Does skepticism carry over into your entertainment choices?

CP489

Critical Thinker
CP489
Joined
May 13, 2006
Messages
319
Just wondering if the forum generally rejects woo-wooism in movies, TV, etc.

For instance, I enjoy "Supernatural" as fantastical fluff as it is. Does your skepticism make it impossible for you to enjoy such vices?
 
I always just think of them as I would the Lord of the Rings movies, pure fantasy.
 
No. I don't need to believe in magic to appreciate it's use as a plot device. I don't need to beleive Klingons exist to appreciate Star Trek, why would I need to believe ghosts exist to enjoy The Legend of Hell House?
 
Nah, I love woo-woo entertainment.... I guess for the same reason I like bad movies. MST3K anyone? I also love Halloween time, going on "haunted tours", etc. I guess I really can't explain why since I don't believe in the stuff. It's just fun. I'm just a big old kid.
 
It all depends.

For one thing, if it turns out the creator has some spiritualist or religious viewpoint he/she is trying to push, that'll ruin it for me somewhat. That is, it's being "preachy" (think Chronicles of Narnia).

If there's any crypto-Christian stuff in there, it'll lose major points with me for sure. But it all depends on how it's done. For example, I love the Hellraiser series, but it only superficially invokes the Christian mythos. Sure, there's demons, and Hell, but there's no angels, or heaven, and it seems like anybody can be victimized by the demons, whether they believe or not. Also, there are NO priests fighting the demons with crucifixes and stuff (thankfully). I think there may've been more religious overtones in Hellraiser III, but that whole film was so bad I've blocked it out of my memory.

Pretty much anything where Christians are fighting the devil and his forces of evil is really lame. The Omen, Rosemary's Baby...it seems like these should only be scary to Christians.
 
Obvious entertainment is fun. I don't want to throw away the original Star Trek, or any of my many fantastical Arthur C. Clarke/Issac Asimov (et al) novels.
A skeptical outlook doesn't need to throw away imagination, it just needs to define when it may become somebody's idea of fact, and misused if unproven.
In my estimation, the continuation of science requires at least two things.
Imagination, and experimentation.

ETA clarification.
 
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It does when I think my money would be going to wooish causes. For instance, I didn't go see the movie "What the bleep do we know" because I didn't want to add to J.Z. Knight's coffers.
 
Gravy said:
It does when I think my money would be going to wooish causes. For instance, I didn't go see the movie "What the bleep do we know" because I didn't want to add to J.Z. Knight's coffers.
Click to expand...

Good point. I suppose that because I'm a skeptic, I watched Loose Change, primarily to debunk it.
 
Loose Change was free on Google Video.

I saw What the Bleep, but gave no money, it was checked out of the library.
 
Know thy enemy.

However, if I read the intent of the OP, I will say that I think imagination is important in the continuation of discovery.
Whether silly ideas will cloud the minds of some is probably the price we pay for thinking unconventional things, and benefitting from them.
 
I enjoyed Julian May's mammoth books despite the fantastic extrapolations from the... erm, highly individualistic Jesuit thinker (that ought to be understated enough) Teilhard de Chardin. They weren't trying to convince me of the reality of the system of magic-like psychic powers, nor the web of forces, nor any of the other trappings of the story universe.

Likewise, the Harry Potter stories are great fun to read. I don't expect Rowling to claim there are real wizards and muggles in the world. It's just decent entertainment.

I don't think I could stomach more than a few pages of those end-times novels that sell so well. My tail would be twitching involuntarily.
 
I certainly enjoy a good fantasy. I do get rather annoyed when a show claims to be set in the real world, and shows strawman "skeptics" refusing to believe the fictional reality around them.
 
To a lesser extent.

It is somewhat silly to get ultra-critical about things that are designed to be fake and they are telling you this fact.
 
Fantasy stories are just fine as fantasy stories.

Fun even.

It's when somebody pushes a fantasy as "real" that I get torqued.
 
it depends. Most times no, but when a show tries to imply what it is showing is real then yes. I didn't watch X-Files for the first 3 or 4 seasons because I thought they were trying to say it was real (and I'm still not a huge fan because I think too many people buy into it.)

BTW, The new Doctor Who is the best damn show around at the moment. Can't wait for season two (here in the US. I'm just barely resisting my temptation to bittorrent all the episodes....)
 
For me, generally not. I've always been a big SciFi and fantasy fan, and as long as magic, powers, or whatever are presented in an intellegent fashion that is self-consistant within the story, I have no problem with suspension of belief.

Julian May for instance, in her Pliestocene Exile stories, presented psychic (and "metapsychic") powers in an intelligent fashion that stayed consistent throughout the books.
 
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