There is skepticism about things that are impossible baaed on our current understanding - perpetual motion machines, ghosts, ESP. Then there is skepticism about things for which there just isn’t any evidence. There are lots of ways aliens could visit without ftl drives, so it is hardly impossible - there is just no evidence of it happening in the past. And, given the odds, it is far more likely that if aliens visited they did it 10 - 100 million years ago than yesterday - 7,000 years ago.
I could tell you I had a date with Uma Thurman last week - but you’d be justified in asking for pictures.
I suspect most skeptics have been in love at least once in your life, so their is evidence against this claim.
Well, there was The Professor on Gilligan’s Island, but real life skeptics…?
Two typos in one post, yikes.
As for the Professor, I know what was in the show, but I’ve read some slash …
Here’s a memorable example from a few years ago of our own Diogenes making exactly that claim:
And so on and so forth.
The notion that only those things which can be detected and analysed by science are real or have any value is very, very widely believed and espoused by skeptics. The standard response, as in the above examples, is to express compete befuddlement that anything could have value or even *exist *if it can’t be shown to exist using science.
And yes, as with Creationists, these skeptics always weasel away when presented with actual evidence that there claims are bullshit. But the claim is made repeatedly and loudly nonetheless. In the case of Diogenes, as a classic example, he made the claim repeatedly, and every time it was shot full of holes he backpedalled, and then made the exact same claim in another thread a few months later. It’s all so very similar to creationist rhetoric.
Absolutely, they have been studied. And it seems to me that the “ancient alien” bits are more typically used in explaining non-white peoples’ achievements, whereas the white people get credit for their own buildings. Except maybe Stonehenge.
Jim B. if you have any specific examples where you thinks aliens might be involved, I’d love to hear what they are and why you think aliens are a more likely explanation than whatever mainstream archaeologists think is the explanation.
While being skeptical and lacking critical thinking skills are not mutually exclusive, I don’t perceive a problem with skeptics being “TOO skeptical”. The default show-me-the-money position is easier than advancing a bizarre/dubious/“revolutionary” argument and it is possible to be lazy about educating oneself, but it remains true that those who make scientific/pseudoscientific claims have the responsibility to document them. Even so, skeptics typically expend a great deal of effort debunking woo with facts.
Yes, SI is a prime example of how the scientific method can be used to evaluate woo of all sorts, including the supernatural. There’s an archive of articles that makes fun reading. And they’ve done the aliens-visiting-ancient-cultures stuff.
I have found well-documented, credible articles on RationalWiki. I can’t say whether that’s the case for all of them, but in any event I don’t approve of dismissing any claim or viewpoint based solely on what website is expressing it, even the whackdoodliest ones like whale.to and NaturalNews.*
*yes, I’m being judgmental.:dubious:
This sounds completely reasonable to me.
To address your initial question, it’s not “too skeptical” to consistently require evidence. The problem with claims of the paranormal and such is the fatal combination of no evidence and no plausible explanation for them.
I agree with your earlier comment that things like ghosts are indeed fascinating, but that’s why these mythologies exist in the first place – we create mythologies because we are fascinated by them and/or because they provide comfort, like belief in an afterlife which helps transcend the fear of death and seems to give life a greater meaning.
The problem, however, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and such paranormal claims are supported by no evidence at all.
It’s a shame because the real world, supported and investigated by science, is every bit as fascinating as the weirdest mythologies, and some of what science is discovering is more fascinating than anything we could have conjured up in our limited imaginations. The origin and future of the universe, the creation of stars and of life, the utter strangeness of the quantum world, the interiors of black holes – these things are endlessly fascinating and they’re real – which makes them a lot more interesting than ghosts.
There’s at least one area where reality even intersects with mythological woo: extraterrestrial life and intelligence. Just as it’s vanishingly improbable that such aliens ever visited earth (just based on probabilities derived from the distances in space and speed-of-light limitations) and that it may be (for the same statistical reasons) that we never make contact with them, it appears to be a virtual certainty that intelligent extraterrestrial life does exist. We know that there are about 300 billion stars in our own galaxy and that many of them have planets, and that there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe. That intelligent life could have evolved just on this one planet circling this one star huddled off in the corner of one galaxy, and nowhere else, requires the Earth to be the winner of a cosmic lottery in which the odds of winning are basically zero. And it’s just not plausible to entertain a belief that depends on such odds.
I think the OP picks some poor examples, but I think the answer to the question is “yes” in at least two different ways.
The first way is obviously, for any statement “Are some people too X?” the answer is trivially “yes” for any personality attribute X.
But secondly, and more specifically, yes some people interpret skepticism in an extreme way where they cannot even admit we don’t certain things.
For example, I have no personal issue with saying there are aspects of consciousness that we fundamentally don’t understand yet; that we don’t yet even have a model for.
I’m not trying to say “Therefore: souls”; I have a Master’s in Neuroscience and I’m quite aware that the brain is just a machine.
But for some skeptics, to suggest we don’t know about something is to open the door to the supernatural or whatever, and so they fight very hard to handwave such issues.
And once again,Diogenes provided the perfect example of this sort of attitude.
Rather than simply admitting that we really don’t know anything at all about how life arose, he boldly declared that “We have a pretty good handle on a lot of the process”. He then proceeded to confidently declaim that he knew that the odds of life arising multiple times was near to unity and that he could prove this mathematically using the Drake equation.
There’s no doubt in my mind that some people are too skeptical and way to certain about the way the universe is.
