By AJ Mell, on May 24, 2010, at 8:22 am  Title page from Thomas Jefferson's cut-and-paste version of the New Testament. On the one hand, I find it hard to truly hate Sarah Palin. She has been a bottomless source of entertainment for comedy aficionados and connoisseurs of the obscene. Politics aside, I can’t help but feel a perverse affection for someone who has added so much unalloyed mirth to my life.
On the other hand, once I stop laughing, I generally start gnashing my teeth. This rictus-grinned, addlepated Stepford wife has spewed forth more platitudinous balloon juice than any politico on the contemporary scene, and has done so with the kind of smug certainty which distinguishes the truly stupid. It’s as difficult to imagine Sarah Palin having an introspective or self-questioning moment as it is to imagine a spaniel solving Fermat’s Last Theorem. … continue reading this entry.
By Page, on May 14, 2010, at 7:03 am  A fun and interesting study was published online at Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq023) that investigates what happens in people’s brains when they are listening to a charismatic authority. Researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark played prayers for subjects who were led to believe the prayers were read either by a non-Christian, an ordinary Christian, or a Christian known for their healing powers, when in fact the recordings were made by regular guys. Participants were either very religious and professed a belief in the ability of prayers to heal, or secular, and had little belief in the healing power of prayer. After hearing the prayers the subjects were asked to rate the speakers on their charisma and indicate which prayers made the listeners feel “God’s presence” (on, of course, the God presence scale of 1 to 10). The results were not necessarily surprising; the Christians thought the speakers they were told had healing powers were the most charismatic and they felt closer to God the most during these prayers, while the secular subjects rated all speakers the same and found the speakers overall to be less charismatic than the Christians. What was neat about this study was that all of this was conducted while the participants were in an fMRI machine so that the researchers could measure brain activity while the prayers were being read. … continue reading this entry.
By AJ Mell, on April 28, 2010, at 7:03 am  The blasted heath outside the Findhorn community. Some people are born skeptical; others learn the hard way. Although I sometimes refer to myself facetiously as a born-again skeptic, my conversion was a gradual process. There was no single earth-shattering moment when the scales fell from my eyes. Nonetheless, I believe I can pinpoint the beginning of the process—the moment that led me to suspect that farce is the truest of all dramatic forms; that the Emperor has no clothes; and that God is, if not dead, then perhaps a wheezing and senile Borscht Belt comic. … continue reading this entry.
By Michael Rosch, on April 15, 2010, at 7:03 am  Last Friday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Albert Snyder, the father of a dead marine, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder to pay $16,510 to Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) to compensate them for their legal fees. Members of the fundamentalist church had picketed Snyder’s son’s funeral in 2006 with signs reading “God hates you,” “You’re going to hell,” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.” The Kansas-based hate group believes God is punishing America because it tolerates homosexuality.
So Albert Snyder had sued for the torts of invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. But as much as I dislike Fred Phelps and the WBC, I think Snyder’s case is weak. While mean-spirited, the WBC’s conduct was not extreme and outrageous, which is what Snyder is required to prove under these torts.
Now Fox News has been passionately defending the Snyder family and condemning the Westboro Baptist Church for some reason I can’t quite fathom because Fox News and the WBC share the same message. The only distinction I see is that Fox News has a bigger audience and therefore doesn’t have to resort to crazy stunts to get their shared message on TV.
But in the following clip, Fox pundits Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly get into a heated argument over the new ruling in this case: … continue reading this entry.
By The Quixotic Man, on April 8, 2010, at 7:03 am
 I think I deserve to be at this table Author’s note: This post is probably about two weeks later than it should have been. It took me a little while to get to write it. What can I say? I’m a busy man. In the article, I mention God a lot, and when I use pronouns to describe that particular deity, I capitalize them. Please don’t have a cow over it, it’s what I’m used to and I think it helps make the pronouns distinct from others.
