Then you'll fit in here well Dr D.

Welcome to the forum!

I was recommended here by some great people on an atheist group on Facebook.

Nora_Leonard wrote:

HughMcB wrote:LIFE recruited me on that fateful first day into his sadistic posse. Ever since then I've been pulling in survivors.

+1. I saw LIFE's post on Rationalia and came straight over and signed up. I think I was 6th to join.

I was in just before you if I remember correctly but I came by the same route though.

I was referred by a Facebook friend and I'm just poking around to get familiar with the board.

I was hanging out at another atheist site that was relatively new and small. One day all these refugees wandered through and I was curious what all the hubbub was about so I followed them.

Hey Gregg, I found you, nice to see you here. Jump in and row, it's a lot of fun.

Actually, I googled "How to deal with conspiracy theorists" and came across this forum.

oh_rissa wrote:Actually, I googled "How to deal with conspiracy theorists" and came across this forum.

In a year or 2 you will realize that walking away is the best response. If they are serious about research they will figure it out. If not, there isn't one thing you can say that will change their minds.

I've walked away already. A ten year friendship gone out the window. I enjoy healthy debate, but it wasn't even a debate anymore, it was "you're wrong, I'm right. end of story. you're not with me. you're against me"

I found it by thinking aloud, rather I was searching the internet to find other possible misotheist or misanthropes and decided to join because I also like skeptics

turnerj41 wrote:I found it by thinking aloud, rather I was searching the internet to find other possible misotheist or misanthropes and decided to join because I also like skeptics

Pretty much the same thing, kinda tripped over and landed here.

Though I must say that bar a few threads a lot of whats posted is not that rational. Still, can be a very interesting read at times.

I was having an argumen... Debate with a certain person over Youtube about the expanding earth hypothesis. A quick Google search and I found that the debate was also going on here (with half of the participants on Youtube and had been going on for hundreds of pages) and had covered just about every single piece of information I'd mentioned or document I'd referenced and many that I hadn't even considered.

A link to here was posted on another forum.

i was looking up a statistic, and happened to find the best citations here. looked around and decided i was desperate enough for intelligent conversation to resort to the intellectual equivalent of porn

Welcome silvermadrone, may I call you Austin? You may call me Aggie.

This forum caught my eye on the Tapatalk app network list. Glad I found it.

Time for a spot of history.

Most of the regulars present here now, will already know that I was a moderator over at RDF, as well as a regular combatant in the Debunking Creationism section of the forums, delivering assorted pieces of ordnance of choice in the direction of mythology-based assertions and outright lies for doctrine. I also decided to accept an invitation to join Rationalia some time before the "Year Zero" events took place at RDF, which I accepted (my join date over there is cited as 27th July 2009), partly to keep in touch with a few people who left RDF after the Great Schism Of 2008TM, and partly to partake of some of the fun and games over there, as a respite from a hard day's creotard bombing.

Then, of course, the "Year Zero" débacle struck RDF. Consequently, I was left temporarily somewhat in limbo, and promptly headed over to Rationalia to keep up with those parts of the unfolding developments that I was not directly party to. In that sense, Rationalia was the 'lifeboat' for me until LIFE turned up with a brand new ship. Many here will doubtless be grateful to the good folks at Rationalia, for answering the distress call at short notice, and withstanding the huge increase in strain upon their server, whilst something like 400 new people turned up overnight, providing the cyber equivalent of hot cocoa, sandwiches and blankets to the assorted refugees until a permanent home could be found for them, and although I was a member in relatively good standing at Rationalia before that, I too wish to state here my gratitude at their sterling efforts in conducting a rescue operation for the former RDF community at short notice, something that they did on an entirely voluntary basis, and in doing so, took considerable risks with their own server, as it was suddenly subjected to a workload a hundred times greater than usual. I can already picture Xamonas Chegwé telling the other admins over there "The engines cannae take it!"

Then, of course, LIFE stepped into the breach, and hove-to with his own vessel, allowing the refugees to offload, then begin the business of trying to rebuild the community that was eminently considered so worthless by the powers that be at RDF, who gave the moderators not one word of thanks for three years or more of exemplary service, nor bothered to find out just how much hard science content was delivered on the old forum.

Indeed, I am minded to note with some irony, the manner in which Richard Dawkins complained about the purported absence thereof, despite never having seen the large number of scientific papers brought into the Debunking Creationism forum by numerous veterans of that combat zone, or the monumental amount of labour that was expended by people explaining the contents thereof. That's before we consider the actual science forums themselves, which enjoyed a large number of regular contributions, including the emergence of a science writing competition that was similarly cast to the flames, in a manner strikingly reminiscent of the sacking of the Library of Alexandria.

Fortunately, not only has a good quantity of that original material been saved (and at this point I have to offer a big hat tip to Nineberry, among others, in this regard), but it has now been augmented by the emergence of similarly valuable contributions here at RatSkep. Unlike the old place, however, the importance of a forum community is understood here, which is why we provide our very own social arena - after all, not everyone in the non-supernaturalist community is a tenured scientist, and even those who are enjoy some light relief, humour, etc., the old adage about all work and no play making Jack a dull boy being apposite here. Indeed, the social side of the forums provides a valuable adhesive, allowing disparate individuals with diverse interests to mingle meaningfully, in an arena that doesn't look too much like school, and the inability of Dawkins to recognise the value thereof, is a reminder that what counts in the battle for freedom from doctrine, is not personalities, but sound ideas, which remain sound no matter who disseminates them. This should render null and void at a stroke, facile attempts to caricature those of us who happen not to treat mythology as fact, as "followers" or "disciples" (how supernaturalists love their instances of projection!), because we happy band of humans, uncluttered by Palaeolithic fantasies, recognise human failings, and did so even before various events educating us robustly with respect thereto. Ironically, it is in fact the purveyors of doctrines, who elevate the products of human minds to an undeserved status, who exhibit a failure to understand the elementary concepts familiar to us. This, of course, is a subject for discourse that deserves its own thread, and I might be minded to launch that very thread in the near future.

It simply remains for me to say, that having now enjoyed over two years of my tenure here at RatSkep, a big word of thanks is due not only to LIFE for providing a new ship, and to the many disparate individuals who make up the community here, whose contributions are valuable whether they're of a scientific or social nature, but also to the people over on the other vessel over at Rationalia, sailing a sometimes parallel course, sometimes engaging in zig-zagging of their own about the discoursive oceans, and whom I am not going to abandon in their own hour of need, as they find themselves subject to undeserved, and lately, wholly gratuitous shellfire.

I came across "Reality is my Religion" blog and noted a long lost butterfly mentioned there. Then the pirates flag on the horizon. Hiho me fellow douchebags, or at least such are the classifications I've been receiving of late. Here to redefine myself ad nauseum, at your service.

A friend showed me this site, in particular the why stevebee is wrong thread. I made my debut there, with the result of everyone thinking I was a sockpuppet. Spent a lot of time after my deconversion period reading through the stuff here.

I must confess, at first I thought Cali was Richard Dawkins in disguise, because the blue butterfly was also on the cover of TGSOE. That idea is laughably ridiculous now, as Dawkins never swears.

Fuck he doesn't.


I can't see youtube videos on ratskep so I hope it is the correct one.