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About Sceptic SA |
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Posted by Wayne de Villiers
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Sunday, 06 January 2008 |
Sceptics South Africa (SSA) (in Afrikaans, Skepties Suid-Afrika) is an organisation open to anyone who has a sceptical disposition to life, questioning the validity of claims by following the basic scientific methods of observation, independent testing, rational deduction, and verification by means of copious evidence. SSA functions as a non-profit, member-supported structure with annual membership fees used to fund the following activities: · Sponsoring regular lectures at various scientific institutions in South Africa.
· To provide, through active participation in the public debate, information on controversial claims to the media, schools, teachers and other similar institutions.
· To organise and present an annual scientific conference with a central theme.
· To enhance public awareness of the value of science and to instill an attitude of critical endeavour among its members specifically and the general public at large.
· To publish books on science and scepticism and to make available a data-base of science and sceptical books at a discount price to its members.
· To organise scientific tours for research and educational purposes.
· To work in alignment with other Sceptical organisations such as The Skeptics Society on America, The British Sceptics, Sceptics of the Netherlands, and others.
SSA’s objective is to counter the flight from science and reason that has become common around the world and to enhance knowledge of the benefits proven science holds in stall for developing countries on the African continent. SSA’s establishment inter alia arose because of the Mephistophelesian anti-scientific phenomenon in 21 st century society (Mephistopheles, disguised in his master, Faust’s, gown, addresses a student whom Faust refuses to see): Scoff at all knowledge and despise
reason and science, those flowers of mankind.
Let the father of all lies
with dazzling necromancy make you blind,
then I’ll have you unconditionally…
- Goethe: Faust, Part I, Act II:1851-1855 (translated by Carlyle F.MacIntyre).
With regard to claims made by a large variety of unscientific and pseudoscientific propagators (creationists, Intelligent Designers, Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists, cults, religions, numerologists, palm- and other bodily parts-readers, witch hunters, life-after-death believers, near-death experiences, alien-abductee theorists, and numerous others), SSA follows the sceptical dictum proposed by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan: Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Like Michael Shermer’s Skeptical Society in the USA, SSA follows the route proposed by the 17 th century Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza: I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
SSA also adheres to the rational challenge set by Immanuel Kant in his summary of what the Enlightenment stood for, a challenge that becomes more important every day because of chosen ignorance by so many people and a flight from reason and evidence: Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without direction from another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolve and courage to use it without another’s guidance. Sapere aude! Dare to know! That is the motto of the Enlightenment.
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