What we’re about
Welcome to the Palmerston North Skeptics in the Pub meetup group. It’s in a bad way.
Our intent is for a safe, respectful conversation about evidence, science, research and beliefs.
What happens in practice is that this meetup seems to attract climate change deniers, male rights activists and religious people looking to whet their evangelism on some atheist noobs. Because of this I have become cowardly and afraid of publicising this event, and it has become a self fulfilling prophecy. The only people who come have a beef based on premises I profoundly disagree with. That’s okay if you have a group to talk stuff through, but it’s just me and I’m tired of facing people I want to throttle when all I want to do is talk science and skepticism.
So I’m cancelling all future meetings unless people directly approach me and suggest we have a meetup. Perhaps there’s someone out there who will join me and we can rebuild this together. In the meantime, be sceptical, love science and hug a climate scientist in a safe, consensual way. Just high fiving would be fine.
"A skeptic is one who prefers beliefs and conclusions that are reliable and valid to ones that are comforting or convenient, and therefore rigorously and openly applies the methods of science and reason to all empirical claims, especially their own. A skeptic provisionally proportions acceptance of any claim to valid logic and a fair and thorough assessment of available evidence, and studies the pitfalls of human reason and the mechanisms of deception so as to avoid being deceived by others or themselves. Skepticism values method over any particular conclusion." - Dr. Steven Novella of The New England Skeptics and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast.
