Many of you may have seen the commercials on TV advertizing Kinoki footpads. It is as if the ad guys decided to insert as much pseudoscience as humanly possible. The ad mentions reflexology, detoxing, ancient asian secrets, ions, and a graphic that appears to depict a sort of reverse transpiration in a tree and compares it to the circulatory and excretory systems of a human. They seem to be trying to convince us that we can crap out our feet. So how do they try to convince us that it does what they claim it does? by showing us a dirty pad and showing us all of the nasty things that are in it. Dont you see the metabolic waste?

As you may or may not know, Ben Stein is making a movie about Intelligent Design. His basic claim is that there is no freedom of speech in academia, because they're not allowed to talk about intelligent design. Ironic as though it may be, press aren't allowed ask questions at press conferences about the movie. Nor are people who see advanced screenings allowed to write reviews: you must sign an NDA to see the movie.

I've uploaded the new charter. If we approve this, SG will approve us as an official club. The only modification from V4 is the removal of one sentence: "declaration by the Chair, unless overruled by a 2/3 majority vote" on the topic of removal of members.

This page is for resources for the Debate on the Existence of God. InterVarsity's page on the debate here and here. Video now posted!

• Full audio of the Event: High Quality · Low Quality
• Photos from the debate
• Video: Big thanks to Ricardo for editing this!
• Reporter article
• Full transcript here - Note: This is not a word for word transcript. It is a paraphrasing done by the Real-Time Captionist.

Responses to questions from the debate:

• RIT Skeptics
• IVCF

Blog posts from around the internet:

• Scroll down this blog.
• Another blog post
• http://rit.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=7950003814&topic=4182
• http://wnyapologetics.blogspot.com/2008/01/center-for-inquiry.html

These are some of the questions asked of us by index card at the debate(errors maintained and amplified):

Do you believe in the elephant? (strange drawing of face on back of card)
Skeptics sclaim they have no dogma and claim to philosphically neutral but that is not so. If one s a ntauralist one believe the eternal prexistence of mater and the "dogma" proposed by Darwin. So how do you (skeptics) know your beleifs to be True.

How would you define faith and is there and justification for it?

How do you explain the fulfilled prophcies in the books of Isaih and Daniel? Is this not evidence that there is is truth in Gods word?

The Secular Student Alliance broke a story a few days ago about the largest group of non-religious people on MySpace being deleted.

"Early this month, MySpace again deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group (35,000 members). This deletion, due largely to complaints from people who find atheism offensive, marks the second time MySpace has cancelled the group since November 2007."

Luckily, however, today the group was restored. However, the situation is still pretty murky:

Pray to eggs/God - get the same answer?

www.RationalResponders.com

I just made this at 5:30 AM :-P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syLBg1LDggU

Send in evolution questions for our Darwin Day episode of Ask a Skeptic

<!-- This is the setup for this page:

is the

,


is for the questions, and


is for our answers. -->

Answers: Jon, Sean, David

I pulled these from ritdebate@gmail.com... I plan to answer as many as I can, but there are a lot so it might be a while before they all get an answer. Other skeptics feel free to contribute. InterVarsity also has a page up about this

What compelled you to become a skeptic? Is it a rebuke of religious upbringing or...?

Since I can see that the IVCF are preparing for the debate with prayer I feel that we need to do something at least equally as usefully. I call upon all of you to join me as I eat noodles while dressed as a pirate to gain the blessing of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vux3DINXG7U

Good evening. If you don't get your question answered tonight, come up to us after the debate, or email it to us at info@ritskeptics.org. You are guaranteed a response and we might even use it on our podcast.

First, I would like to thank the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship for their cooperation in putting this event together. I would also like to thank Dr. Meredith for helping organize this debate, and for moderating. Also, our adviser Dr. Torcello for his help in preparing for the debate.

I would like to note that this debate is not in any way adversarial. We're here to promote open inquiry and mutual understanding.

We represent a group called the RIT Skeptics. We hold meetings, debates like this one, and outings related to unverified claims. We also hold a monthly podcast called Ask a Skeptic, where members of the RIT community can ask questions to our group.

But what is a skeptic? A skeptic is someone who requires a high standard of evidence, based on observations of the natural world. Our definition of evidence does not include personal testimony or anecdote. Evidence should be objective and verifiable externally. If there is no data to support a claim, belief should be withheld. Therefore, the more a claim conflicts with our prior experience of the natural world, the more evidence is required to confirm it.

http://www.cafepress.com/ritskeptics

T-shirts are available. One dollar from every sale goes to help the club. The rest goes to the greedy bastards at cafe press.

Here’s a surprising truth about skeptics: people want to be us. Or, at least they want our credibility. I’m hereby coining a new word for people who adopt the airs of skepticism to lend credibility to claims, but fail in some area of critical thinking: stupists.

http://ask-a-skeptic.podshow.com/

Check it out.
The podcast of the RIT skeptics.

The Episode list