Well here I am, starting a blog. Where to begin? Don't expect much, I'm not the best writer, I'm not as elegant and witty and well-spoken as many of my counterparts, but I shall give it a go. I apologize in advance for my atrocious grammar. I guess I will start by explaining the title and a few things about myself.
I am a skeptic. I have embraced the skeptical mindset with a fervor and passion that I have not felt for anything else. I guess I've always been a skeptic, I just never gave it a whole lot of thought until a couple of years ago. That's when I found the JREF and Mr. James Randi. I started reading his weekly commentary and following links to all sites skeptical. I realized that society is sinking into superstition and nonsense seemed to be reigning supreme. Everywhere I looked, there was a crucial lack of critical thinking and real world consequences that just couldn't be ignored.
I get many responses to my skepticism. The most common and most frustrating is the closed-minded comment. I'm just a cynic who believes in nothing and dismisses all that doesn't fit into my dogma out of hand. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've come to learn what skepticism truly is and what a true skeptic is. It's really just a process. A skeptic will question an extraordinary claim and not accept it's validity without some strong evidence to support it. Simple. Why everyone doesn't do this is beyond me. This includes things like the existence of psychic powers, ghosts, lake monsters, the effectiveness of homeopathy and other new age healing, etc. The list is much too long to go into detail right now. It's not that I wouldn't love for many of these things to be true and I would change my mind about any of it in a second if reliable evidence was produced. As of yet, there is just not enough. This is why I dispute the close-minded accusation. I'm willing to change my mind, a believer, on the other hand, clings to their beliefs no matter how much evidence to the contrary is presented to them. Now THAT'S closed-minded.
Most (but not all) skeptics are atheists. I am an atheist as I have not found enough proof to convince me that an invisible sky daddy is guiding our every move. In my opinion, I have much more evidence to the contrary. Perhaps more about that later. I find it hard to wrap my brain around that fact that some skeptics are theists. For me, it's really an all or nothing thing. Why accept one thing without sufficient proof but dismiss others? Human psychology fascinates me, why people believe the weird things they do, why others don't, it's curious.
What does bother me is that sometimes I do feel a little smug. I feel like I'm privy to a reality that others aren't and I want to shake them into some sense. But I guess everyone feels that way. People who are deeply religious feel that they have found something enlightening and feel bad for those that don't have the knowledge that they do. That is really one of the reasons I became a skeptic. Everyone feels that they are right. They KNOW the truth. Who really is right? I figured it best to just not accept anything until I knew for sure. But at least I know that I have science, reason and rationality on my side, and that makes me feel a little better.
So now for the "armchair" part. I use that term because I'm not an active member of the skeptic community in that I don't give speeches, or teach, I don't have a kick-ass podcast or have a famous skepchick blog. I sit in my living room and gripe about the pervasive nonsense that's spreading like wildfire. The most I've done to further the cause is to write a few letters and e-mails to the media when I thought a story they did was biased toward the ridiculous. Well, now I have a sad little blog, maybe that puts me one notch up.
That's enough rambling for one day but one last thing. The next biggest thing that bugs me about skepticism critics is the ones that say "where's the harm?" So and so can go spend their money on a psychic if they want, you shouldn't trample on their beliefs. First of all I don't think psychics are a "belief", they are a scam, but more about that later. When people ask me why I'm so adamant about it all I point them here. Real. World. Consequences.
I am a skeptic. I have embraced the skeptical mindset with a fervor and passion that I have not felt for anything else. I guess I've always been a skeptic, I just never gave it a whole lot of thought until a couple of years ago. That's when I found the JREF and Mr. James Randi. I started reading his weekly commentary and following links to all sites skeptical. I realized that society is sinking into superstition and nonsense seemed to be reigning supreme. Everywhere I looked, there was a crucial lack of critical thinking and real world consequences that just couldn't be ignored.
I get many responses to my skepticism. The most common and most frustrating is the closed-minded comment. I'm just a cynic who believes in nothing and dismisses all that doesn't fit into my dogma out of hand. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've come to learn what skepticism truly is and what a true skeptic is. It's really just a process. A skeptic will question an extraordinary claim and not accept it's validity without some strong evidence to support it. Simple. Why everyone doesn't do this is beyond me. This includes things like the existence of psychic powers, ghosts, lake monsters, the effectiveness of homeopathy and other new age healing, etc. The list is much too long to go into detail right now. It's not that I wouldn't love for many of these things to be true and I would change my mind about any of it in a second if reliable evidence was produced. As of yet, there is just not enough. This is why I dispute the close-minded accusation. I'm willing to change my mind, a believer, on the other hand, clings to their beliefs no matter how much evidence to the contrary is presented to them. Now THAT'S closed-minded.
Most (but not all) skeptics are atheists. I am an atheist as I have not found enough proof to convince me that an invisible sky daddy is guiding our every move. In my opinion, I have much more evidence to the contrary. Perhaps more about that later. I find it hard to wrap my brain around that fact that some skeptics are theists. For me, it's really an all or nothing thing. Why accept one thing without sufficient proof but dismiss others? Human psychology fascinates me, why people believe the weird things they do, why others don't, it's curious.
What does bother me is that sometimes I do feel a little smug. I feel like I'm privy to a reality that others aren't and I want to shake them into some sense. But I guess everyone feels that way. People who are deeply religious feel that they have found something enlightening and feel bad for those that don't have the knowledge that they do. That is really one of the reasons I became a skeptic. Everyone feels that they are right. They KNOW the truth. Who really is right? I figured it best to just not accept anything until I knew for sure. But at least I know that I have science, reason and rationality on my side, and that makes me feel a little better.
So now for the "armchair" part. I use that term because I'm not an active member of the skeptic community in that I don't give speeches, or teach, I don't have a kick-ass podcast or have a famous skepchick blog. I sit in my living room and gripe about the pervasive nonsense that's spreading like wildfire. The most I've done to further the cause is to write a few letters and e-mails to the media when I thought a story they did was biased toward the ridiculous. Well, now I have a sad little blog, maybe that puts me one notch up.
That's enough rambling for one day but one last thing. The next biggest thing that bugs me about skepticism critics is the ones that say "where's the harm?" So and so can go spend their money on a psychic if they want, you shouldn't trample on their beliefs. First of all I don't think psychics are a "belief", they are a scam, but more about that later. When people ask me why I'm so adamant about it all I point them here. Real. World. Consequences.
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