The price of knowledge was only a dollar last week as the UCO Skeptics threw a fundraiser in the form of a two-day-long Q-and-A session covering every aspect of critical thinking.
Those with inquiring minds (and more than a few singles lying about) could pay to pick the brains of the new group’s members, including the group’s president, psychology grad student Arpaya Dalaya, as well as vice president Matt Korstjens.
The group was raising money to help fund their inaugural trip to Houston, Texas, for the Texas Freethought Convention on Oct. 7.
The Texas Freethought Convention is an annual event sponsored by the Atheist Alliance of America. According to the event’s website, this year’s guests include Richard Dawkins and biology professor and science writer Paul Zachary “PZ” Myers.
“We have a lot of money that we need, but what we’re trying to do is do our best to cut into those costs,” Korstjens said. “We are planning on spending quite a bit of our own money to go, but we are trying to help reduce costs.”
Students could either ask the Skeptics their own questions or choose from a prefabricated list that was on display. Some of the questions included “Why should I believe you?” and “What evidence is there for evolution?”
“People ask questions,” Korstjens said. “We try to give the answer, according to whatever the evidence is.”
Other questions tackled religion, homeopathy and how skeptics figure out which information is credible and which information isn’t. Questioners kept things civil during the two-day fundraiser.
“Well, it’s a mixed bag, we have a lot of like-minded people come over and kind of sign up for the group, rather than donate or whatever, gets some free material,” Korstjens said. “We’ve also had a couple of people that were a little contentious, a little argumentative, but nothing serious.”
Dalaya reaffirmed this.
“We haven’t really had any serious confrontations at all,” she said.
There was, however, some issue with people confusing “skeptic” for “conspiracy theorist.”
“I think most people don’t know what a skeptic is,” Dalaya said. “A lot of them confuse us with conspiracy theorists, so we do get questions like ‘oh, are you skeptical of 9/11?’ or, like the guy who was just here: ‘Do you think Oswald shot Kennedy?’ And we’re not really looking into conspiracies, we’re looking more into pseudosciences and trying to see whether or not there’s evidence for them or not.”
The UCO Skeptics will be holding another two-day fundraiser on Sept. 28 and 29.