Once again, Diogenes provided a perfect example is this thread, where he simply threw out all skepticism, dismissed all rational doubt and basically said that statistics aren’t of any use in determining the truth on matters that he knows in his gut are right.
Of course we see real-world examples all the time on issues such as GM crops or nuclear power or free trade. Skeptics believe that we must follow the scientific consensus on public policy when it comes to everything, except those issues. Then science and expert opinion can suddenly go to hell, and gut feeling and “mother nature” and “think of the children” should be the overriding policy drivers.
Your reference to the no true Scotsman fallacy is possibly amusing but wholly misplaced.
Skepticism is antithetical to glib acceptance of absolute positions. Those who would leap to absolute positions without due consideration of available data are definitionally not skeptics.
Wait, what? As a skeptic I think we should be using nuclear power and eating GMO crops, like right now. This instant. This is because I’m skeptical of the mass hysteria that drives people away from such things. Which means either science has suddenly decided nukes and GMO crops are bad, or you’ve met a specific group of skeptics who, like most people, have decided to turn off their brains about one or two things.
“No reason to lie” is such a silly phrase. There’s lots of evidence that eyewitness accounts are very unreliable. And that’s when there’s nothing weird going on that we can’t quite explain, leading our brains to helpfully fill in the gaps.
I mean, it’s not remotely surprising that ghost sightings tend to take place at night, by people who are alone in old, drafty, poorly lit places. Because when you’re a bit sleepy, and it’s dark and there’s no one around to talk to (and otherwise distract you), and you see something move out of the corner of your eye, or hear something you brain can’t quite categorize, the imagination takes over.
And who gets to decide whether someone has given due consideration to available data?
It’s a classic True Scotsman. Anyone who goes “too far” in your opinion isn’t a True Skeptic, they are a Denier. Of course they will say exactly the opposite, that you are not a True Skeptic because you have bought in with too little evidence.
To give you an example, Richard Dawkins has said that the damage caused to children by being raised religious is literally worse than sexually abusing the same child. Stephen Gould had a very different approach, that religion is compatible with science and often highly beneficial. Both men claim to be Skeptics and both made their statements explicitly speaking as skeptics.
Which these men has given due consideration to available data, and which has gone too far and become a denier? Because clearly one has. If raising you child Catholic is as bad as raping your child, then condoning it is gong to far. And if it isn’t massively harmful then comparing raising your child Jewish with raping them is clearly going to far?
So who gets t decide which if these self-proclaimed and famous skeptic is a “real” skeptic and which is a “denier”?
You decide who has not given due consideration to the benefits/harms of religion and you then call them a denier and not a true skeptic. Just as when I say that someone who puts too many condiments on their porridge isn’t a true Scotsman. Of course I get to decide what constitutes too many condiments because there can never be any objective way of deciding when it becomes “too many”. Just as there can never be any objective way of deciding when the consideration given to any evidence becomes “due consideration”.
It’s a classic True Scotsmen.
Gee, it’s almost like it’s an example of where skeptics are skeptical until it goes against their personal agenda.
Oooh, I get what you’re going for now. You’re using the term “skeptic” differently than I am.
I mean, I would tend to define a skeptic as a person who is reasonably skeptical when presented with an unusual idea idea, any unusual idea, until presented with decent reason not to reject the idea as being as silly as it first appeared. This would be a personality type, which urges people to be all contrary and not accept the first thing told to them, and who has probably done this often enough to notice that pretty much the only source of information out there that isn’t 80% crap is the wider scientific community.
This would be distinct from “person who chooses not to believe in ghosts.” There are lots of reasons not to believe in ghosts, up to and including being a theist who believes that God doesn’t forget to collect up the dead people. You don’t have to be skeptical of everything to disbelieve in ghosts - or NDEs, or ancient aliens, or unicorns, for that matter. Different people believe or disbelieve all kinds of things for all kinds of different reasons.
If you’re calling anyone who disbelieves in your preferred nuttery a skeptic, then of course you’re going to be describing all kinds of people, including people who reject all science on principle and fervently adhere to some different form of nuttery that just happens to disagree with yours. Whereas I wouldn’t include such people, and would call those types (wait for it) No True Skeptic, on account of them not agreeing with my definition of the term.
By my definition, those science doubting skeptics you found (or made up as strawmen) are probably just ordinary credulous people who happen to disbelieve in some or all of the more fanciful forms of crazy, perhaps due to not having watched enough history channel as children. Or perhaps you managed to find some skeptical people who are just drastically misinformed really haven’t heard any good reason not to build nuke plants and eat food. It’s hard to say, really.
One thing we can all agree on, though, is that the fact you found one imperfectly skeptical skeptic does indeed legitimize and validate believing in ghosts, aliens, and pod people. That’s clearly the case.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
a specific group of skeptics who, like most people, have decided to turn off their brains about one or two things.
[/quote]
We both accept that some skeptics choose to cease being skeptical on certain points. I assume we both agree that this is often where skeptcism conflicts with their core beliefs.
That’s essentially what we all mean.
Which nobody is doing or has done, so the rest of this paragraph is a strawman.
The point we both agree on is that people who describe themselves as skeptics are incredibly credulous and inclined to accept with no evidence on all sorts of topics when it suits them. The behaviour of Diogenes in the last link I posted is a classical example. The rejection of GM crops or nuclear power by people who otherwise meet your definition of skeptics is another good example.
So you are saying that that you have never encountered any personor groupthat are stridently atheist, openly and proudly label themselves skeptics, loudly proclaim “we have to accept the scientific consensus” on issues such as climate change, and then go on to be stridently anti-GM or anti-nuclear? Because I find that surprising. Such people and groups are legion. Of course we could say the same thing about many people who are anti global warming.
