Palmerston North Skeptics in the Pub

With its scenic miniature railway, the National Rugby Museum and the country's second-largest ball of string, Palmerston North is often wrongly described as “the Armpit of New Zealand”.

When Massey University is in session, the IQ of the city as a whole nears average, and from this rich intellectual demographic Palmerston North Skeptics in the Pub draws its intellectual muscle.

We have been running PNSitP (pronounced “penis tip”) since January 2011 which, as alert readers will see, adds up to literally hundreds of monthly meetups for the group. When I say group, I mean myself; an obelisk that has stood the test of time as a cast of characters had ebbed and flowed around it.

The group goes through cycles which reflect both the vagaries of word-of-mouth and my lack of interest in creating publicity. We have had at times a very large group, with meetings of fifteen or twenty showing up for special events. (We resist unfair comparisons with a local church, which has four hundred regularly turning up to its uninsulated hall and even then paying tithes).

A notable occasion was when a Christian evangelist challenged the PNSitP to a public debate on morality: “Is there such a thing as objective morality without God?” We filled the top deck of the Tomato Café to see how this would proceed, and we were not disappointed.

To their credit, the two evangelists who turned up played by the rules. “The Bible does NOT prove your point!” we said from the outset. Whatever they offered us was to come from other sources than revelation, and they did their level best with this constraint.

That was truly a great evening, with both sides showing mutual respect, but at the same time asking very focused and interesting questions. One altercation saw the evangelist saying, “But without God you are nothing but evolved protoplasm and genetic coding within an existence that has no purpose!” and the reply was “You say that like it's a bad thing!”

Another memorable moment was provided by one member of the group challenging the fundamentalist to “disprove” his own theory that the world was carried on the back of a vast turtle, swimming for aeons through the void. The evangelist had a good stab at it: “What's holding the turtle up?” to which the reply was “It's turtles all the way down!” The evening was very challenging, frustrating, boisterous and exciting. And we all left as friends, even the turtle guy.

That guy though. A brilliant debater, fearless and quick witted, great to have at your side in a debate with evangelists, but difficult to have as a member of a group that relies on good relations. He denied anthropocentric climate change which led to a challenge to our group. Could we reach common ground with this man and his entrenched denialism? Were we the ones who were entrenched?

His presence in the group repeatedly threw out the question, are you sure you are right? How do you know that the Earth is warming as a result of man-made emissions? These were really good questions and we did our best to answer them.

But eventually he turned every topic to climate change, and began to dominate our group. I was sadly reminded of the holocaust denier David Irving, whose mastery of history and knowledge of Third Reich minutiae makes it pointless for other historians to attempt a debate. All of his skills, his knowledge, his grasp of detail and his eloquence are directed to maintaining a falsehood. It was the same with our own denier and his relentless pursuit of a single topic had driven people away. With a heavy heart we had to tell him to leave. We learned a lesson.

We have now a new rule that simply paraphrases the “don't be a dick” imperative of a lot of groups like ours. The rule is that politeness and respect reign supreme, and if you aren't persuading another member of your point of view, let it go.

This year we had a challenge that brought a lot of people out to the (now closed) African Bar. A kindly philosopher had decided he would like to offer us a chance to debate whether or not the mind and the body were two distinct entities. His assertion was that he could “prove” that the mind was not the brain. To be honest I'm no philosopher, and my head hurt as we tried to wrap ourselves around his arguments. Again, an infuriating night with people passionately arguing their position. We were swelled that night by a contingent from Wellington, and had a fiery debate, but one that remained amicable.

The group has had its high points and frankly, some evenings that were no fun at all. At the moment we are riding a high. A bunch of people who turned up for purely social reasons (and who I thought didn't get skepticism at all) turned up again and brought other people. We have people who are steeped in skepticism, and people who have only just begun to consider the question “how do I know?” The rule is that we enjoy ourselves.

Skeptics are a rather odd subset of the species, but summer is coming. The long evenings seem to draw a bigger crowd. Perhaps we will meet someone who is good at publicity, and then we'll need a hall to cram us all in, with our bottles of crafted beer or entry-level chardonnay, irreverent good humour and frantic fact-checking over the Café Wi-Fi. So, if you have seen the second biggest ball of twine and exhausted the thrills of the rugby museum, why not seek us out? We meet on the second Friday of the month at 7pm at The Grand. Bring something to talk about.