Sorry about the late reply. (I had a colonoscopy yesterday, and I think they gave me too much sedative. I have been basically knocked out for the past couple of hours.)
Well, to answer your question, actually I agree there are few things that have been just rejected out-of-hand. I do agree that some things have been studied, and the evidence sometimes just isn’t there. But I do think some phenomenon is still pretty captivating, if that is the right word.
Take ghost phenomenon. I have been interested in it since I was a kid. Yes, a lot of it is just waking dreams and our rooting-reflex to see faces, where there are none. But again, some of the stories are pretty striking.
Take the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. One picture of her is obviously faked. And perhaps that is why people are less likely to give any time to the more unusual stories, surrounding the alleged ghost. As I recall, at one point, two men were waiting behind a door. Then the brown lady, holding a candle, and with eyeless sockets(!) walks up to them and stops. Then she grins at them them in an evil manner, and one of the men takes out his gun and shoots her. The apparition then just disappears. This was an actual story, told by a credible person, who had nothing to gain by lying. Now you can’t tell me any scientist has even given the story the simple time of day.
Scientists have a good reason to be skeptical of paranormal claims. Most of it is exaggerated nonsense, by people who DO have something to gain by lying. But as I said, I think this fact puts up a barrier, where then scientists are unwilling to even hear anymore.
That’s my opinion at least. And impression. It is hard to find direct evidence to prove it. It comes from many years, of my reading many stories, and eventually becoming rather skeptical myself, in fact.
i have to say that the ‘Brown Lady’ story is not what I would call credible evidence, for several reasons.
1/ It is a second-hand story;
2/ It was told by a novelist to his daughter…
3/ …who was a friend of Charles Dickens, and Dickens was author of some of the most famous ghost stories ever written.
4/ It happened nearly two centuries ago, and all the primary and secondary witnesses are long dead, so no chance of an interview then.
As ‘credible sources’ go, this is pants.
I’m an eternal skeptic, as anyone who has read my many amateur (and often ineffectual) debunkings of various UFOs will know. But even I have had a ghostly experience. In a well-known haunted house near me, I experienced a weird ‘cold spot’ floating in mid-air; that’s all there is to it, and it probably had some subtle physical or psychological cause - but I couldn’t determine what that cause was, at the time.
I think that is the distinguishing feature behind most paranormal experiences - they are strange events which do not have a cause that can be determined at the time. Maybe someday we’ll be abe to determine if any of these events are caused by souls, or telepathy, or aliens - but when that happens these events will move from the realm of the supernatural to the natural.
Too skeptical - maybe.
I have a friend who is very skeptical. The one that gets me is that she’s really skeptical of acupuncture. Frankly, so am I, but I’ve known a few people - including my brother in law who used it when he was terminal with cancer and had a lot of pain - who believed it gave them a lot of relief. I think its likely it was a placebo effect, but if it brings relief, I’m not sure if I care if its prayer or incense and rattles or acupuncture or sugar pills.
Nothing to gain by lying? The story got the attention of people for one thing, that’s often why people embellish experiences and sometimes only remember the embellished story and not how they added bits themselves after the fact.
And it doesn’t even have to be lying. What we know a lot about now is how malleable human memory is. The teller of the story could have had a much less spectacular experience and embellished it during several rounds of recall, even just personal recall without telling the tale.
There’s no reason any scientists should give that single story special attention, but scientists have given the field as a whole a lot more time than it deserves including such stories, and what we’ve gained is a lot of good knowledge of how easy it is to trick us humans into remembering incredible experiences that never took place.
I care. Acupuncture brings at least some instances of infections and punctured organs. Incense has lit people on fire and given burns. And any and all of these methods accepted as legal placebo lead to people forgoing actual curative treatments and in some cases dying from it.
I agree with Czarcasm, no matter how woo things sound, they will give you a fair hearing - as long as you have evidence. If you really believe in your wild idea, then use the skeptics to polish it.
In Australia, I am fairly well known as a skeptic, so can you imagine the reaction when I claimed that I had a new theory for the purpose of Stonehenge? That was over eight years ago. I used the skeptics to challenge the theory as I developed it. It wasn’t always comfortable, but it was always really valuable in pointing out where the theory had holes which had to be plugged. It took me years to convince some of the skeptics.
Many skeptics’ meetings and conventions later, a PhD and Cambridge University Press book, my theory has expanded to include lots of other ancient monuments - and the skeptics have helped me all the way. The theory has just been published here for the mainstream and will be published in the US and UK in February. I am a speaker at November’s Australian National Skeptics Convention, and I will push the theory just a little bit more. And they will challenge me and make me work. Love it!
But those Cottingley Fairies were real, and don’t try to say otherwise.
I’ve seen the pictures.
[QUOTE=eburacum45]
i have to say that the ‘Brown Lady’ story is not what I would call credible evidence, for several reasons.
1/ It is a second-hand story;
2/ It was told by a novelist to his daughter…
3/ …who was a friend of Charles Dickens, and Dickens was author of some of the most famous ghost stories ever written.
4/ It happened nearly two centuries ago, and all the primary and secondary witnesses are long dead, so no chance of an interview then.
As ‘credible sources’ go, this is pants.
[/QUOTE]
There is a further reason for scepticism, which is arguably the most important of them all. The only source, the daughter who claimed to have been told the story by her father, published it in a book advocating the reality of Spiritualism as an example supporting her case. So the one person we know told the story actually did have quite a lot to gain by telling it in the way that they did. Florence Marryat might not have been lying, but she was most emphatically not neutral.