X-Message-Number: 19784 Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 12:08:46 -0500 From: Trent <> Subject: #19735: Shermer, "skeptics", debunkers and odds. [George Smith] At 09:00 8/10/02 +0000, you wrote: >#19735: Shermer, "skeptics", debunkers and odds. [George Smith]... I have seen this guy in Joplin, Missouri, speaking at the college there. He is a joke. He is a good showman. He is a good speaker. He has some good points. But so would a 1,000 monkeys with a 1,000 typewriters... What I did not like was his audience pandering, name calling, making fun, and humor. They all have a place in speaking; when you are at an "educational" speech about science, there is little place for them. Some highlights: Made fun of the physicist Brain Greene. Agree or disagree with him mocking him with funny voices and eye rolling really didn't answer my technical question. Mr. Shermer couldn't get any more detailed than that. Got everybody to laugh a lot, though. Haha. Debunk UFO's by humorous antidotes about long trips. Belive or not, I would like some facts, not suppositions. FTL travel being possible or not I would guess that kids using the bathroom is the least of NASA (or space aliens) worries. His "fact" about propulsion was easily dispelled by a 6th grade newspaper article - NASA already uses / has viable plans for the "fantasy" propulsion he "debunked" as being 50 years in the future. Doesn't belive in God. Very vehement on this. Believe or not, it wasn't the topic of conversation, so why bring it up? Oh, it will get people to talking and you can avoid "hard" questions (see 1st point above). Although he doesn't seem to belive in God, he offers no explanation why no other planet anywhere has life, except that it doesn't. He has faith it doesn't; he just "knows". See above reference about having "faith" in things. Upon arriving home I opened the mail; got a Scientific American; turn to 100 years ago today, article about airships and how a panel of the most prominent scientists of the day explain how it is impossible for people to ever use them, using the same method Shermer does. Found that humorous... Shermer is no better than the people he ridicules; many of them make their living promoting paranormal stuff, with little or no proof, and he says this is bad - they get paid to distort the truth and have no scientific proof. Yet, he makes his living the same way, only in the opposite belief system.... Trent Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19784