Skepticism, your definition of skepticism, goes out the door for these people, who otherwise meet your definition of a skeptic, when being a skeptic conflicts with their core beliefs.
A couple of simple questions just so we can gauge where you stand on this.
Do you consider Bill Nye, Richard Dawkins and Steven J Gould to be skeptics?
Do you accept that these men are, in fact, skeptics on all issues?
If one of more of them are not skeptics on all issues, do you think it reasonable to conclude that their skepticism likely ceases when it conflicts with their personal beliefs. Or do you think that they cease being skeptical on random issues which have no emotional hold on them?
Rather disappointing attempt at trivialising the issue. “Just one”? “Found”? Really? :rolleyes:
What are you talking about? Two other posters were having a discussion, you interjected with a series of strawmen without bothering to read or understand the discussion, and ended being forced to agreeing with what we were saying anyway.
And now you come out with this lame attempt to demonise us by saying we must believe in ghosts because we don’t believe that Bil Nye and Greenpeace are perfectly skeptical on all issues.
Disappointing behaviour my friend, very disappointing.
Okay, then I don’t know what your point is. That skeptics are still humans? That skeptics don’t exist? That skeptics are bad people and everything they say should be ignored?
The first is a non-point, the second is silly, the third is the kind of ad-hominem attack I’d expect of a woo-woo-lover, and none of these is probably your point anyway.
Not only that, but you name-drop Dawkins and Gould, as if they are set on some altar that all skeptics bow to, when they aren’t. They are skeptics of some renown on some areas, and also humans that have been demonstrably wrong in others. People are people, and pretty much everybody has some blind spots, some ingrained bit of irrationality that they hold on to because they have believed it long enough that it has become fact.
Of course all I did do is mention them as examples of skeptics, which was what was asked for. Nothing more was stated or even vaguely implied.
But that’s is a fantastic example of a strawman. Well done.
So what you are saying is that pretty much every skeptic has some blind spots that cause them to discard their skepticism when it conflicts with their deeply held beliefs?
Czarcam, can you clarify what it is that you are asking for examples of, because you seem to have become confused. Doyle said:
You then asked for examples.
Were you asking for examples of skeptics who are skeptical until it goes against their personal agenda. because I provided that, and you seemed to want examples of all skeptics doing it. Do you want an example of 51% of skeptics behaving this way. Surely you realise that such such an example could be produced, even if the statement is perfect true. It’s a silly thing to ask for an example of.
So it seems that maybe you want an example that in Doyles experience he has found most skeptics to behave this way. Is that what you want. because that’s even sillier.
Please clarify.
And while you are at it, you can apologise for misquoting me. At no stage did I ever say “most skeptics”. If you apologise we won’t need to take this misquoting any further.
Exactly. And that was my reason for mentioning Agent Scully in fact. I thought her special brand of skepticism was the key characteristic everyone remembers about her.
What I’m saying is this: when you emphasize plausibility of explanations, you sound to a “believer” like Agent Scully. That no amount of evidence would ever convince you of something so “implausible” as ghosts or UFOs, so it’s just a matter of you trying to ad hoc together an explanation that fits your worldview.
Now, you and I both know that actually there is no evidence that needs explanation, apart from notoriously unreliable (and wish-fulfillment based) stories. And that there are thousands, perhaps millions of people, who have wasted their lives and careers trying to find some evidence.
But there’s no reason to talk about plausibility; when the hypothesis that ghosts are real can be used to predict something we wouldn’t otherwise expect to happen (no matter how unimpressive the phenomenon may be; it could be a flash of light that lasts 1ms), then we could start taking the phenomenon seriously. Not before then.
I’ll be very busy today, but I’d like to come back later re: Dawkins vs Gould.
Even the most ardent skeptic is subject to regular human frailties, but it is worth noting that* personal agendas *and skepticism are fundamentally opposed. We cannot be super-rational all the time, but skeptics (at least) would recognise that as a goal.
So a skeptic attached to a personal belief is hardly being skeptical in that respect. You can call that a *no true Scotsman fallacy *if you’d like, but in fact it follows from the definition of each term.
That’s a vague statement. Are you saying that all skeptics fail 100% in skepticism when discussing topics they are heavily emotionally or personally invested in? Or are you saying that some skeptics fail somewhat in their skepticism when discussing topics they are heavily emotionally or personally invested in?
Because if your’e saying the latter, I don’t think anyone would disagree or care.
I don’t want to go into why Dawkins would equate the damage caused by religious indoctrination with sexual abuse, but I can tell you he doesn’t just pull the idea out of his ass (see The God Delusion chapter 9). That religious indoctrination is necessarily to some extent damaging I have no doubt.
Gould’s Non-overlapping magisteria are not a get-out-jail-free-card for all religious excesses. The extent to which science and religion are NOMA (and therefore not incompatible) ends the moment religion makes any claims about the physical world, like the age of the earth (for example).
Gould is dead, and I do not own Rock Of Ages, but I cannot believe that it was his intention to imply that it’s okay to teach our children fairy-tales of questionable moral value as if they were fact.
Incidentally, Dawkins has said that he cannot believe that Gould meant all of what he said in Rock of Ages, but instead felt Gould was “bending over backwards to be nice to an unworthy but powerful opponent”.
I therefore repudiate your suggestion that one of them failed to give due consideration to available data, if you insist that I throw one of them to the dogs, I’ll throw Gould, being nice to idiots is no way to behave.