Several moons ago, I visited the TruthCon, a convention with a difference. It brought together a wide variety of extraordinary claims together under one roof. I was unable to write about it here because I was reporting on it on behalf of Skeptical Inquirer. Well, it’s up now and ripe for your delectation. Enjoy!
(I should mention that I am also going to be appearing on the conspiracy theory panel at the upcoming CSICon in New Orleans in October. You should really come. It’s going to rock out!)
RJB
Skeptical Humanities 
Well I read your article. Rarely have I read about so much fail in one place. Is this the result when a generation grew up on a show like The X-Files? A show that pandered, at times outrageously, to paranormal crap? A show that had over and over again the message that being rational and skeptical was bad and that faith and believing in outrageous crap was good. A show that validated over and over again Muldaur’s brain dead cry “I want to believe!”
So now we are getting it seems a bumper crop of true believers who want to believe and will surrender their critical faculties in order to believe.
I find it impossible to believe that the people you talked to are that stupid, it is far more likely they want to believe and therefore turn off to some extent their minds. Now it woudn’t be so bad if they admitted that was what they were doing but they don’t. I’ve met my fair share of true believers who were into all sorts of woo, I’ve met extremely few who I would call stupid. The vast majority were actually quite bright, many in fact were extremely bright, but in one or a few areas their minds seem to collapse and crap takes over.
I think more than a few people think that people who believe such stuff are idiots. That is simply not true except in a tiny minority of cases. Why people want to believe this sort of stuff is another question. I personally think it is, too some extent, a replacement for lost Religious faith.
I do however think that what can be called anti-rational propaganda in the media like The X-Files has had a bad effect by making such crap more acceptable in many peoples eyes.
I forgot to mention. A pity the 9/11 “truthers” wern’t there they would have fit right in. On second thought that was probably why they refused to attend.
I liked the X-files. 😦
Then again I knew it was fiction. The fact that the rational, skeptical one was a devout christian confused the shit outta me growing up and always seemed pretty far fetched.