NoBull.ws - Update 2005-10-10

General Information

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Since good, honest, intelligent people disagree every day about nearly everything, my "good faith effort" is the best I can promise. However, if you think I've changed your meaning significantly, I'll either remove your words or offer you an opportunity to email me a correction.

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From Bill Dearmore

You are receiving this first No Bull Update because you asked for it, but you probably don't recognize the name. I tried many names and several URLs for my "skeptical, liberal website with a scientific bias" before I found one I really like. Finally, I settled on No Bull and located it at http://www.nobull.ws as discussed briefly below.

Although there is still much room for improvement, I am ready to let the public see the website; and I intend to add a page or two each month as long as I live. Or until my fingers wear out, whichever comes first.

This update is based on the home page of the site, except for this note. The links in this Table of Contents will not work; but the ones on the site do, of course.

Anybody who wants to may subscribe to this free Update through a form on nearly every page at the website, to be notified whenever I make a major change or addition to the site.

Thanks for your support. Enjoy and please let me know what suggestions you have.

With Warmest Regards,

Bill Dearmore

Bull Is a Metaphor for Nonsense.

Why? I have no idea. Sometimes it is used alone; other times, with a second word indicating manure. On this site, we'll let the single word stand alone, without the reference to the fertilizer.

I've tried for months to find an available URL that expresses exactly what I want. It has been difficult for many years to find a good dot-com that is short, pithy, and memorable and expresses what I want to do with this site. I considered a lot of possibilities, and finally settled on Shooting-the-Bull.com; but it really wasn't right.

I didn't qualify for a dot-org, dot-gov, dot-mil, or dot-edu URL; and I didn't want the nationalism of dot-us. When I found dot-ws promoted as standing for "Web Site," I immediately thought this was the answer.

Since then, I've seen it promoted as "World Site;" and that's OK. But I've learned it was originally meant for Western Samoa. Oh, well! Let's use nobull.ws anyway. I think it's going to work out just fine.

No Bull is a skeptical web site.

Exactly what does that mean? I intend to devote an entire page to this subject in the very near future.

In the meantime, dictionary.com defines a skeptic in part as "one who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions" and "someone who habitually doubts accepted beliefs."

Except for the part about disagreeing, these seem like pretty good definitions.

And yes, a skeptic is likely to disagree with many conclusions of the less skeptical people around him or her, but the disagreement is not the skepticism. It is a result.

We'll discuss this at length soon. The article is already essentially written; I just need to edit it and put it on a page.

Let me add for now that skepticism is not cynicism, pessimism, unhappiness, or depression. It does not lead to sorrow, gloom, discouragement, or dismay. It does not produce paranoia, fear, hatred, or suspicion; and it is not a protest against anything.

Life simply offers more questions than answers, and the answers are often more difficult to learn than they seem. A skeptic is likely to keep looking for answers when others feel certain they already have them.

We'll ask a lot of questions and try to find answers when we can. Sometimes we'll be pretty sure of the answers; other times, not so sure. We'll recognize no sacred cows as we delve into religion, philosophy, politics, cloning, abortion, evolution, and many other controversial subjects, trying to make sense of the world we live in.

Honestly, though, engaging in controversy is NOT my desire. Isaac Asimov -- with almost five hundred books and many thousands of short stories, articles, and essays to his credit -- sometimes referred to himself as a "professional explainer."

I am not a professional in any sense of the word, and I have neither Asimov's talent nor his education. On a smaller scale, though, an explainer is exactly what I want to be.

Simplifying difficult ideas so they are both interesting and understandable seems to be one of my talents. I made a pretty good living doing it for a few years.

Now I'm retired and writing mostly because I want to; so theoretically I can write about whatever I want to. What I want to do is explain a wide variety of difficult subjects in plain, simple language so anybody can understand them.

However, I am reminded many times every day that we are drowning in an ocean of superstition here in the United States. In some other parts of the world, it is an even deeper ocean. Dealing with this nonsense requires more of my writing energy and time than I would prefer, but I consider it necessary.

Besides that, much of the initial material here has been adapted from my previous web site, The Skeptic's Soap Box, which discussed religion almost exclusively.

For those reasons, this site will initially have an overabundance of articles about religion and superstition. I hope this can be a temporary situation. We'll see.

No Bull is not meant to be either a soap box or a pulpit. Its purpose is not to argue or preach, but to inform, explain, and reason. But I should probably warn you, it's often pretty hard for me not to get excited about a subject.

As the world-famous magician, James �The Amazing� Randi, said recently, "It's a very dangerous thing to believe in nonsense." I agree totally.

For that reason, we're going to do our best to spot the nonsense in our society and get rid of it. We want no bull!

When we feel like we can spare the time, though, I would much rather discuss things like what makes the sky blue, a sunset red, and where all the colors in a rainbow come from. Why do some kinds of leaves turn red, brown, or yellow in the fall? If you and I both look at something red, does it look the same to you as it looks to me? Or do our brains interpret it differently? How could we ever know?

How do we think? Can we do whatever we can imagine? Do we really create our own reality? Is it possible for an objective fact to be true for you and false for me?

Do we really need to go back to the moon? And Mars? Why or why not?

Did we really come from monkeys? Is that even what Darwin said?

When does life begin? Maybe more to the point, DOES new life ever begin? Are there better or more important questions to ask about a fetus?

Remember, a skeptic is not one who knows all the answers. Rather, a skeptic simply doubts things that don't make sense, unless there is very good evidence they are true anyway.

He or she probably wants answers as badly as anybody else, but the skeptic is likely to keep on looking for them long after others have made up their minds. Even if the skeptic finds what appears to be an answer, he or she will realize there may still be a better answer. Or a more complete one.

Science, for example, could never work without skepticism. In the article on the scientific method, I have given a couple of examples of essentially correct answers that were improved on and made more complete as technology improved enough to provide the better answers. Go ahead! Read it! It's not as bad as you think.

Generally, I'll try not to make fun of other people or their beliefs; but some ideas are just too silly to be taken seriously. I'll try to give them all the respect they deserve, but sometimes that isn't very much.

As I write both for myself and my readers, my main purposes are these:

To think skeptically.
To encourage my readers to think skeptically.
To use skeptical thinking to understand a variety of difficult and sometimes controversial concepts and (when possible) reach appropriate conclusions.
To share some fun with my readers. After all, skeptics need fun, too.

Here are a few questions we may discuss as time permits. And you are welcome to participate, after we get started:

Is God any more real than Santa Claus?
Is Allah different from God?
What in the world is YHVH?
When does life begin? Or DOES life ever begin?
How accurate is DNA evidence?
Are UFOs real? If so, what are they and where do they come from?
What about astrology?
Are there intergalactic aliens who abduct humans for medical examinations or sex?
Is the Bible suitable reading material for children?
Is there any real, credible proof as to whether or not the Bible is a revelation from God? What about the Koran (or Qur'an, if you prefer)?
What should we say about witches, magic, good and bad luck, black cats, broken mirrors, "and so ad infinitum"?

I promise to try hard to keep the site and the Update interesting.