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Michael Shermer
Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of ''Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The author of over a dozen books, Shermer is known for engaging in debates on pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism. Shermer was the co-producer and co-host of ''Exploring the Unknown'', a 13-hour Fox Family television series broadcast in 1999. From April 2001 to January 2019, he contributed a monthly ''Skeptic'' column to ''Scientific American'' magazine. Shermer was raised in a non-religious household, before converting to christian fundamentalism as a teenager. He stopped believing in God during graduate school, influenced by a traumatic accident that left his then-girlfriend paralyzed. He identifies as an agnostic and an atheist,Shermer, Michael (June 2005)"Why I Am An Ath ...
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Skeptics Society
The Skeptics Society is a nonprofit, member-supported organization devoted to promoting scientific skepticism and resisting the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. The Skeptics Society was co-founded by Michael Shermer and Pat Linse as a Los Angeles-area skeptical group to replace the defunct Southern California Skeptics. After the success of its magazine, ''Skeptic'', introduced in early 1992, it became a national and then international organization. The stated mission of Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine "is the investigation of science and pseudoscience controversies, and the promotion of critical thinking." History In late 1991, the Skeptics Society was co-founded by Michael Shermer and Pat Linse, in Los Angeles with the assistance of Kim Ziel Shermer. For the first five years, Shermer and Linse worked on the Skeptics Society out of Shermer's garage. The Skeptic Society formed after a scandal forced an earlier group known as the Southern Ca ...
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ABC Family
The American cable television, cable and satellite television network that is now known as Freeform (TV channel), Freeform was originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service on April 29, 1977, and has gone through several different owners (and six different name changes) during its history. This article details the network's existence from its founding by the Christian Broadcasting Network to its current ownership by The Walt Disney Company, which renamed ABC Family to Freeform on January 12, 2016. CBN Satellite Service The network was founded by Pat Robertson as the CBN Satellite Service (CBN Satellite Network), an arm of his television ministry, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). When the channel launched on April 29, 1977, it became the first Cable television in the United States#Basic cable, basic cable channel to be transmitted via communications satellite, satellite from its launch and, effectively, the first national basic cable-originated network. Initially, the ne ...
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Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban agglomeration in the United States. The region generally contains ten of California's 58 counties: Imperial County, California, Imperial, Kern County, California, Kern, Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles, Orange County, California, Orange, Riverside County, California, Riverside, San Bernardino County, California, San Bernardino, San Diego County, California, San Diego, Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo County, California, San Luis Obispo and Ventura County, California, Ventura counties. The Colorado Desert and the Colorado River are located on Southern California's eastern border with Arizona, and San Bernardino County shares a border with Nevada to the northeast. Southern California's ...
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YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the List of most visited websites, second most visited website, after Google Search. YouTube has more than 2.5 billion monthly users who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos each day. , videos were being uploaded at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute. In October 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. Google's ownership of YouTube expanded the site's business model, expanding from generating revenue from advertisements alone, to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching content without ads. YouTube also approved creators to participate in Google's Google AdSens ...
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American Humanist Association
The American Humanist Association (AHA) is a non-profit organization in the United States that advances secular humanism. The American Humanist Association was founded in 1941 and currently provides legal assistance to defend the constitutional rights of secular and religious minorities, lobbies Congress on church-state separation and other issues, and maintains a grassroots network of 250 local affiliates and chapters that engage in social activism and community-building events. The AHA has several publications, including ''The Humanist'', ''Free Mind'', peer-reviewed semi-annual scholastic journal '' Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism'', and TheHumanist.com. The organization states that it has over 34,000 members. History In 1927, an organization called the "Humanist Fellowship" began at a gathering in Chicago. In 1928, the Fellowship started publishing the ''New Humanist'' magazine with H.G. Creel as first editor. The ''New Humanist'' was published from 1928 to 1936. The ...
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Humanism
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" has changed according to the successive intellectual movements that have identified with it. During the Italian Renaissance, ancient works inspired scholars in various Italian cities, giving rise to a movement now called Renaissance humanism. With Enlightenment, humanistic values were re-enforced by the advances in science and technology, giving confidence to humans in their exploration of the world. By the early 20th century, organizations solely dedicated to humanism flourished in Europe and the United States, and have since expanded all over the globe. In the current day, the term generally refers to a focus on human well-being and advocates for human freedom, autonomy, and progress. It views humanity as responsible for the promotio ...
