{"id":27,"date":"2015-01-05T07:30:26","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T15:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/?p=27"},"modified":"2015-04-05T22:40:17","modified_gmt":"2015-04-06T06:40:17","slug":"excited-to-join-skeptic-ink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/2015\/01\/05\/excited-to-join-skeptic-ink\/","title":{"rendered":"Excited to Join Skeptic Ink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy first full week of the New Year! I’m Cherry Teresa<\/a> and I’m delighted\u00a0to bring in 2015 as the newest addition to the Skeptic Ink Network with my Very Cherry<\/em> blog. I’ve been a fan of this group since shortly after its inception and am honored to be writing alongside such talented and intelligent thinkers. I’m also excited\u00a0because I’ve been following the comments on the blogs and on social media, so I know that the readers of Skeptic Ink are great minds.\u00a0I look forward to the interactions.<\/p>\n

\"Cherry \"Cherry \"Cherry<\/p>\n

Here’s some\u00a0background on\u00a0who I am and how I got involved in skepticism:<\/strong>
\nFrom childhood until junior high, I grew up on the edge of the Bible Belt in Southern Ohio.\u00a0I went to music school studying and performing classical piano. I also became very involved with church, and played\u00a0piano and handbell during\u00a0Sunday services. This resulted in realizing I wasn’t a Christian. Reading\u00a0the Bible and interacting with congregants and church leaders made me realize how many inconsistencies there were in Christianity. I also could not support a belief system that promoted homophobia. I became an atheist and an ally for LGBT issues\u00a0when I was a preteen.<\/p>\n

My family and I then moved to the much bigger\u00a0city of Baltimore, MD and I lived in the Baltimore-DC Metro area from my teenage years through most of my adulthood thus far. It was there that I finally started to tell people I was an atheist. I felt more comfortable in a place with greater\u00a0religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity.<\/p>\n

I went from classical pianist to alternative keyboardist. My teens and 20s were consumed by my rock bands: Writing, rehearsing, collaborating, performing, recording, and promoting. Most notably, I was in Skitzo Calypso for a few years and we played quite a bit on\u00a0the East Coast, particularly the Mid-Atlantic region. You can check out some of my recordings on the music section<\/a> of my website.<\/p>\n

\"Cherry\u00a0\"Cherry<\/p>\n

The music scene and business changed drastically within a relatively short time and I was barely scraping by, so I went to college and got my\u00a0Applied Sciences degree in Information Technology. During this period\u00a0of focused learning and studying, I spent more time examining\u00a0my views. I started realizing that I was wrong on certain things.<\/p>\n

I also experienced the tragic, unexpected loss of a close\u00a0friend during this time. He died by suicide from jumping off a bridge. He was only 27 years old. This devastated me and I could barely sleep. I was incredibly upset and also could not wrap my head around certain beliefs I had. While I had been an atheist and used critical thinking on many issues, I wasn’t an all-around skeptic. I still believed in woo, including the supernatural. In order to feel comfortable with my own brain, there were confusing topics that I had to study and figure out. I did a lot of reading.<\/p>\n

I eventually got to the book The God Delusion<\/em> by Richard Dawkins. I initially wasn’t interested in it. I didn’t think I’d learn much from it\u00a0since I already didn’t believe in God and was critical of various religions, but my friend kept singing its praises and convinced me to read it.\u00a0I did\u00a0and it sharpened the way I looked at the world. I then started reading other Dawkins books and watched\u00a0his documentary The Enemies of Reason<\/em>. He not only covered religion, but other topics such as psychics, astrology, and\u00a0alternative medicine. I’d previously heard arguments against these subjects,\u00a0but\u00a0nothing really convinced me before Dawkins’ explanations. Most importantly, he\u00a0was the first person to finally make me realize that I was wrong to believe in alternative medicine.<\/p>\n

I watched many\u00a0YouTube videos of Dawkins.\u00a0In the related videos, I was introduced to other great thinkers such as James Randi, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Christopher Hitchens, and rediscovered\u00a0Carl Sagan. I learned that skepticism wasn’t cynicism, as I had previously thought. It’s a way to examine the world and to help protect and educate yourself. It’s an empowering thought process. Shortly after my introduction to skepticism, I was\u00a0interviewed by the Baltimore Sun<\/a> about an atheist billboard. The interactions I had with friends and online commenters about the article strengthened my desire to become more involved and meet\u00a0other freethinkers.<\/p>\n

Through my new friends Brian Gregory<\/a> and Bruce Press<\/a>, who would soon start\u00a0Drinking Skeptically Baltimore<\/a>, I was introduced to Center For Inquiry in early 2010. I attended as many\u00a0DC and Baltimore events as I could squeeze in while working full-time in the healthcare industry and\u00a0attending\u00a0college. I also took the Megabus up to\u00a0New York for NYC Skeptics events when I could. \u00a0The fantastic\u00a0people I met and wonderful talks I saw put\u00a0a new spring in my step, which had been lacking since my rock band days.<\/p>\n

\"cherryteresa-hampdenFSM\"<\/a>\u00a0\"cherryteresa-michael-shermer\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the end of 2011, I moved to Los Angeles, CA in the Hollywood district.\u00a0I quickly became part of\u00a0the skeptic and atheist communities here, including Drinking Skeptically, CFI-West, Atheists United, Investigation Network, and the former L.A. office of the James Randi Educational Foundation.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t long after moving here that I noticed just how common and mainstream alternative medicine is compared to cities I lived previously. Since I was once an advocate and user of complementary and alternative medicine, I decided to use my knowledge and experiences\u00a0to promote science-based medicine. I endured harm from alt med, but if I can use my understanding of why people believe those false ideas,\u00a0some good can come from it.\u00a0Some of my\u00a0pieces on that include\u00a0How Alternative Medicine Harmed Me<\/a> and How I Was Scammed By Kevin Trudeau<\/a>. I plan to write more on this topic, as well as my thoughts on other issues related to skepticism, humanism, atheism, and secularism. I might even discuss relevant issues that involve music and pop culture.<\/p>\n

My day job is in Finance at an LGBT nonprofit. I love the organization I work for, but having a “big girl job” doesn’t allow me as much time to create music as in the past. However, I do still record solo music when I can, and my more recent songs have incorporated\u00a0critical thinking. Unborn Ghosts<\/a>\u00a0includes the spoken word of Richard Dawkins. Faith is a Slippery Pig<\/a> is a collaboration with philosopher Peter Boghossian. You can hear more\u00a0on my YouTube channel<\/a> and my SoundCloud page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks for letting me introduce myself here and I look forward to getting to know you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy first full week of the New Year! I’m Cherry Teresa and I’m delighted\u00a0to bring in 2015 as the newest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,33,35,41,12],"tags":[5,9,8,11,6,4,7,10],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-music","category-personal","category-religious-skepticism","category-skepticism","tag-alternative-medicine","tag-atheism","tag-baltimore","tag-lgbt","tag-los-angeles","tag-music","tag-new-york-city","tag-skepticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/verycherry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}