Skepticon

For Those About to Atheist, We Salute You

2009-11-20T11:47:00.002-06:00

Skepticon, first debate, moments away. Stay tuned for blogs from the event.

Follow us on twitter:
http://twitter.com/SkepticonEvent
Tags: #skepticon #atheism

Thanks PZ!

2009-09-13T20:42:00.001-05:00

PZ mentioned us on Pharyngula and kindly asked folks to pitch in. Thanks PZ!

As I wrote before...

We live in an area with over 340 in-town churches. James River Assembly has both a Starbucks and an ATM inside. Suffice that dredging up money for an event like this locally is not the easiest thing to do. Imagine walking into a local business and saying, "Hi. We're inviting a bunch of famous atheists to Springfield to criticize religion and explain how it's very dangerous. If you give us a donation, we'll put your business's name on the flyer." Yeah...

So we need help from everybody. We want five of your dollars. That's it, five. Let's imagine that we wanted to raise $5,000 to pull this off...I think it will be easier finding 1,000 people to donate $5 than five people to donate $1,000. Most people have five bucks to spare. Of course, you can send us more if you feel so moved.

You can either send it to skepticonevent@gmail.com via paypal, or click the shiny button below.

It's very true! My university has shown some reticence to giving us full funding for this, so we will need some outside assistance. Make it happen! This are really needs this kind of event.

Thanks everybody!

Donate to Skepticon II

2009-08-12T09:39:00.002-05:00

I had a comment on my personal blog yesterday asking how people can donate to Skepticon II. We're gonna launch our fund-raising campaign in about a week, and you'll have the ability to donate when the web site goes live. However, here's the means for all of you who are just chomping at the bit to send us money. We have set ourselves up as a not-for-profit, which means we can now start taking donations. Here's the deal...

We want five of your dollars. That's it, five. Let's imagine that we wanted to raise $5,000 to pull this off...I think it will be easier finding 1,000 people to donate $5 than five people to donate $1,000. Most people have five bucks to spare.

You can either sent it to skepticonevent@gmail.com via paypal, or click the shiny button below.

Also, if this is a cause you support, write a blog on it and ask your readers to donate $5! Link this post. If they have questions, send them to me. I'll happily answer them.

Also...get down here in November for the event! It won't cost you a thing to get in, and we have lots of couches and sleeping bags.

Thanks guys.

New speaker and concept art

2009-07-25T20:30:00.001-05:00

Katie Hartman did last year's poster, and it was phenomenal. She's on the job this year and she's just come out with her first concept piece:

We also picked up an additional speaker today on top of Victor Stenger. We also got a commitment from Robert M. Price. Those who have seen The God Who Wasn't There will recognize him as the theological scholar explaining the similarities of Christianity to other localized myths. He is also the author of several books surrounding the inaccuracy of the bible/Christianity including Blasphemies and Revelations and Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition. I've been told by some very reliable people in the atheist biz that few people rival price at deconstructing Christianity specifically. He will be a welcome addition.

Stenger Commits to Skepticon II

2009-07-25T14:23:00.002-05:00

Skepticon II has just acquired physicist Dr. Victor J. Stenger, author of the NY Times bestseller God: The Failed Hypothesis, as well as Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness, and The Comprehensible Comos, amongst many, many others.

Stenger will be giving a presentation on how the scientific evidence points most strongly to atheism.

This makes our current line up PZ Myers, Richard Carrier, Rebecca Watson (you can read my exchange with her here), Dan Barker, DJ Grothe, Joe Nickell, Victor J. Stenger, Mark Richter, and myself. I'm currently going after three other speakers: one big name and two smalls.

I'm also in the process of arranging a debate focusing on the question, "Does god exist?" I have some bites there, but nothing solidified.

Things you should do:

Confirm your attendence on the Skepticon II event page. (And invite all your friends!)
Add Skepticon as a friend on facebook.
Join the Skepticon II cause on facebook.
Join the MSU Chapter of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on facebook.

Also, help get the word out. Blog about it, tell your friends, etc. The fundraising machine also goes into full swing in mid-August, and you can bet I'll be blogging it.

Skepticon II has a new speaker!

2009-07-24T13:35:00.001-05:00

We just picked up another speaker for Skepticon II. Joe Nickell, famous paranormal investigator. Get the hell down here to Springfield in November!

This means that the current speaker line up includes PZ Myers, Richard Carrier, Rebecca Watson (you can read my exchange with her here), Dan Barker, DJ Grothe, Joe Nickell, Mark Richter, and JT Eberhard.

Things you need to do aside from showing up (We have lots of couches for people to crash on):

Confirm your attendence on the Skepticon II event page.
Add Skepticon as a friend on facebook.
Join the Skepticon II cause on facebook.
Join the MSU Chapter of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on facebook.

w00t!

We have the power to change minds.

2009-03-18T20:43:00.004-05:00

Last Fall, I put together a skeptics event on my campus that was retroactively dubbed "Skepticon." And here we are, just a few short months later, preparing for Skepticon II, which will honestly make Skepticon I look like chicken feed.

Today, PZ posted a blog about a grateful e-mail he received from a student who attended the first Skepticon.