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Skeptic
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the person doubts that these claims are accurate. In such cases, skeptics normally recommend not disbelief but suspension of belief, i.e. maintaining a neutral attitude that neither affirms nor denies the claim. This attitude is often motivated by the impression that the available evidence is insufficient to support the claim. Formally, skepticism is a topic of interest in philosophy, particularly epistemology. More informally, skepticism as an expression of questioning or doubt can be applied to any topic, such as politics, religion, or pseudoscience. It is often applied within restricted domains, such as morality (moral skepticism), atheism (skepticism about the existence of God), or the supernatural. Some theorists distinguish "good" or modera ...
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Fox Business Channel
Fox Business (officially known as Fox Business Network, or FBN) is an American business news channel and website publication owned by the Fox News Media division of Fox Corporation. The channel broadcasts primarily from studios at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan. Launched on October 15, 2007, the network features trading day coverage and a nightly lineup of opinion-based talk shows. Day-to-day operations are run by Kevin Magee, executive vice president of Fox News; Neil Cavuto is the vice president and managing editor for the network and business news operation overall. As of February 2015, Fox Business Network is available to approximately 74,224,000 pay television households (63.8% of households with television) in the United States. History News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch confirmed the launch at his keynote address at the 2007 McGraw-Hill Media Summit on February 8, 2007. Murdoch had publicly stated that if News Corporation's purchase of ''The Wal ...
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Stossel (TV Series)
''Stossel'' was a weekly American talk show, hosted by John Stossel, highlighting current consumer issues with a libertarian viewpoint. The television program debuted on December 10, 2009, on the Fox Business Network and aired on Fridays. It originally aired at 8:00 pm EST, but was moved to 9:00 pm EST. In 2013, Fox News Channel began to replay the show which aired occasionally on the weekends. John Stossel moderated the first-ever nationally televised Libertarian presidential debate on April 1, 2016. The second part of the debate aired on April 8. The final episode premiered on December 16, 2016. At the end of that episode, a retrospective that spotlighted moments from seven years of the program, Stossel explained that due to his age, he wanted to help develop a younger generation of journalists with his views, and would continue to appear as a guest on Fox programs, and also help produce content for Reason TV.Welch, Matt (December 16, 2016)"Thank You, John Stossel, for Teaching ...
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Stossel, John
John Frank Stossel (born March 6, 1947) is an American libertarian television presenter, author, consumer journalist, and pundit. He is known for his career as a host on ABC News, Fox Business Network, and Reason TV. Stossel's style combines reporting and commentary. It reflects a libertarian political philosophy and views on economics which are largely supportive of the free market. He began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV, was a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City, and then joined ABC News as a consumer editor and reporter on ''Good Morning America''. Stossel became an ABC News correspondent, joining the weekly news magazine program ''20/20'', and later became a co-anchor. In October 2009, Stossel left ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel. He hosted a weekly news show on Fox Business, '' Stossel'', from December 2009 to December 2016. In 2019, Stossel launched StosselTV, an online channel distributed on social media. Stossel has received 19 Em ...
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Why People Believe Weird Things
''Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time'' is a 1997 book by science writer Michael Shermer. The foreword was written by Stephen Jay Gould. Summary In the first section, Shermer discusses the ideas that he has towards racism. He also explains his conversion to Deism from New Age mysticism (to which he had converted from being a Fundamentalist Christian Baptist). In part two Shermer explains paranormal thinking and how one comes to believe in things without evidence. He uses Edgar Cayce as an example, and while he agrees with parts of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, he criticizes its moral absolutism and argues that many follow her philosophy unquestioningly, which he believes contradicts free thinking. Part three begins with Shermer describing several debates he had with Duane Gish. He lays out some creationist arguments in 25 separate claims, and attempts to debunk each one with his own evidence. He closes retelling how a constitu ...
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Atheist
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists. The first individuals to identify themselves as atheists lived in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment. The French Revolution, noted for its "unprecedented atheism", witnessed the first significant political movement in history to advocate for the supremacy of human reason.Extract of page 22
In 1967, Albania declared itself the first official atheist cou ...
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