A Message from Skippy

[kaasirpent]

Skippy's Top Ten Reasons to Become a Skeptic:

10. Demons never possess skeptics


9. Aliens never abduct or even bother skeptics


8. Ghosts and poltergeists never haunt the homes of skeptics


7. Big Foot, Nessie, The Abominable Snowman, and all those 30' alligators that live in the sewers never seem to bother skeptics


6. Witches' spells have no effect on skeptics


5. No skeptic has ever been turned into a zombie


4. Curses and the Evil Eye have no effect on skeptics


3. Nigerian con-men never rob a skeptic blind


2. Astrology has no effect on skeptics (I guess planets only dictate/predict the lives of non-skeptics)


1. Psychic "abilities" cease to function altogether in the presence of a skeptic

So, if you think about it, why would you want to be anything but a skeptic? It sounds safer than any of the other choices, doesn't it? :)

Comments

[luckycee.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that bioterrorists aren't at this very moment plotting to seek and destroy the very town you live in!

[kaasirpent]

Unless, of course, you live in New York or Washington, DC, or.... :)

[dollraves.livejournal.com]

I dunno... sometimes it's nice to have something inanely stupid in which to believe.

I mean, just ask a Christian...

[kaasirpent]

I was listening to catch-up episodes of one of my favorite podcasts, recently (Skepticality), and they had a guest on the show who was a member of Circlemakers. Circlemakers is an organization responsible for most of the crop circles in the UK (and possibly world-wide; I can't remember if they're international or not). In previous episodes, the show had covered evolution vs. creationism, psychic abilities, aliens, ghosts, and lots of very "controversial" subjects. They didn't think crop circles would be one of them, but to their shock and surprise, they received more "hate" mail over the fact that crop circles aren't a real phenomenon than they did for all their other shows combined. How dare that British upstart claim responsibility? Sure, he did a lot of them, but he didn't do all of them, and those others are the real crop circles.

It just goes to show you that even dyed-in-the-wool skeptics often have a soft spot for a "pet" woo or two.

I purposefully didn't get into religion in this post because Skepticism != atheism/agnosticism. I am an atheist, a skeptic, and a cynic. Which makes me, I guess, the last person you want to invite to your combination bible study/séance. A real triple threat. :)

[humanbeatbox.livejournal.com]

This is like some kind of twisted extra-terrestrial Pascal's wager!

[kaasirpent]

Are you suggesting something along the following lines (which, by the way, purposefully leaves out religion, as I did with this post)?

	Woo exists (W)	Woo does not exist (~W)
Belief in Woo (B)	no benefit or loss	wasted time and effort that could have been spent on worthwhile topics
No Belief in Woo (~B)	no benefit or loss	no time or effort wasted on silly topics

[humanbeatbox.livejournal.com]

yeah, except presumably there's some benefit if you believe in woo and it exists :)

[kaasirpent]

I could argue that, but we won't go into it, here. :)

[dorsai.livejournal.com]

Pascal wept.

[brightspot.livejournal.com]

Oh, I dunno...I'd kinda like to meet Nessie. :oP

[winkymonkey.livejournal.com]

This has absolutely nothing to do with your post. I just had to comment that I've been missing out on your posts lately. I like to check out the comments and, there for a while, the type was so small I couldn't make it out. Now everything is all blurry which, Pru tells me, is because I need a new monitor. So I can only make out about half. Maybe it will get better soon. I miss Skippy.

[kaasirpent]

Most browsers allow you to increase the size of the font. For instance, in IE, you can click on View and then on Text Size and set it to Larger or Largest (I actually have mine set to Larger because it IS rather tiny) and it is way more readable. On FireFox, that would also be View, Text Size, and then on Increase until you can read it comfortably. Alternatively, in FireFox, you can hold down the CTRL key and press the 'plus' (+) key until it's readable--it does the same thing.

I keep meaning to get into the bits and bytes of the themes and styles on LJ to personalize this one, but...I just never seem to have time. :)