1. The last edition of the Hotline I reviewed all the great media skeptics have been getting lately, including Randi's debunking of James van Praagh on Dateline. Well, low and behold who was on Larry King Wednesday night, December10, for a full hour, unopposed? James van Praagh, and King was throwing him softballs to swat out of the stadium. It was pathetic. He was actually doing his "readings" with the dead over the phone, and on several occasions he started in on the reading before he even got the name of the person he was talking to, or the name of the person "on the other side." He explained that people on the other side are at a higher "vibration" and that he "tunes" into that vibration. Ridiculous. King did ask him one good question regarding reincarnation: since there are now more people on the earth than there used to be, where do all the souls go and come from? Van Praagh said he hadn't thought about that. So King simplified it for him: if there were once 50 people on the earth and now there are 100 people, where do the extra 50 souls come from to be reincarnated later? Van Praagh said he wasn't very good at math! Ya, but I bet he can balance his check book just fine. At $200 an hour, he is book every day for the next three years. Oh, he was on plugging his new book from Dutton, TALKING TO HEAVEN. Most authors would kill for 10 minutes on a show like King's to plug their book. Here this nutball gets a full hour unopposed to plug his book. Frank Miele says it can all be explained in one word: RATINGS.
2. The foreign rights for WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS have now been sold to Germany and Japan, and an Italian publisher is making an offer this week. The book is also on the reading list for nominations for the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1997. Keep your toes and fingers crossed and do whatever it is we skeptics do for good luck.
The next Skeptics lecture is this Sunday, December 14, 1997 2:00 pm at Caltech's Baxter Lecture Hall in Pasadena
IN THE GODESS WE TRUSTED: The Faith Of Our Forefathers
Frank Miele, Senior Editor, Skeptic magazine
When religious fundamentalists call for a return to a golden age of moral standards, they often choose the period following the American Revolution and hold the Founding Fathers up as exemplars of what ever viewpoints they are seeking to reestablish in society. The motto that appears on our currency, In God We Trust, is thought to be the last vestige of a once happy union of fundamentalist church values and the state. Frank Miele will show us, with his usual wit and lively style, how inaccurat this picture is with an illustrated slide tour of religion and politics as the leaders of the American Revolution really saw them, and as exemplified through the symbols they choose to represent the fledgling nation. Early currency used pagan imagery like the Greco-Roman Goddess Liberty, (later even shown bare-breasted and displaying a considerable amount of leg). Other pagan imagery included Mithra's sun rays, Zeus's eagle, the fasces and even the All Seeing Eye of the Novus Ordo Seclorum. The Founders also deliberately avoided using images of political figures, which to them smacked of the deified royalty=0Aagainst whom they had recently revolted.
Senior Editor of Skeptic, Frank Miele has interviewed Richard Dawkins, Charles Murray, Robert Sternberg, Lionel Tiger, Robin Fox, Jerry Brown, Julian Simon, Garrett Harden and Donald Johanson for Skeptic, as well as written cover stories on Holocaust revisionism and free speech, evolutionary psychology, environmentalism, and human origins. He is presently working on a book about evolution, politics, and religion. Directions: 210-fwy to Pasadena, exit south on Lake, left on Del Mar, right on Michigan, parking lots one block south, on both left and right. From L.A.:110-fwy to end, N to right on Del Mar. For further information contact: Skeptics Society, Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001; phone: 818/794-3119; fax:=0A818/794-1301; e-mail: skepticmag@aol.com
As a teaser, here are a couple of Frank's slides:
God's order for the world requires that people look to God directly to meet their needs, not to government, social programs, or conduct that injures others and violates His laws. And when people claim to know Him, He insists that they live according to their profession. For the United States to write. In God We Trust on its currency while denying public school children the right to pray is not only hypocritical, it breaks the third commandment (i.e., You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain clarification and emphasis added.)
--Pat Robertson, The New World Order, p. 342, 1992
A general spirit reigns against the most liberal and generous establishments of religion;... it begins to be a growing idea that it is mighty indifferent, forsooth, not only whether a man be of this or the other religious sect, but whether he be of any religion at all; and that truly deists, and men of indifferentism to all religion, are the most suitable persons for civil office, and most proper to hold the reigns of government.... I wish we had not to fear that a neglect of religion was coming to be the road to preferment.
--Ezra Stiles, The United States elevated to Glory and Honor, 1783