US District Judge John E. Jones III issued his long-awaited ruling on the case of Kitzmiller et al. versus the Dover (Pennsylvania) Area School District on Dec. 20, 2005. The school board had required grade-nine biology teachers to read a statement calling evolution not a fact but a theory with gaps and pointing to Intelligent Design as alternative explanation for the origins of life.
Introduction
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The first book of the Bible, Genesis (1:1-31), describes the creation of the universe in six days, from out of cold nothingness, by a supernatural being to which Christianity, Judaism and Islam bid worship. As time progressed, people began to look more closely at the rocks which they trod upon, and noticed peculiarities which could not be accounted for by the Bible, and so required further explanation. Thus was born the scientific field of geology — the description of the earth’s rocks and how they came to be situated in their current locations.
Part of “Pseudoscience A to Z”, a series of articles in the Skeptics Canada newsletter.
The Jonas Method of natural conception control is a strange mix of quack medicine, religious inspiration, and an astrologically based pseudoscience called cosmobiology. If you believe the claims it enables seemingly infertile women to conceive, while promising that you can choose the sex of the child you wish. It also avoids miscarriages, and “eliminates birth defects and mental retardation”. All of these purported benefits are based on conceiving at just the right time.
An issue of Ontario Skeptic contained a letter from Paul Greenwood, (“Science is open to radical, new ideas”) reporting on the “water memory” experiments of Dr. J. Benveniste, and offering the publication of these experiments as evidence of the willingness of the scientific community to examine new and unconventional ideas.
Part of “Pseudoscience A to Z”, a series of articles in the Skeptics Canada newsletter.
Naturopathy and its associated practices are well known to skeptics, and little description is needed here, but for those who are interested in an in-depth analysis, try www.naturowatch.org/general/beyerstein.html by the late Dr. Barry Beyerstein, a skeptic and biopsychologist at Simon Fraser University.
The New-Age ‘science’ of reading eyes doesn’t work—but there may be a speck of truth in it.
From OSSCI’s Special Interest Group on Alternative Medicine:
North Americans spend over $30 billion annually on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) – from acupuncture to therapeutic touch. More than one-third of adults now use at least one form of “alternative” health care each year (where “alternative” is loosely defined as those practices which aren’t generally taught in medical schools or offered at most hospitals).1
I had no premonition of any synchronicity coming on. There were no warning signs or vague impressions. Nothing portended any good fortune or impending joy. It was, after all, Friday the 13th, August, 2004. There was an OSSCI (Ontario Skeptics Society for Critical Inquiry) meeting taking place but in true skeptical fashion, the triskaidekaphobia factor was being ignored.
On September 12, 1996, four days after her 45th birthday, Ontario resident Lana Dale Lewis died after suffering a stroke.
Psychics and mediums over the last 150 years have moved well beyond the simple rappings and table shiftings to serious communication with the dead. Indeed, a number of so-called mediums have produced both art and writings, courtesy of their channels. I suppose one must applaud their “honesty” in not taking credit for the work of others, they nonetheless have almost uniformly benefited monetarily from the generous dictation of their spiritual guides. The following is a compilation of just a few of these. Note that the spiritual guides appear unwilling to warn their hosts of impending danger. Thus several have met untimely ends.