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Skeptics Dinner Meeting
Saturday August 16, 2008
The Chatswood Club
11 Help St
Chatswood
7.00 for 7.30

Professor Victor Stenger
God: The Failed Hypothesis.
How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.

We are delighted to announce that our August Dinner will feature a special guest speaker from the USA, distinguished scientist and popular author Victor Stenger, who will speak about his latest best selling book.

Victor Stenger is adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and emeritus professor of physics at the University of Hawaii (retired). He is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a research fellow of the Center for Inquiry. Stenger has also held visiting positions on the faculties of the Universities of Heidelberg, Oxford and Florence, and has been a visiting researcher at the Rutherford Laboratory in England and the National Nuclear Physics Laboratory in Frascati, Italy.

He spent forty years doing research in elementary particle physics and astrophysics during the golden age of those subjects. In his last project before retiring, Stenger collaborated on the underground experiment in Japan that showed for the first time that the neutrino has mass.

Victor Stenger has had a parallel career as an author of critically well-received popular-level books that interface between physics and cosmology and philosophy, religion, and pseudoscience. These include: Not By Design: The Origin of the Universe; Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses ; The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology; Timeless Reality: Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes; Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe; The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come from?; and God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. The latest book made the New York Times bestseller list in March, 2007.

Book through our online shop

You could go to www.peterbowditch.com or it could all be repeated here, which would probably annoy all the other committee members.

As well as being the Vice President of Australian Skeptics, Peter is the Boss and Chief Decision Maker of the RatbagsDotCom Empire and the Executive Officer of the Australian Council Against Health Fraud. Both of these organisations are in the front line in the fight against foolish thinking. During 2005 he was dragged through the courts by a multi-level marketing company which was not pleased about his criticism of their activities, and this experience prompted him to (successfully) stand for election to the Board of Electronic Frontiers Australia.

Richard Saunders was born in Kurri Kurri NSW and now just loves to eat it. He is known far and wide as an international author and origami expert with 30 books published. Richard enjoyed his time as President and is now the Technology Consultant for the Skeptic. Richard was awarded Life Membership of Australian Skeptics in 2001 for his work on The Great Skeptic CD and since then he has created the Great Skeptic CD2, the Great Water Divining DVD and video, created the Skeptics online shop, designed the "card carrying skeptic card", designed and created the "2005 Babes of Skepticism Calendar", founded "Sydney Skeptics in the Pub", initiated "The Skeptic Tank" radio show, produced the Australian Skeptics collection on TV"s "Theories of Everything" and created several of the Skeptics convention DVDs. Richard delights in investigations, teaching critical thinking to school students and uncovering quackery.

In his spare time, Richard is one of the team at the Mystery Investigators.

Eran was born in Israel in 1963 and arrived in Australia in 1999 with his family. Like many skeptics, he has always been a skeptic but didn’t know his weirdness had a name (let alone an organisation) until 2001, when he found out about Australian Skeptics through their web site. He has been on the NSW committee since 2002.

Eran is passionate about education and believes that the path to a rational society starts with children being trained to think critically. He is a member of several organisations dedicated to rethinking educational methods.

When he is not busy being a skeptic, Eran works as an IT consultant and enjoys spending time with his family, which includes 3 boys and a single female representative.

As a Barrister interested in history and science; Martin is intrigued by differing approaches to evidence and certainty. As an atheist with a few devout friends, he ponders the role of faith and the supernatural in the lives of people who pride themselves on their powers of reason and their grip on reality. He has been a fan of Robyn Williams’ “The Science Show” since it began in the ‘70s. After hearing Barry Williams interviewed there about astrology, Martin came to the Australian Skeptics to find out about much much more.

Ian grew up on a sheep farm in central Victoria, which at least taught him how things work and how to fix them when they don't. In a Presbyterian household. he figured out alone that the universe runs by science, not gods. There was a big awakening at 15 when he found another person with similar beliefs! Suddenly a lonely heresy became a legitimate topic for discussion. Ian graduated in physics and engineering at Monash University. and is active in amateur space activities, including the Ausroc rockets built by the Australian Space Research Institute (ASRI). Ian has worked in satellite communications, aircraft and satellite manufacture, and now as a rocket scientist for a launch project. Ian joined AS committee in 1983. He is interested in claims involving action at a distance, open to the possibility of electromagnetic effects. He designed and ran the Australian Skeptics 1980 Divining Tests, and retains some country friends who keep trying to prove they can divine water with their eye on the $100,000 prize. Ian is a friend of the Australian Museum, wants to protect the environment, and would like to find out how the mind works.

Richard graduated from the University of Sydney, MB BS, in 1971. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and practises as a GP in Lindfield. Richard's interest in alternative medicine led him to become a member of the Committee of the Australian Skeptics in 1986. He is frequently asked to comment on alternative medicine in the media. He has published a number of articles in the Skeptic and made presentations at various medical meetings. Crackpot remedies are easy to discredit, but Richard's special interest is the critical evaluation of some of the alternative medical practices that have become mainstream: acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine and chiropractic. Richard is also a past President of the NSW Skeptics

Dr Trevor Case is a Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology, Macquarie University. He is an experimental social psychologist who has conducted research examining the psychological processes involved in widespread superstitious belief and behaviour. In 1996, he was the inaugural recipient of the Australian Skeptics Eureka Prize for Critical Thinking and he has served on the New South Wales Skeptics since 1997.

Dr Karen Stollznow is Associate Editor of the Skeptic (but she can’t take your gall bladder out).

Karen has spent a decade investigating and writing about the paranormal and pseudoscientific, but she still hasn’t seen a ghost. She has been a non-bearded, non-bespectacled member of the NSW Committee since 1997 (before then, she had a beard).

Despite a career in academia and writing, Karen has never worked at McDonald’s. Karen is a researcher for the Script Encoding Initiative (http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/who.html) through Unicode (http://www.unicode.org/) and UC Berkeley (http://www.berkeley.edu/), and has lectured in linguistics at San Francisco State University (http://www.sfsu.edu/) and the University of New England (http://www.une.edu.au/). Karen also acts as a consultant linguist for various software companies in Silicon Valley.

Born in Sydney, Karen now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Travelling throughout the US, Karen finds many bizarre things to investigate!

Check out Karen’s website, Bad Language (http://www.bad-language.com/).

See Hunter Valley Region profiles for details

Barry Williams was born in southern Queensland in the early summer of 1938. Within a year the world was plunged into the most destructive conflict in its history. Are these two events connected? Not obviously, but it certainly makes one think. After a lifetime of gathering no particular expertise and a vast stock of utterly trivial knowledge, Barry at last discovered his metier when, in 1990, he was appointed editor of the Skeptic. When he grows up he wants to be an astronaut, meet interesting people, develop an unplayable leg break, work for world peace and sing the lead in la Boheme at La Scala. At the World Skeptic Convention held in Sydney in November 2000, CSICOP Chairman and founder, Paul Kurtz, presented Barry with a Distinguished Skeptic Award for his contribution to promoting Skepticism and critical thinking. He has also been made an Honorary Associate by Rationalists International.