The Magic Room

I push a button. Doors slide open. I step inside and the doors close. I push a button and the rooms shakes and makes noise for awhile. The doors open and I am somewhere else. Magic! Right?

But if I look closer I will notice that there is a gap in the floor between the hallway and the room. I might also notice that there are two sets of doors - one on the outside and one on the inside. I might also go up the stairs and see if the next floor above is the same as the one the doors open on when I push that button. Once I noticed that these "magic" rooms were called elevators I could look them up online or in an encyclopedia and see that they are large metal boxes suspended from cables that lift them up and lower by means of a large electric motor. Amazing engineering that saves me the trouble of climbing many floors worth of stairs, but "magic"? Not in the least.

Hello!

Hi, my name is Bill Hunsicker. I am a small s skeptic, a small a atheist, and a small l libertarian. I try to live my life by all these philosophies but I do not want to push any of it on anyone else. Part of my philosophy is that I will not force my philosophy on anyone else. I am also a member of the Neothink Society and the I am involved in the Twelve Visions Party. I will explain these in future posts.

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle my ongoing journey from a gullible, somewhat religious, apolitical person to the skeptical, atheistic, libertarian leaning person I am becoming. Topics will include every aspect of my life and how my journey has affected my perspective on them. This blog is about me and is not intended to suggest how anyone else should act.

I first became aware of the Skeptical movement last July (2013) when I found the Skepticality podcast on iTunes. This podcast led me to The Skeptics Guide to the Universe which is now my main source for skeptical information although I still listen to Skepticality and other podcasts such as Geologic and Skeptoid. I also listen to Skeptic related podcasts such as Penn's Sunday School and Skeptically Challenged.

I was politically independent for most of my adult life and voted for whoever said what I agreed with. After a while I noticed that they rarely did what they said they were going to do. For a while I did not vote at all. In 2004 I joined the Libertarian Party in New Jersey and ran for state legislature in 2005. I got 743 votes, the winner got 30,000+ votes. I wondered what I was actually accomplishing. I also noticed that many of the members held opinions that varied greatly from each other and the platform of the Libertarian Party. I left the Libertarian Party in 2006 when I became involved in what is now the Neothink Society. I participated in the founding of the Twelve Visions Party in 2009. Since then I have been actively involved in the organizing and promoting the movement.

I was an agnostic (although I did explore several religions) for most of my life. I decided around 1990 that I was not interested in organized religion although I thought that there may be some kind of superior being.
In 1997 I read The Neothink Discovery and came to the conclusion that there was no evidence for any god in any form and became an atheist.

I welcome comments that are constructive and honest debate on the subjects I discuss. However, any comments that attack me or anyone else personally or say "Don't tell me how to live my life." or words to that effect will be rejected.

I look forward to discussing these ideas and learning from each other. Let's go!