Jon Ronson - Time to get Organised

These have been exciting times for us here at Birmingham Skeptics.  We’ve had some brilliant talks over the last few months, word is getting around the midlands and as a result our talks have been getting more and more popular.  Those who were at Ash Pryce’s excellent ‘How to be a Psychic Conman’ show will have noticed how popular it’s become.

On top of this, we’ve got the amazing Jon Ronson doing his talk ‘The Psychopath Test’ for us next week (13th July) at The Victoria.  We’re really looking forward to it, and, looking at the numbers that have responded on Facebook, lots of other people from around the area are too.

As a result of this, we’ve decided that we need to be a little more organised

The Return of the Alpha Skeptic

By Patrick Redmond

This is a rather belated follow up to my Alpha Skeptic post. There I described how I started the Alpha Course ran by a local evangelical church and I promised to follow up and report how I did. Well, basically, I failed. How and why I failed is a little confusing and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. I was very open about my atheism in what I thought was a nonaggressive way, but I think that the problem was in my initial hopeful and naive conception of what the Alpha Course was for.

According to the advert it was for people to come and find out about Christianity and to ask questions. It said that you could come to all or dip in and out, which is what I was going to do. It also said that there was no need to make a commitment.

If you read the account of my first session the experience was positive, lots of debate and openness. My second session was not so. My life is full of ‘stuff’ and so I had missed out some weeks and came back in on