[kitkat]

***But Professor Paul Kurtz of the State University of New York at Buffalo, who heads an organization that investigates claims of the paranormal, says he thinks the parents are "self-deceived." ***

For what it's worth:

***Professor Paul Kurtz of the State University of New York at Buffalo is also a full-time leftist.

Prof. Paul Kurtz, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, is a renowned academic philosopher of high rank. He has moreover the merit of having carried the ideals of secular humanism rationalism to the broad general public.
SNIP
. His dedicated work of several decades in service of the liberation of human mind from the bondages of religion, superstition and all kinds of dogmatism, has made a lasting impact on the intellectual climate of our times and stands as a guidepost into a better future.***

http://www.rationalistinternational.net/associates/p_kurtz.htm

[kitkat]

CORRECTION:

The *** before the sentence saying Kurtz is a full-time leftist should be at the beginning of the next sentence.

[stands2reason]

And that means he's wrong how exactly?

BTW have you ever read his opinions on Scientology or global warming?

[RightWingAtheist]

Kurtz speaks only for himself. My rationalism is in a tradition begun by the likes of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and David Hume, and has been carried on by the likes of George Santayana, H.L. Mencken and Sydney Hook. One of the things that burned me up about Kurtz's book The New Humanism (at least I think that was the title) was his rhetorical maneuvers against capitalism. After going on and on about all the flaws in theistic thought, he then describes free-market economics (as well as Ayn Rand's objectivism) as a "religion"! Although he also criticizes Marxism, he doesn't call it a religion, even though it's based completely on faith and refusal to acknowledge facts or reality. If Kurtz actually bothered to study economics, he'd see that capitalism truly is based on the objective study of social reality. To borrow from the motto of a few of my favorite FReepers, it assumes that the world is the way it is, and not how we wish it to be. Kurtz and those of a like mind have precisely the opposite philosophy-they want the world to be what they want it to be, instead of the way it is.