Brilliant skeptical questions

In My Humble Opinion
1

What are your favorite questions that great skeptics or science communicators have asked?

They may be questions that skeptics ask to make non-skeptics question their beliefs, or questions that skeptics ask to keep other skeptics honest.

Two of my own favorites:

  1. I think this was Michael Shermer on a skepticallity episode … When you hear a noise in the basement, how do you know it’s a ghost, and not an alien?

  2. At the Beyond Belief conference 2006 - one of the panelists asked “When you criticise religion, who is your audience? What are you trying to achieve?”

I think that they are both great questions for making people think.

A third one … this one I know the source. Swoopy from skepticallity asks it at the start of every interview …

  1. When did you first become aware you were a skeptic?

I think the phrasing of that, compared to similar alternatives, is just brilliant.

2

The phrase “Question Authority” was written on one of my professor’s bulletin board. Underneath, someone wrote “Why?”

Regards,
Shodan

3

I was once talking to a ‘wannabe’ punk rocker kid. He had the ‘Anarchy’ patch sewed on to his denim vest. (it had been a jacket but he had cut the arms off)

He pointed to the patched and asked me if I knew what it was. I did know but I cocked one eye brows a la Spock.

Him: That’s the international symbol for Anarchy.
Me: How can Anarchy have an internationally accepted symbol?

4

This is sort of a mutual skeptic/believer thing.

Joan Brown Campbell, the general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, was great friends with Carl Sagan. They once had this dialog:

Sagan: *If you’re so smart, why do you believe in God?
*Campbell: *If you’re so smart, why don’t you?
*
I heard this in a speech by Campbell’s daughter Joan, then-mayor of Cleveland.