Last semester I took a Religions of the World course, and as an extra-credit assignment, I was given the option to attend an event at the Missouri State University, at which you spoke. I went, and let me tell you, it was probably one of the most jarring and terrifying moments of my life. I'd always known there were those who strongly opposed religion. In fact, one of my best friends in high school was an extreme skeptic, who constantly asked me the tough questions, you know, the ones that usually can only be answered with "He works in mysterious ways." But I'd never been in a room packed with people who whooped and cheered every time a stab was taken at the way I'd chosen to live my life. It was chilling and upsetting and I wanted to leave every second since you'd first opened your mouth. I didn't hate you for saying it. How could I? It was your belief and you were sharing it, which you have every right to do.

But what horrified me the most wasn't the room full of atheists, or the seemingly impenetrable arguments you provided that I should completely dump my faith and see the world in a different light. What turned my stomach and threatened to send me off the edge were the stories you told of Christians giving the rest of us a bad name, such as those at the Catholic Mass when the student stole the cracker and received death threats. I suppose hypocrisy is simply the nature of the conventional Christian. They act like children in a tree house that throw rocks at anyone who hurts their feelings.

Atheists ranting about how the past five generations of my family are superstitious crackpots I can handle, because the atheists are standing for what they believe, but when people who claim to have devoted their lives to furthering the love and compassion that Jesus showed start acting in ways that negate every message they've ever tried to present, or they choose which biblical rules they want to follow and which to ignore, and things like that, it really just makes me sick.

Anyway, I suppose this isn't terribly interesting to you in any event, but I've resolved to stop sitting in church and being spoon fed pre-cooked beliefs, and to start seeking answers by asking questions I was afraid to before. The founder of Buddhism once said, "Do not believe these things because I've told you to, but find truth through your own experiences." I've adopted that to the core of my beliefs.

I still believe in God, and I still consider myself a Christian, but I'm seeing things in a different light. I'm finding the meaning behind the rituals and traditions, rather than just believing there's power in "holy" water or an oyster cracker. I've begun searching for the reasons why certain rules are administered, instead of just saying "because the bible says so".

I don't know if you'll ever read this, and I don't know if I'll ever come in contact with you again, but I want to sincerely thank you. I know I completely missed the purpose of your speech, but whether or not you actually accept my thanks isn't the point. I hope that maybe others of my faith can learn the lesson I did, and I definitely think that it's a good idea to listen what nonbelievers have to say.

After all, knowledge never really hurt anyone, right?

So often I hear people say "What's the point of being an evangelist of reason, nobody's going to change their minds." That's pure bollucks, and it's precisely what the fundamentalists want you to say. People do change their minds.

The Skeptical Student was a Christian when I first met him here at MSU. He changed his mind.

In my five years of being a vocal skeptic and critic of religion, I've received over 40 e-mails from people who thanked me for helping them abandon faith. They changed their minds. Who knows how many more never e-mailed me?

Ben over at War on Error changed his mind.

I changed my mind.

Our nation is slowly changing their minds (and even our nation is only following the pattern of the world), and it's because finally, for the first time in the course of the human experiment, a large contingent of people are charging past the taboo of criticising faith and demolishing the pretensions of religion without apology.

Good reasoning is irresistible. If the case for any proposition is strong enough, you will helplessly believe it, whether you can admit it to yourself or not. We have the power to wake people up and expose them to the light of reason. And faith, like cockroaches, does not do well in the light.

"The premise of evangelical atheism is that you can introduce people to the importance of reason and they will come to a reasonable conclusion on their own. The premise of evangelical faith is that people must accept an arbitrary belief because an arbitrary judge, who the convert may not query, demands it. The former kind of proselytizer ought to be called a teacher, but is more often called an arrogant asshole; the latter ought to be considered a liar, a fraud, and an arrogant asshole in fact, but they actually believe they are humble servants of the lord." ~ PZ Myers

Web page is up!

2009-03-14T07:53:00.002-05:00

The Skepticon web site is up. It's pretty barren at the moment, but I hear it's about to get rocked out!

Much props to JD and Jeff for making that happen!

Also, I just looked at the poll below about who would win in a pit fight...does Rebecca Watson know kung-fu or something?

It's on, suckahs!

2009-03-11T22:30:00.001-05:00

Skepticon II is a go!

Here's the speaker list so far:

PZ Myers:

Dr. Myers is biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris and the author of the science blog Pharyngula. Myers is known for his criticism of creationism and religion. Dr. Myers was a speaker at the original Skepticon last Fall, and we are elated to have him, and his cracker-disrespecting ways, back at Missouri State.

Richard Carrier:

Richard Carrier is the renowned author of Sense and Goodness without God, as well as numerous articles online and in print. He received his Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University in 2008, and now specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism, the origins of Christianity, and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome.

Rebecca Watson:

Rebecca is a blogger and independent podcast host. She is the founder of the Skepchick blog and is a co-host on The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast. Rebecca has spoken all over the country, including at the Amaz!ng Meeting.

Dan Barker:

Dan Barker served as a Christian preacher and musician for 19 years, before discarding his faith and becoming one of the nation’s most prominent atheists. He is the author of Losing Faith in Faith and president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

D.J. Grothe:

D.J. Grothe is a program director at the Center for Inquiry and editor for Free Inquiry magazine. He is also a professional magician who has lectured all over the United States and hosts the nationally popular radio show and podcast Point of Inquiry.