I have just learned that a most wonderful man, renown polemicist on the anti-God side, and jewel in the SFU faculty (Psychology) has died unexpectedly. Dr. Barry Beyerstein was a gentleman and a scholar, a vigourous, publically activist and unrelenting Skeptic, who remained persistently gentle, gracious, and cheery.He and I had a public debate back when I was an undergraduate (not on any topic relevant to this course) and we had pleasant encounters periodically after that; including a guest lecture he gave, to my benefit, at a course of mine at Harbour Centre a couple of years back.
Links here, here and here. His like is rare and valuable. Resquiat in pacem, Dubitare.
1 comment:
I am sorry to hear that. I had the honor of listening to one of his lectures this spring when he came as a guest speaker to my Complementary and Alternative Medicine course. He was definitely a polemicist and delivered a great lecture against Alternative Medicine. In the end he confided to us that he could just as easily have given us the lecture against Conventional medicine, which just highlighted his skill as a polemicist. He was so full of life and jocular that it is hard to believe he is gone. May his spirit live on in his students and friends.
Monica
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