Charlottesville Skeptics

Welcome to our corner of Charlottesville's skeptical community! Founded in 2006, Charlottesville Skeptics hosts monthly dinners, occasional outdoor or online activities, and seasonal parties.

What is Skepticism?
Modern skepticism is a positive attitude, which is growing worldwide. Skeptics seek to avoid being mistakenly convinced of anything that is false, while yet remaining persuadable for anything that is true. Prominent organizations include the Center for Inquiry, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and the James Randi Educational Foundation. Periodicals such as Free Inquiry the Skeptical Inquirer are gaining readership. Furthermore, many informal bloggers, journalists and other writers, as well as this and other meetup groups, contribute to our worldview. Skeptics are gardeners of ideas, weeding as needed so that good ideas may grow.

Most skeptics conclude that nontheism flows naturally from the above. However, we are not merely atheists; our group includes humanists, agnostics, naturalists, and nonreligious freethinkers. We value reason and rationality over tradition or reputed authority. Not everybody who doubts what they are told to believe fit within this sense of a skeptic, though. If you have faith in anything "supernatural", this group is probably not for you, even if you are skeptical in other domains. On the other side of the coin, blind contrarians and "conspiracy theorists" also may tend to fit in poorly.

Why do we meet up?
1.      To  provide fellowship and fun among skeptics, without worrying about showing respect for religious or other traditional, non-evidence based ideas.
2.      To do so in the public sphere, to set a good example and help normalize skepticism, increase local disdain for pseudoscience, and decrease general science devaluation.
3.      To seek interesting new knowledge through conversation with diverse individuals and the occasional invited speaker.

So join us, and have (occasionally irreverent) fun!