earilest skeptical memories

Looks to me that dinosaurs are a big assistance in early skepticism, I know it was for me, I LOVED dinosaurs. That and a psycho-religious aunt that effectively turned me off of religion. Never force a child to choose between dinosaurs & God, dinosaurs always win.
 
Corplos said:
Looks to me that dinosaurs are a big assistance in early skepticism, I know it was for me, I LOVED dinosaurs. That and a psycho-religious aunt that effectively turned me off of religion. Never force a child to choose between dinosaurs & God, dinosaurs always win.
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If your story is typical, we should encourage radically-religious relatives to force kids to choose between God and dinosaurs. And they should really ratchet up God's tendency to be cruel, vindictive, cranky and supremely evil.
 
Polaris said:
If your story is typical, we should encourage radically-religious relatives to force kids to choose between God and dinosaurs. And they should really ratchet up God's tendency to be cruel, vindictive, cranky and supremely evil.
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Hmm, actually I don't think making God cruel, vindictive, etc would help.

The reason dinosaurs won so handily over God for me was because God was so bland and vague, and dinosaurs were so COOL! It had nothing to do with God being evil or cranky, he just couldn't compete with the collected tribe of Saurus. If God had had giant pointy teeth, bird hips, and a brain the size of a walnut, he might've been in the running, but he was just kinda...generic God.

So I actually think making God evil and cruel and smitey would work t'other way. Then he might be cool enough to compete with dinosaurs.
 
I think it all began when I asked my mom "what you mean 'once upon a time'? Isn't there an exact date or something?" :eye-poppi
 
As I was preparing for my first communion (~10 yrs old, United Methodist church) we had to go through a little schooling with the pastor to understand what it was about and such. She was a great lady and was willing to answer questions and such. Being the naturally inquisitive and cynical person I am I asked how god could send people that lived good lives to hell just because they had never heard of jesus or god. She, as I recall, did a fairly good job trying to answer a 10 yr old who had asked such a question. Other than that specific memory, I can not recall exact incidents; though I have always been inquisitive and questioning of most things.
 
Stellafane said:
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Event #3: The McMartin Preschool trial. I started out utterly convinced that these people were the worst scum of the Earth, and deserve the worst possible torture devised by humans. I eventually came to see the whole thing was a stupendous farce, and that the accused were in fact victims of an obscene matrix of credulity, ignorance, and evil. I saw how much damage woo thinking could cause, how prevelent it was, and how it must be fought at ever possible level. And it eventually led me to realize that there were a lot of other people like me out there, similarly outraged.
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While I think I had already become a skeptic, this was a very powerful event in my life as well. Even to this day, I am still interested in the event and still read about it.

LLH
 
Carnivore said:
...I felt seriously stupid, because I had allowed myself to believe in something because I would have liked it to be true, and I realized with hindsight that I had not applied my judgement to my belief. I had fooled myself....
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Even though I’ve been a skeptic since before I even knew what the word was, I have experienced this. After reading www.snopes.com I discovered that even I had been suckered by some of these urban legends. It is an odd experience indeed. When I discover that something I believe is false it almost “hurts” and I feel embarrassed (even though there are no witnesses). Back when I first started reading Snopes, I would have to stop from time to time because I didn’t want to read anymore.

LLH
 
I think I've answered this here before, but here goes anyway...

I was 4 years old and attending a Lutheran nursery school. Not because my parents were believers or anything, but because it was local and convenient. We had bible stories from time to time. I remember one day while driving home from nursery school, thinking "That David and Goliath thing, yeah, I can see how that might have happened. But walking on water? Multiplying bread and fish? Coming back from the dead? Nah, just stories."
 
I don't know if I can point to one specific thing. I do remember praying when I was little, and being really disappointed that I wouldn't hear anything back.

Why was I praying, if nothing happened because of it? If it was to make me feel better about something, well, talking to Mom or Dad always made me feel a lot better about whatever was bothering me than praying did, and I could almost always see a change happening after I talked to them.

