:

• 

The other day I was sent an email saying:

"Attached is a photo that a friend of mine took back in 2008 (ignore date stamp,as he never figured out the settings on camera).The camera is a Kodak Digital Easy Share c310. The location is a south Dublin city farm and garden which is open to the public. My friend Pat was on a organic vegetable course and always took  photo's of their progress in growing veg and plants.

Read more… 237 more words

#4 Yeah Right! Skeptics

Why Dragons Are Real:

• Richard Kent’s argument (and debunked)

Strange Sounds Heard Worldwide:

• Strange Sounds (Kiev)
• Strange Sounds (Worldwide)
• Tunnel construction in Kiev

Andre’s Demon Haunted House:

• The Story

uhhhhh, yeah right.

#3 Yeah Right! Skeptics

#2 Yeah Right! Skeptics

#1 Yeah Right! Skeptics