Passover is, without a doubt, my favorite Jewish Holiday. Well… let’s clarify that. Since I started keeping Kosher to feel a cultural connection to the only roots I really have, the first two days of Passover are my favorite Jewish Holiday, the lack of beer in the following six days is annoying. But going back to the original point, Passover is my favorite Jewish Holiday, bar none. Chanukah, to be frank, is a bit of a bullshit holiday. It’s only gotten as big as it has due to its proximity to Christmas. There are interesting things about it, what most people don’t know is that it’s actually the celebration of a military victory, the Maccabees over the remnants of the Greek Empire in the second or first century BCE, but because Jews didn’t like celebrating a military victory, we decided to go for oil burning longer than it was supposed to. The big Jewish gift giving/party holiday is Purim, but my family never celebrated that. Rosh Hashanah was never a big family affair for us. It was a day when we’d go to Shul, listen to Torah and the Shofar (big smelly rams horn hollowed out into a crude brass instrument – well, it’s not brass, but it is played the same way). Sometimes, we’d get together with another family afterward, but it was never the affair that Passover is. And Yom Kipor? The whole holiday I spend waiting for the holiday to be over, and though I do generally enjoy the meal that follows, I don’t think I can give Yom Kipor the credit that as soon as the day is done I have a good time. Passover, on the other hand, is pretty fun. It’s like a big Jewish Thanksgiving. It’s a ceremonial meal where you sit around, get tipsy, tell a big story, and then have a good dinner. You ask me, it’s everything a holiday should be. … continue reading this entry.
By Michael Rosch, on April 2, 2010, at 7:03 am  Eerie ... 'Jesus' face in Rorshach Test I’d always heard weird news stories about the likeness of Jesus or the Virgin Mary being miraculously discovered in the most odd and random of places like on an egg, on a banana, in a frying pan, on a cat, on a cow, on a toilet, on a dirty rag, in Ikea, in a condom, in bird poop, on a tree stump, in a lava lamp, on a potato chip, on a pierogi, and in a painting.
And skeptic that I am, I always pretty much wrote it off as a product of pareidolia, the psychological phenomena of seeing patterns in vague stimuli. That is, I was a skeptic until April 1, 2010 when the miraculous image of Jesus was discovered someplace where chance, pareidolia, and April Fools pranking could not possibly have played a roll…in a Rorschach Test. … continue reading this entry.
By The Quixotic Man, on March 29, 2010, at 7:03 am The inspiration for this sketch is an AP article about a former Sea Org member trying to sue Scientology for back pay. I’m fairly certain getting someone to join the Sea Org is pretty much the worst thing you could ever do to them, so I really hope the members win their case. Also, if anyone out there has NOT found the time to sit down and watch the Steven Fishman Deposition, might I humbly suggest it. … continue reading this entry.
By The Quixotic Man, on March 22, 2010, at 7:03 am  Buyer Beware Let’s say that you go out and buy a big bucket of snake oil. It’s sold with the label “Snake Oil! New and improved!” You take the snake oil home and try and use it to heal a sore leg. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t work. Are you now allowed to sue the snake oil salesman? A woman in Morris County, NJ, has decided to sue her psychic for $160,000, after the psychic’s predictions did not come true. Well, she first asked for her money back, but after the psychic said no, the woman decided to sue. I am a firm believer that psychics don’t exist. I would love if they did, I’d actually really enjoy having super-powers, and as a fan of the X-men, there’s always been a part of me that wanted to be Charles Xavier with hair and the ability to walk. But whether someone should be able to sue their psychic… that’s a stickier issue. … continue reading this entry.
By The Quixotic Man, on February 4, 2010, at 7:03 am  Photo from NASA Yes ladies and gentleman, it’s that that we all love, time for Jake to dazzle you all with an anecdote where something uncomfortable happens to me and I do my best to twist it into something more universal about all us skeptics in general. Admit it, you’re excited. … continue reading this entry.
By Scott, on January 27, 2010, at 7:03 am Disclaimer: The views conveyed in this article are not those of the New York City Skeptics and should not be held against them in a Court of Law, a Court of Basketball…or any other court.
Before I begin, I’ll take a moment to introduce myself since I am a new face in Gotham. My name is Scott Stafiej and I lead volunteering and membership at the Center for Inquiry | NYC. I’ve recently launched a year-long project in which I will explore traditionally religious and spiritual practices from a secular, skeptical perspective. You can read about that project on my blog, Skeptuality. Now that I have finished with the not-so-shameless self-promotion… I’d like to discuss some thoughts I have had on this topic with you.
On several different occasions, I have been confronted with statements akin to: “So, you’re a skeptic, huh? Does that mean you don’t believe in anything? You wouldn’t even consider yourself spiritual?” From the simple framing of these questions, much of the subsequent discussion devolves into an explanation of my conformity to traditional concepts or a justification of my deviance from them. … continue reading this entry.
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