When I was little I was interested in woo-woo stuff. I remember dragging my mom to see the "Chariots of the Gods?" movie. But that was mainly because I was on my way to becoming an astronomy knowledge sink -- I couldn't get enough -- so anything that had the slightest thing to do with outer space, I was there. I came out of that movie realizing that there was something distinctly off about the presentation. Instead of making definite declarations ("Mars has two moons"), it just asked leading questions ("Did ancient astronauts visit the Incas?") and never really answered them.

That's when I realized that science both asks and answers interesting questions, while woo-wooism asks interesting questions but never really answers them.
 
gfunkusarelius said:
hi all,
sorry if this had been done, but i thought it would be fun to hear people's formative memories...sort of "when did you become skeptical?"

for me, the first thing that sticks in my head is very innocuous, but i guess it often starts that way. it was a commercial for an otc drug- i think it was excedrin. anyway, the commercial compared two other otc drugs, and they said something like "drug one has only aspirin and drug two has only aspirin and acetaminophen, but excedrin has a third ingredient that makes it work better." and i thought to myself "what is that third ingredient and why didnt they name it?" i did a little research and found out it was caffeine...now granted, i understand why this can help, i even use it myself, but i knew even at that age that caffeine had a bum rap and it was obvious to me why they didnt name it.

hopefully some of you have better stories than mine, but hey, i had to share if i was asking for yours.
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My first skeptical experience, in retrospect, was when I was two, and my dad came into my room with a stuffed toy that he said was my favourite. Swear to God, I had never seen that toy before. My conclusion was that my memory could be faulty. I still have the toy (coincidentally, it's an elephant!)

Later, I did lend too much credulity to pyramid power, although I'm proud to say that I tested it and reported negative results, rather than making excuses. I think belief in the paranomral is actully normal, or even healthy, for kids.

I had several families growing up, but the last one were pretty committed Catholics, and I went through Confirmation even though I didn't believe any of it. I ended up teaching Cathecism until the priest asked me directly whether I believed and I had to 'confess' that I didn't. There was no recovering from that conversation!

I have had constant changes in my philosophical, economic, and political views, as well.

My feeling is that I went from being uninterested to scientismic (sp?) to skeptical, in that order, although gradually, not with sudden changes.
 
blutoski said:
Later, I did lend too much credulity to pyramid power, although I'm proud to say that I tested it and reported negative results, rather than making excuses.
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I remember doing science fair experiments in 6th grade on pyramid power (it being the 70s and all) and the previous year on psychic card reading. Both turned out to be bunk.

Maybe my first skeptical experience involved Sunday school when I was perhaps 5 or 6 years old.

The Sunday school teacher drew a wavy line on the chalk board and a straight line above it and asked if the top line could make the bottom line straight. No one answered. I think that, like me, they all were confused by such a silly question. Adults weren't supposed to ask silly questions, so we furrowed our brows trying to figure out what we were missing.

The answer was that the top line can't make the bottom line straight. So God can't make us do right. We have to choose to do right.

But more generally, I couldn't see any difference between the Bible stories and my bedtime stories. My mother told me that the bedtime stories were make-believe. And they didn't seem anything like the world around me. So the difference was plain enough. Then the grown-ups turned around and tried to tell me that these particular bed-time stories were true. That's when I seriously started to distrust grown-ups.

I already distrusted other kids. And I reckon that was really my first skeptical moment.

I was the youngest-but-one of all the kids on my block, and the youngest of 3 boys in my family. I learned pretty quick that anyone older than me was more likely to lie than to tell the truth, even if it was just so they could have some fun.

Telling lies to little kids was always great fun. Whether it was older kids wanting a joke, or adults with their stories of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Bible, or big brothers trying to make you feel small.

I then decided that the best way to approach the world was to go first on the theory that everything I heard was false -- either deliberately or by mistake -- and to change my mind only if convinced. My experience in school didn't change that attitude any.
 
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