excludes philosopher Daniel Dennett from this charge). In a discussion of his book Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More Meaningful Life, Pigliucci told Skepticality podcast host Derek Colanduno, "Aristotle was the first ancient thinker to really take seriously the idea that you need both empirical facts, you need an evidence-based approach to the world and you need to be able to reflect on the meaning of those facts... If you want answers to moral questions then you don't ask the neurobiologist, you don't ask the evolutionary biologist, you ask the philosopher." Pigliucci describes the mission of skeptics, referencing Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World saying "What skeptics are about is to keep that candle lit and spread it as much as possible". Pigliucci serves on the board of NYC Skeptics and on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America. In 1998, he debated William Lane Craig over the existence of God at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Also in 2001 he debated Craig about the same topic. Massimo Pigliucci criticized the newspaper article by Pope Francis entitled, "An open dialogue with non-believers". Pigliucci viewed the article as a monologue rather than a dialogue and, in a response personally addressed to Pope Francis, wrote that the Pope only offered non-believers "a reaffirmation of entirely unsubstantiated fantasies about God and his Son...followed by a confusion between the concept of love and truth, the whole peppered by a significant amount of historical revisionism and downright denial of the ugliest facets of your Church." Stoicism Pigliucci became a popularizer of Stoicism and one of the driving forces in Stoicism's resurgence in the United States in the early twenty-first century. His 2015 essay for The New York Times on the topic was one of the most shared articles to date. Pigliucci said he always felt Stoicism was part of his Italian heritage, but he came to practice it after being disenchanted with Buddhism, though he finds both schools of thought to share similarities. Neoskepticism In 2021 Pigliucci announced a shift of interest away from Stoicism and towards, as he said, "a new synthesis, something that I have called Neoskepticism, and which uses the combined insights of the ancient Skeptics and Stoics to craft a better way to think about and especially live one’s life." On consciousness Pigliucci has criticized David Chalmers' Hard Problem of Consciousness, and he