The new 20,000-square-foot structure on Sweet Home Road, across from the North Campus but not affiliated with UB, has plenty of room for Doubting Thomases, but no room for budding Kreskins, according to founder and director Paul Kurtz, professor emeritus of philosophy at UB. The newest additions, built as part of a $4.5 million endowment campaign recently conducted by the Center, opened for business last summer.

The Center houses two sizable organizations, the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODRSH), which promotes "free thinking" and rational scientific inquiry; and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), a world-renowned debunker of alleged UFO sightings, psychokinetic claims and paranormal powers. Nearly a dozen related organizations, all dedicated to the advancement of rational scientific inquiry, also call the Center home, according to Kurtz. These philosophic disciplines share a common interest in the triumph of rational explanation over myth, religion or superstition. Their bottom line, according to Kurtz: "Prove it to me."

The Center employs 60 people who toil in relentless pursuit of rational explanations of the unexplained. "Most of the mysteries on Unsolved Mysteries have actually been solved," explained Kurtz, who taught budding philosophers at UB for nearly 30 years. "We deal with the real mysteries out there-at the frontiers of science and knowledge-based on rational evidence, not supernatural superstition."

Recently, the Center opened its new library, housing one of the world's largest collections of resources on "skepticism, humanism, atheism and American Naturalism," according to Kurtz. This center is actually one of at least six centers operating at universities around the globe and, along with its publishing house just up the street, Prometheus Books, it is the nexus of Kurtz's multi-million dollar international non-profit conglomerate for agnostics, secular humanists and paranormal investigators.

The Center publishes two leading international journals on skepticism, Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer and serves as an international booking agency for skeptical talent (or is that talented skeptics?) Kurtz and other experts affiliated with the Center are frequently called upon to explain skeptical inquiry and secular humanism to the national media, appearing on everything from Oprah to Donahue to Larry King Live. The Center has a full-time media director with radio and television facilities on the premises. Recently, more than 200 National Public Radio affiliates across the country carried a 13-part series produced by the Center on humanism and skepticism. Someday, perhaps, a Skeptics Channel will grace the cable box.

Although humanists work to disprove "close encounters" they come in contact with, they remain excited about the prospect of there being life where no man has gone before. Indeed, noted astronomers, including Cornell's Carl Sagan, are among the Center's most ardent supporters. Science fiction aficionados, like Isaac Asimov and the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, both Center members, often are secular humanists, according to Kurtz. And, of course, there is that great philosopher... Steve Allen?

"He's actually a very thoughtful man," says Kurtz of the original "Tonight Show" host who, too, is an active member of the Center. Allen appeared in Buffalo last summer for the grand opening of the new Center facilities.

Center researchers frequently run afoul of organized religions, seeking to use rational scientific inquiry to explain biblical hyperbole, debunk alleged miracles and dispel unsubstantiated religious tenets, explained Kurtz. Many "secular humanists" are agnostic or atheistic, he said, and have been out front refuting such claims as the Shroud of Turin and statues that are said to have cried or drunk milk.

The Center's research into religion has made it a frequent political target of the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition in recent years, Kurtz said. However, in cultures that are less religiously tolerant than ours, Kurtz added, dominant fundamental forces have been known to threaten skeptics with death.

Barry Karr, director of CSICOP, once called his organization "the party poopers of the paranormal." Karr explained that serious scientists seldom studied claims of aberrations or late-night chain-rattling, letting such claims go uncontested. A recent Fox Television broadcast, "Alien Autopsy," revived speculation surrounding a 50-year-old close encounter of the dead kind and drew the attention of skeptical CSICOP investigators.

In what is known as the "Roswell Incident," it is alleged that a UFO crashed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 and that it, as well as several dead passengers, were captured by the U.S. government. Skeptics such as Philip Klass, who chairs CSICOP's UFO subcommittee, cast serious doubt on the authenticity of a film allegedly taken of the autopsy of a creature who died in that UFO crash. The most recent issue of Skeptical Inquirer, published bi-monthly by CSICOP, features several articles skeptical of the event and alleged government cover-up.

Next June, CSICOP will host an international conference of skeptical paranormal investigators at UB. Expect Casper and his friends to be out of town that week.