Canberra Skeptics Incorporated

Seal of Canberra Skeptics Inc

Welcome to the Website of Canberra Skeptics.

This Web page provides information about the Canberra Skeptics, including notices of forthcoming events and activities.

The association holds regular informal meetings, usually on the 13th of each month, at various locations; see below for details.

Planned Events and Activities

Canberra Skeptics' programme of planned activities is outlined below. Please note that details may change.

Next event

Do democratic societies have a right to do wrong?

Dr Christian Barry

On Monday, 14 December 2009

Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: Lecture theatre, Innovations Building, Eggleston Rd, ANU

Click here for a map; the Innovations Building is numbered 124

Free admission

No need to book but note that the theatre seats 106.

Do democratic societies have a moral right against others that these others not prevent them from wrongdoing? Many political theorists seem to think that they do. "It is a feature of democratic government", Michael Walzer writes, "that the people have a right to act wrongly - in much the same way that they have a right to act stupidly." Most think that the scope of this right is limited. A majority in a democratic society is not usually held to have a moral right not to be prevented if it is about to enslave or arbitrarily disenfranchise a minority, or if it were to launch a grievously unjust war against another society. Many have argued, however, that it would be wrong in principle to intervene to prevent some wrongs that democratic societies would inflict. This view, which we shall refer to as the right to do wrong thesis (RTDW) can be stated as follows: for democratic societies A and agents B, there is a class of unjust policies and institutions X, such that if A chooses to implement X pursuant to democratic procedures, it is in principle morally impermissible for B to intervene to prevent the implementation of X. Dr Christian Barry will be skeptically reviewing the issues involved in order to help better understand the ethics of democratic governance.

Christian Barry is a lecturer in philosophy and a research fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the ANU. He is a host and producer on Public Ethics Radio, the Centre’s regular on-line audio program. His research focuses on closing the gap between theory and practice in international justice.

Future events

  • January 2010

    To be advised: social event

  • February 2010

    To be confirmed: talk on scams

  • March 2010

    Terrorism conspiracy theories and the 1978 Sydney Hilton bombing, Lockerbie, 9/11, and the London 7/7 bombings

    Speaker: Clive Williams

  • April 2010

    To be confirmed: talk on bioethics or the question of genetic testing for insurance purposes

Past events

Details of some previous Canberra Skeptics events and activities can be found here.

A Powerpoint file (2 MB) of Professor Thomas Pogge's talk of 15 July 2009, World poverty: explanations and proposed solutions, is available here.

A podcast of Professor Hugh White's talk of 13 March 2009, Clear thinking about national security: why is it so hard?, is available here.

A PDF file (2 MB) of the slides from Professor Peter Collignon's talk of 15 December 2008, Drinking our own waste: change we can believe in?, is available here.

About Canberra Skeptics

Canberra Skeptics Incorporated is a non-profit association incorporated in the Australian Capital Territory for the purpose of promoting critical thinking. While it is a branch of the Australian Skeptics, the two organisations are independent. For more details about the Australian Skeptics, visit their Website.

More details of the objectives of Canberra Skeptics are listed here.

Copies of the winning entries in the Cartoon Competition run as part of the Young Skeptics programme at the Annual Convention can be found here.

Subscriptions

Membership fees for Canberra Skeptics are currently $8 per year, or $5 per year for members with limited incomes, payable by 30 June each year. For new members there is also a one-off joining fee of $2.

Financial members are entitled either to free admission, or to admission at a members' discount rate, to all Canberra Skeptics functions where fees are charged.

A PDF copy of our pamphlet Do you believe everything you are told? can be downloaded from here (75 kB). It has an application form for joining Canberra Skeptics.

While anyone interested in critical thinking, member or not, is welcome to attend our informal monthly get-togethers, non-members will, of course, not be entitled to vote at any formal meetings where official business of Canberra Skeptics is to be conducted. Nor are they eligible to receive members' discounts on admission to any of its functions.

Membership of Canberra Skeptics does not include a subscription to the Australian Skeptics' magazine, the Skeptic, and nor does subscription to that magazine include membership of Canberra Skeptics.

E-mail mailing list

Canberra Skeptics' secretary maintains a mailing list of people interested in receiving e-mail notices about our activities. It is not necessary to be a member to have your e-mail address on this list. If you would like to be included, please let us know. (Also please let us know if you change your e-mail address!)

Members without access to e-mail will receive notices of all Canberra Skeptics activities by post.

Committee

The Canberra Skeptics committee usually meets once a month. To obtain further information about, and a mug shot of, any committee member, click on his or her name below.

Kevin Davies -- External Relations Officer
Pierre le Count -- Webmaster; notices for meetings
Jim Manning -- Secretary
Michael O'Rourke -- President
Marianne Pietersen -- Treasurer and Public Officer
Nick Ware -- snail mail

Contacts

The postal address of Canberra Skeptics is:

Canberra Skeptics Inc
PO Box 555
Civic Square  ACT  2608

and our e-mail address is:

Objectives of Canberra Skeptics Inc

  • Establishing a network of people in the Canberra region interested in examining claims about psychic, paranormal, and similar phenomena systematically and with an open mind

  • Preparing bibliographies and maintaining a library of material relating to such claims

  • Making information and relevant expertise relating to such claims available to the public and media

  • Encouraging impartial research into these matters

  • Supporting the publication of literature which carefully examines claims of the paranormal

  • Convening meetings and conferences in support of its objects

  • Fostering links with similar organisations

  • Promoting a sceptical attitude

Publications

Argos

The following back issues of the Canberra Skeptics newsletter Argos, written by a past president, Pete Griffith, are available:

No. 1: January 2003
No. 2: February/March 2003
No. 3: March/April 2003
No. 4: May 2003
No. 5: June/July 2003
No. 6: August 2003
No. 7: September/October 2003  (MS Word (45 kB))
No. 8: November/December 2003
No. 9: March 2004
No. 10: April 2004
No. 11: May 2004
No. 12: June 2004
No. 13: July 2004
No. 14: March 2006

Pamphlets

Over the years Canberra Skeptics members have written many pamphlets on topics related to its aims and objects. Some of the more recent ones are available for downloading. These are designed to be printed double-sided, in landscape mode on A4 paper. When so printed, the paper can be folded into a compact triple-leaf pamphlet.

Do you believe everything you are told? ( PDF (75 kB) )

Holocaust Revisionism by Peter Barrett ( MS Word (58 kB), PDF (30 kB) )

Homoeopathy by Pete Griffith ( MS Word (67 kB) )

Intelligent Design by David Wilson ( PDF (29 kB) )

Weight Loss Information by Vicki Moss ( MS Word (98 kB), PDF (55 kB) )

Links to Other Sites of Interest