You can’t act as if it’s unreasonable that people misinterpreted “in jokes” with yourself. I asked for clarification, to see if you were mocking the claims in that thread that Sylvia Browne was a fraud, and you chose not to respond.
Why can’t it be both? Philosophical outlooks are often both a world view/set of beliefs and social groups based on that outlook.
I don’t think you reject science in its entirety. I think that you may be one of those people who feel that science is a fine tool in a limited scope, but it’s not any sort of authoritative source of objective truth - or at least there exist things outside of the scope which can be measured by science. Which can then be used to justify various forms of woo.
Could you give examples?
Incidentally, the people who seem more interested in calling themselves skeptics are the least skeptical people - if you watch any sort of ghost hunter or cryptozoology show they’ll always start with “I’m a skeptic, but…”
Sort of like those people who say “I’m not racist, but …”
Yeah, I’m pretty awesome.
If it actually works, then there’s some physiological mechanism behind it that doesn’t rely on woo like vitalism. I mean - a shaman from a tribe that knew the fever reduction properties of willow bark might’ve thought it was a gift from the spirits, which doesn’t mean that it didn’t work - but his reasoning was flawed and relied on the paranormal when a measurable biological effect was the actual cause.
This is like the “psychics”, who upon being asked to conduct their talents under blinded conditions, claim to be inhibited by a “negative energy field” generated by the skeptics.
Funny, that - the trick only works on people who are willing to be fooled by it.
This is the very essence of a placebo effect. No doubt that people’s expectations can change their perception of the effect of something. That doesn’t mean that there’s some nebulous hidden woo behind it - it is a well understood, well documented psychological effect.
The more introspective and rational you are, the less such things work. This can be unfortunate sometimes when you can’t fool yourself into believing something that would ultimately be pleasant and beneficial to you.
Which was part of what I was talking about in my previous post - often people feel better with a palatable reality they create for themselves and are hostile towards people who attempt as best they can to determine objective reality.
This seems like a straw man to me - maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but I can’t think of any examples of behaviors that could be described that way by rationally inclined people.
I didn’t engage a fallacy. I made a guess, based on what you’ve said on the board. I may be wrong, but I’m not claiming it to be rigidly logical or the absolute truth. I also didn’t mean to imply that you were against science entirely. I suspected (and you made it clear in this post) that you think science serves some role, but that there’s a metaphysical realm beyond the scientific.
Effectively, this allows you to believe anything you want about existance while still claiming to believe (and probably actually believing in) the scientific process and scientific knowledge. So I was right - you don’t reject science, but you’ve decided whatever you believe is beyond the scope of science superscedes it in your world view. This can be used to justify lots of unscientific beliefs.
I partially agree with this statement. There is a tendency to relate to those with similar beliefs. And religion does serve as a way to socially bond and form communities. Atheists are left out in this regard - so it makes sense that they group with other likeminded people to form the same sort of social bonds.
However, because they may be forming groups along the same lines for the same reasons does not mean the rationality of their beliefs is equal. If a group forms based on mutual interests in science and skepticism, it’s not like they suddenly lose their focus on rationality and empircism and blindly adhere uncritically to a group of beliefs. This, again, was what I posted about in my last post - trying to say “oh, those skeptics are the same as any believer, just with a different set of beliefs”
I might be able to agree or disagree if you provided examples. In general, I don’t see a lot of what you’re describing on this board.
If anything, your post describes people who try to integrate scientific sounding language into their woo - like all the new age movements that attempt to use “quantum physics” to describe how their belief works - based on it sounding scientific and yet being confusing to almost everyone.
Science is not a collection of facts, it’s an ideology and a method. It’s the best method we’ve devised to understand nature. Our information is incomplete and imperfect, and scientific knowledge changes to reflect that as we gain more information. I don’t think people who appreciate science essentially worship a set of facts and knowledge as sacred - I think they tend to be interested in knowledge and critical thinkers.
Sir, I can assure you that I can talk trash to you and make fun of you while also giving a serious effort to understand 