Skeptic Magazine
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Skeptic, colloquially known as Skeptic magazine, is a quarterly science education and science advocacy magazine published internationally by The Skeptics Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting scientific skepticism and resisting the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. Founded by Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society, the magazine was first published in the spring of 1992 and is published through Millennium Press. Shermer remains the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the magazine and the magazine’s Co-publisher and Art Director is Pat Linse. Other noteworthy members of its editorial board include Oxford University evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Jared Diamond, magician and escape artist turned educator James “The Amazing” Randi, actor, comedian, and Saturday Night Live alumna Julia Sweeney, professional mentalist Mark Edward, science writer Daniel Loxton, Lawrence M. Krauss and Christof Koch. Skeptic has an international circulation with over 50,000 subscriptions and is on newsstands in the U.S. and Canada as well as Europe, Australia, and other countries. Source
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| Scope | National |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
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| Frequency | Quarterly |
Recent Articles
Search ArticlesThe Hard Problem of Consciousness Is an Insoluble One
Consciousness is often defined as “what it’s like to be something,” inspired by the philosopher Thomas Nagel’s 1974 classic paper, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” As he explained the problem: “An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something that it is like for the organism.” Let’s make dolphins our subject of inquiry.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness Is a Soluble One
It has now been over 30 years since Australian philosopher David Chalmers posed the “Hard Problem of Consciousness,” one that has intrigued philosophers of mind, neuroscientists, and psychologists ever since. The problem can be summarized in three “what, how, and why” questions: What is consciousness? How does the brain give rise to or produce consciousness? Why does consciousness exist? In this brief article, I will suggest answers to these questions. What is consciousness?
The 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
Following a public lecture I gave in 2005 at the L.A. Public Library, I was buttonholed by a documentary filmmaker with ambitions of exposing the conspiracy behind 9/11. “You mean the conspiracy by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to attack the United States?” I asked rhetorically, knowing what was to come. “That’s what they want you to believe,” he said. “Who is they?” I queried. “The government,” he whispered, as if they might be listening at that very moment.
Hagioptasia: The Feeling You've Never Had a Word For
Stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and something happens in your chest that a photograph can never capture. See a celebrity in person and they seem lit from within, even when you know better. Fall in love and the other person briefly stops being a person and becomes a kind of doorway. Walk into an old cathedral, or a stadium before kickoff, and the atmosphere seems to change. We reach for tired words to describe this phenomenon: Awe. Magic. Aura. The sacred.
The Appeal of the Irrational: Pseudoscience, UFOs, Cults
Several decades ago, when I was a student at the Chouinard Art School, out of curiosity I dropped in at a local Scientology center. I attended a few introductory lectures there, one of which included a filmed interview of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. In these lectures Hubbard was touted as a genius, not only a nuclear physicist, but a brain surgeon as well.
The Kurds and Kurdistan: How History Left 35 Million People Without a Country
To most of us, at least at a first glance, maps appear to describe reality. They show states, borders, capitals, and frontiers with the reassuring precision of geography. We learn them at school, consult them in newspapers, and rarely question the assumptions they contain. A mountain either exists or it does not, and a river follows its course. A border appears equally factual. But maps don’t simply record the world “as it is”—they record political settlements.
Monkey-Man Mystery Explained
The social, political, and economic factors that lead people to believe in non-existent beings Humans love patterns. Trying to find patterns even where they don’t exist is our way of making sense of the world. Place a million parallel lines before a human observer and they shall immediately know it if one of them is askew.
Götterdämmerung in Japan
This is a response to Klaus Ziegler’s critique of my moral case for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I want to thank Klaus Ziegler for taking the time to read and respond to my essay, “The Moral Case for Dropping the Atomic Bombs.” He challenges my three propositions that (1) the atomic bombings contributed to Japan’s surrender, (2) without them substantially more people would likely have died, (3) therefore, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was morally justified.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and an Article of Faith About the Dropping of Atomic Bombs
This is a critique of Michael Shermer’s moral case for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Michael Shermer has spent much of his career teaching others how not to fool themselves. As the founder and editor-in-chief of Skeptic, he has made a profession of demanding evidence, distinguishing what is known from what is inferred, warning against confirmation bias, and urging people to apply the same standards to their own beliefs as to others’ beliefs.
Repatriation and Reburial of Sh*t Needs to Be Stopped
Through the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the U.S. Department of the Interior’ National Park Service at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado plans to repatriate bags of human feces to tribes for reburial.