YES IT'S TRUE: I AM A SKEPTIC
I like to think and I like evidence but that does not mean I do not believe. I never thought of myself as an intellectual but I question before I decide. I have had spiritual experiences and so I am both skeptical and spiritual. I always want to know more and it may have gotten me into trouble but that's just the way I am. I am hungry for answers to everything. And I am open to all thoughts and ideas. God gave us the power to think and I think we should.
Definition of a Skeptic:
Do you believe in
bigfoot? How about
leprechauns? if not, then you might be a skeptic!
If you think all skeptics are atheists, you're very wrong. You can be a skeptic if you don't believe in many things around us that have very little proof that they either exist, or if it is a process, that the evidence of it's claims are not true. Take acupuncture for example. Many people testify that's its claims are true, but very little scientific and non-biased studies have proven that it's not so..
If you have questions or doubts about the following items, then you too, might be a skeptic.
Do you believe in
That there is a civilization on Mars who built a building that looks like a face
UFOs, UFO abduction, Bigfoot, Revelations from the Bible
911 Conspiracy Magic Jewelry with magnetic healing properties, Healing Touch therapy
Ghosts or Orbs Roswell aliens An aura around you
Vaccines cause autism Phrenology, physiognomy, palmistry, or
ideology Nostradamus
Crop Circles Will ethanol save us? Remote viewing
if so then you might be a skeptic!
Skepticism is not the rejection of ideas or beliefs, but doubting and suspending our judgement about claims presented. Reasoning of such claims should be made under sound, consistent logic and not emotions or social
pre assure. Truth of factual claims is not determined by the emotion than accompanies then nor the fact that they might be believed by certain social groups.
Not every claim can be true. But how does one know the difference? You might say common sense. This is true to an extent, but there are a lot of people whose "common sense" tell them a lot of unbelievable things.
To help determine the validity of a claim, you need to employ a process. In the sciences, that process is called the scientific method. Simplified, it goes like this: First, you form a hypothesis ("The world is round."). Then you make observations about your hypothesis (fly a plane around the world, send up a network of satellites). Your observations will either invalidate your hypothesis (your plane smashes into a wall at the edge of the earth), or they won't. If your hypothesis is invalidated, you modify it to fit the new data and repeat until you have a reasonably good model, or "theory," of the way things actually are.
In the strictest sense, no set of observations will ever "prove" a scientific hypothesis. But when there is a huge preponderance of evidence, we can basically accept the hypothesis as true. Very few people today (make no mistake, there are some!) believe that the world is flat because of a preponderance of evidence demonstrating that it is round.
Skepticism takes this same approach and applies it to
everything. So, what is skepticism, exactly?
The word "skepticism" has a bit of a bad reputation. You often hear the word "skeptic" in the same sentence as "cynic." All skepticism means is that when people make claims, those claims should be open to testing and should be judged on the quality of the evidence. If the claim being made flies in the face of what we already know, then the burden of proof is on the one making the claim to demonstrate the truth of their claim.
Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary EvidenceWhen you hear a claim, what do you feel is the likelihood of this claim being true, based on what we already know? If someone claims "I lost my keys," you probably won't require a great deal of evidence. People lose their keys all the time. It's not an extraordinary claim.
If, instead, they claim "I can walk through walls," most people will be a lot more skeptical. No one has ever been known to walk through walls before. Furthermore, if someone
were able to do so, it would literally require physicist to rewrite their model of the universe from the ground up. It is quite an extraordinary claim. For the most part, claims like this can be dismissed out of hand. That said, a true skeptic will gladly accept such claims as true if the claimant can demonstrate their ability in truly a controlled environment (i.e., not susceptible to trickery or other methods of deception). For instance, the
James Randi Educational Foundation, one of the foremost skeptic organizations, has a standing
$1,000,000 prize for anyone able to demonstrate a paranormal ability in a controlled environment. To date, no one has claimed the prize.
ReligionMany skeptics consider religion off the table, arguing that people's deeply-held beliefs should not be subjected to scrutiny, and that the claims made by religion are not falsifiable (that is there is no way to test their validity) and are therefore outside the realm of science or skepticism. Other skeptics gladly tackle religious topics, arguing that just because a given claim was written down thousands of years ago, it shouldn't be exempt from skeptical scrutiny. I personally tend to side with the latter group. No claim, particularly any claim upon which people chose to base their entire lives, should be exempt from examination.
