I missed the NECSS meeting last month, but my pal (and JREF President) D.J. Grothe was there, and gave a great talk about the meaning of skepticism, and how it relates to humanism. And, wonderfully, the whole thing is online!

I agree with pretty much everything he said there. The idea of why we do what we do in the skeptical movement has come up a lot in my life (online and IRL) lately, and I have been doing a lot of thinking about it. I may write a post (or more likely a series of them) outlining my thoughts on this. It’s important, and the movement itself has been debating it internally recently as well. Certainly D.J.’s calm, rational discourse on this can only help.