Secular Humanists Congregate in Spirit of Friends

You are barely religious, if at all, you are decidedly liberal on social and cultural issues and you profess a scientific view of reality.

Where do you find like-minded souls, er, people, to meet and mingle with?

As some secular humanist and freethinker groups struggle to draw more than 50 people to their monthly meetings, a group called the Skeptic Society, started four years ago by a Glendale native, seems to have found a way to attract nonbelievers as well as the slightly spiritual.

Michael Shermer, who has taught at Glendale Community College and is an adjunct professor of history and science at Occidental College, counts 10,000 Skeptic Society members nationwide and an average of 300 people at monthly lectures on the Caltech campus in Pasadena.

Skeptic magazine, launched by Shermer in 1992 with 1,000 subscribers, now prints 25,000 copies.

"We are bigger than most scientific journals and climbing fast," said Shermer, who now lives in Altadena. "We investigate [scientific] claims that are . . . controversial or in the paranormal area."

One way the society may have succeeded, he said, is to eschew anti-religious goals. In contrast to atheist and some humanist groups, "we don't have a goal to de-convert religious people," he said. However, the group does challenge the anti-evolution arguments of creationism, which Shermer regards as "smuggling religion into classrooms under the guise of science."

Nor does Shermer say he is trying to supplant skeptical groups with longer histories. "The more the merrier if they hold the view that science and rationality offer solutions to human problems," he said. "But I think all of us need to be cautious when dealing with religion, because people get offended so easily," he added.

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Indeed, atheists generally are held in low esteem by the public. Six of 10 Americans in a recent survey by Glendale's Barna Research Group said atheists have a negative influence on society--a far higher negative rating than even controversial faith groups.

Yet, in a Times Poll of the San Fernando Valley in late 1991, 20% of adults said they had no religion, matching the statewide percentage found in an earlier survey by researchers at UC Santa Barbara.

So why do some groups espousing an ethical, liberal and skeptical perspective find it hard to attract people from the pool of "nones" in surveys that ask religious affiliation?