The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

This course was taught at the University of North Texas.

Excerpt from Syllabus

In this class students will utilize scientific critical thinking to examine the causes of various strange phenomena, including alleged paranormal events, magic, superstition, mystery illness, bogus therapies and pseudoscience. The main goal is to teach students how to think about weird things when they encounter them.

Learning Goals

By the end of this course, students should be able to do:

1. Describe 3 scientific paradigm shifts that have occurred within the last 1000 years and explain why they happened.
2. Describe the importance of temporal and spatial contiguity in relation to perceiving weird things.
3. Describe how the environment selects superstitious behavior in organisms. o Describe the role that uncertainty plays in why people believe weird things.
4. Describe the “law of non-contradiction” and why it must be true.
5. Describe differences and similarities between logical and physical possibilities.
6. Describe at least two principles of critical thinking. o Define “knowledge” and how it relates to evidence & belief.
7. Demonstrate commonsense skepticism by proportioning your belief to the evidence.
8. Define the “criteria of adequacy” and use them evaluate competing theories.

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