The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine


God

eSkeptic for September 21, 2016

Kathleen J. Schultheis reviews Larry Taunton’s book, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens.

eSkeptic for August 8, 2016

Michael Shermer on “The Quack of the Gaps Problem: Facilitated Communication, Autism and Patients’ Rights”; MonsterTalk episode 109: Blake Smith interviews James Randi’s about his late-night AM radio show: Long John Nebel “Party Line”; plus, Mr. Deity: The Bourne Again Identity, an episode in which a couple takes in a young believer suffering from dissociative amnesia.

eSkeptic for May 25, 2016

Why are we so bad at spotting deception? In this week’s eSkeptic, we present an excerpt from The Confidence Game: Why We Fall For It…Every Time, by Maria Konnikova, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2016 by Maria Konnikova. This excerpt appeared in Skeptic magazine 21.1 (2016).

The Non-Fine-Tuned Universe: The Astronomical Failure of the Cosmological Argument for Theism

How significant are we as humans within the universe? Could the universe have been fine-tuned for our existence? In this week’s eSkeptic, Jérémie Harris and Edouard Harris examine the nature and extent of universal fine-tuning.

eSkeptic for May 4, 2016

How significant are we as humans within the universe? Could the universe have been fine-tuned for our existence? In this week’s eSkeptic, Jérémie Harris and Edouard Harris examine the nature and extent of universal fine-tuning.

eSkeptic for April 6, 2016

In this week’s eSkeptic: Bike Crashes, Divine Intervention, and the Nature of Evil: An Open Letter to Larry Taunton from Michael Shermer; Hooey. Drivel. Baloney… Would you know it if you saw it?; INSIGHT: The Discovery of Richard III’s Grave and the Fallibility of Memory; The Way of the Mister: Science & Religion are Mortal Enemies: Part III

Bike Crashes, Divine Intervention, and the Nature of Evil: An Open Letter to Larry Taunton

They say “God works in mysterious ways.” Does He intervene in the lives of some people and not others based on the quality of the prayers of their friends and family? In this open letter to Larry Taunton, Michael Shermer questions Taunton‘s belief that his recovery from a bicycle accident was due to divine intervention prompted by the many prayers of family and friends.

eSkeptic for March 2, 2016

How Science Makes Us Better People: Now Available in Paperback; Scientific American: Left Behind: Political Bias in the Academy; New Episode: The God Distraction Chapter Two: The Unknowable; Chapman University Debate March 7: God vs. Science Smackdown (Keith Ward vs. Michael Shermer)

eSkeptic for February 24, 2016

In this week’s eSkeptic, scientist and historian, Michael Shermer, responds to evolutionary biologist and anthropologist, David Sloan Wilson, about ancient warfare and the notion the blank slate.

The Top 10 Weirdest Things

Ever since Michael Shermer wrote Why People Believe Weird Things he has been asked to list the strangest beliefs he’s come across in his quarter century as a professional skeptic. We have compiled this list into The Top 10 Weirdest Things… DOWNLOAD the free PDF

eSkeptic for October 28, 2015

In this week’s eSkeptic, Richard Grigg explains why he thinks Douglas Navarick’s empirical God-hypothesis fails.

eSkeptic for October 10, 2015

On September 30, 2015, Michael Shermer and Larry Taunton debated the question “Do We Need God?”. In this week’s eSkeptic, we present Michael Shermer’s notes for the debate: “10 Reasons Why We Do Not Need God.”

eSkeptic for September 30, 2015

In this week’s eSkeptic, Dave E. Matson critiques Douglas J. Navarick’s article “The ‘God’ Construct: A Testable Hypothesis for Unifying Science and Theology,” which appeared in Skeptic magazine 20.3 (2015). Following Matson’s challenge, Navarick responds.

The “God” Construct: A Testable Hypothesis for Unifying Science and Theology

In this article from Skeptic magazine 20.3 (2015), California State University, Fullerton Psychology Professor Douglas J. Navarick presents the case that the current pattern of evidence for the origin of life is consistent with the interpretation that life started just once in one place and was not the result of random processes.

Closer To Truth: Does Evil Refute God’s Existence?

Evil is a high hurdle for theists. Given the savagery of moral evil (what humans do to humans) and the horrors of natural evil (earthquakes, tsunamis, disease), how could an all-powerful and all-good God exist? Philosophers offer defenses (evil and God do not contradict) and theodicies (reasons why God allows evil). The problem is the sheer amount of evil. Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviews Michael Shermer, for CloserToTruth.com.

12-09-12

In this week’s eSkeptic, Richard Morrock reviews New Atheist Victor Stenger’s new book God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (2012, Prometheus Books, ISBN 978-1616145996).

12-04-25

In this week’s eSkeptic, Skeptic magazine’s religion editor demonstrates how the Christian apologetic argument of creation ex nihilo (that God created the universe out of nothing), is not dissimilar to earlier creation myths.

Arguing for Atheism

A review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (Bantam Books, 2006, ISBN 0618680004). This review was originally published in Science, January 26, 2007.

11-05-25

In this week’s eSkeptic, we announce the release of Michael Shermer’s latest book, The Believing Brain: From Ghosts, Gods, and Aliens to Conspiracies, Economics, and Politics—How the Brain Constructs Beliefs and Reinforces Them as Truths. Synthesizing 30 years of research, Shermer presents his comprehensive theory on how beliefs are born, formed, nourished, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished.

Is God in the Equations?

In this book review Joe Cuchiara considers the validity of the new theories of emergence and complexity and how complex systems arise naturally from the bottom up through the natural forces of nature as emergent properties, instead of the traditional top down explanation of divine design. Herald Morowitz’s book The Theory of Everything is an all encompassing theory to explain the cosmos.

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