The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

In this lecture based on his new book, professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, Dr. Benjamin Bergen, illuminates the controversial and complex nature of profanity and its relationship on our culture.

Most Americans continue to grow up without thinking very deeply about other religions (other than mocking them on a superficial basis), and never question the assumptions of their own faith. In this week’s eSkeptic, Donald Prothero reviews Sacred Cows: A Lighthearted Look at Belief and Tradition Around the World, by Seth Andrews, in which he does all that, and more.

Most Americans continue to grow up without thinking very deeply about other religions (other than mocking them on a superficial basis), and never question the assumptions of their own faith. In this article, Donald Prothero reviews Sacred Cows: A Lighthearted Look at Belief and Tradition Around the World, by Seth Andrews, in which he does all that, and more.

Daniel Loxton considers how fuzzy folkloric phenomena come to be crystallized as "cryptids."

Mike McRae describes how the development of Ionian coinage may have provided a metaphorical scaffold for considering an economics of nature—a rules-based system, upon which science is built.

In this debate, on what are arguably two of the most important questions in the culture wars today — Is Religion a Force for Good or Evil? and Can you be Good without God? — the conservative Christian author and cultural scholar Dinesh D’Souza and the libertarian skeptic writer and social scientist Michael Shermer, square off to resolve these and related issues, such as the relationship between science and religion and the nature and existence of God.