Sitting in the Theater waiting for the talk to start. Michael has the add for his Skeptic Magazine up and organizing his presentation meeting unknown who's.
The theater is filling up, so it nice to see that there is a market here in Melbourne, Australia for what the author of "The Believing Brain" has to say.
Robert Sain, Dean of Faculty of Science at Melbourne University and gave a run down on Dr Shermers C.V.
Then straight to the Skeptic himself, and the presentation overall was based on his book, which yours truly had just listened to, read by Michael Shermer. The good thing was that he presented some of the videos of his experiences he told us in the book.
This meant the trans US bike ride he participated in with the intention to minimize the sleep time. This resulted in the fifty-eighth hour, experiencing an abduction by aliens straight from the 70's TV show "The Invaders" with Roy Thinnes, complete with the defective pinkies unable to bend. These aliens also looked like his support team. This broadcast on TV no less. Personally I would not be so sure of sharing such an experience. But then I am not promoting Sketicism on a National and International scale and writing books.
What this prompted was an investigation into how our brain/mind causes such hallucinations and is it related to similar religious and alien abduction experiences that are reported seemingly frequently these days. I personally enjoy listening to the alien abduction stories and how similar they are to religious experiences recorded from the past. Incubi and suckubi come to mind as Nuns in the Cloisters try to explain a pregnancy and justify an abortion, the gestating child being of the devil.
The funniest clip was a number of young women having a discussion in a fashion shop about the origins of wool and cashmere, being from cows.
Ignorance is encouraged in certain worldviews, like Christian Fundamentalists who cling to a strict biblical view of the origins issue despite the hundreds of years of scientific evidence for an old earth and evolutionary origins of all the animals on this pale blue dot.
I recommend Michael Shermers book The Believing Brain and suggest it to those early in the skeptic mind set.
Clifford M Dubery
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