On Sunday morning, I will be talking to a crowd of American atheists about belief in werewolves in post-Reformation Europe. My subject is usually consumed enthusiastically by atheists, because they find vampires and witches no sillier than angels and, in any case, studying these things leads to insights into what makes us human.
As a story, the idea of the werewolf is really very good. So are the ideas of vampires and witches. The trouble is just that stories bleed into what we take to be real, and in the case of things like witches that can have terrible results.
If the tweets are any guide, James Croft killed it at Skepticon earlier this morning, doing funny accents and acting out a comic and then inspiring everyone.
I really, really wanted to be there for Hyde’s talk, and I’m kicking myself now for having to miss a lot of good talks in order to get back home in time to do my real job.
I hate it when pesky real life interferes.
Of course, some vampire stories are better than others…
As a story, all of the nonsense in the Bible is really very good. Angels, demons, hell, and the undead all work quite nicely within the stories, movies and games I enjoy. It’s really just too bad that people think these things are real rather than stories that help us understand what it means to be human.