Is there anything skeptics can't reduce

Taffer said:
I do not speak for the good doctor. Only myself.....
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We share outlooks. I don't speak for others, either. Just me.

...I ask you again. I am a skeptic, so why am I "full of myself.....
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I must have been in error with my generalizations, like the "good doctor".

You must be "different".
 
Dr Adequate said:
My feeling of superiority to halfwitted liars is well-merited.

But it is hardly being "full of oneself" to know that one is not a halfwitted liar. Billions of others can make the same claim....
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Yes. Some are "fullwitted liars". Those are the ones who build their lies with great care and skill.

Either way (half-witted, or full-witted), the one caught up in the lie is usually it's maker, not the intended audience.

...Note for the dull-witted: I made a negative generalization. I claimed "that skeptics don't lie and lie and lie to believers about what believers think". If the prancing little halfwit wishes to argue otherwise, the burden of proof is on him....
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Ah, the famous and well utilized "burden of proof" avenue! There simply can't be a single thread on this forum without that gem, as well as the "strawman" accusation.

You, sir, are a masterful debater, a mind of great power, skill, and glory!

We bow before thee!
 
monoman said:
Fad? So skepticism started when you registered at the JREF forums?
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Nope.

Just like communism wasn't the invention of Marx, skepticism is an old concept and way of thinking.

The similarities is that those who warped the communism of the 20th Century were similar to those who today are warping skepticism.

The current rave in skepticism, as a tool in the war against religion, will have it's successes.

Ultimately, it will fail as such in a similar way that communism failed as a form of central government, and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
 
Taffer said:
So you accept things without evidence?
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What a silly question. There are loads of things we accept without personally examining the evidence: we accept the evidence presented by others whom we presume to know more about the subject than ourselves.

Some examples: I would accept Randi's word about how a particular illusion could be performed without testing it myself. If Phil Plait tells me the angle of Mercury's orbit from the plane of the ecliptic I won't go find an ephemeris to check him. If my buddy Stan the chemist tells me that hydronium consists of a hydrogen ion and a proton, I will take his word for it (in fact, he told me that very thing last week.)

The issue is, WHOSE evidence do you accept and whose do you delve further into and verify for yourself? Or phrased differently, what criteria do you use for deciding what evidence to accept? Skeptics, like scientists, go with evidence that is replicatable, and we like stuff that has passed peer review. Other folks prefer to go with authority vested in certain individuals.

Now to these "other folks", my examples above might look like I'm putting faith in various people just because I like and respect them. That's true, but that's not why I believe them: it's because I know they have worked for years in the fields they are talking about, and that what they know has been subject to practical testing all during that time, and that it has held up (other than that Phil may not have been asked about Mercury's orbital angle for a long time). I trust the experience I know they have, and therefore I don't feel a requirement to go gather the same experience myself.
 
Numenaster said:
...Now to these "other folks", my examples above might look like I'm putting faith in various people just because I like and respect them. That's true, but that's not why I believe them: it's because I know they have worked for years in the fields they are talking about, and that what they know has been subject to practical testing all during that time, and that it has held up.......
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It is belief. You have presented your reasons for believing certain people, but it is belief nonetheless.

And that is one of my ideological problems with how many people present skepticism;

at some point, you must have faith and believe, or you run the risk of ideological zeal.
 
Huntster said:
It is belief. You have presented your reasons for believing certain people, but it is belief nonetheless.
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Of course it's belief.

Skepticism is, broadly defined, simply a refusal to believe in things for which there is no reliable evidence.

As opposed to religion, which is effectively a school of thought that demands that one believe in things despite, or sometimes because of a total lack of reliable evidence.

Unfortunately, the symmetry you seem to feel is there simply does not exist -- or at least, there is no reliable evidence for it.
 
Huntster said:
It is belief. You have presented your reasons for believing certain people, but it is belief nonetheless.

And that is one of my ideological problems with how many people present skepticism;

at some point, you must have faith and believe, or you run the risk of ideological zeal.
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I'll defer to Shermer, as he has already worded a response that is as good or better than something I can come up with on the fly,
Modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, which involves gathering data to test natural explanations for natural phenomenon. A claim becomes factual when it is confirmed to such an extent that it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement. But all facts in science are provisional and subject to challenge, and therefore skepticism is a method leading to provisional conclusions.
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The difference, IMHO, between belief in a religious context and that of a scientific one, is that, in science, theories are always fair targets for challenge and revision/expulsion. Though we may have "faith" in the Specific Theory of Relativity it is only provisional and is testable by any individual (either through math or experiments).

The call for "evidence" from those that are challenging the current scientific paradigm is because of this rigorous testing and objectivity of the theory has earned it provisional agreement, and to accept any hypothesis thrown at it and go through the testing is a waste of time and resources.
 
Arkan_Wolfshade said:
The call for "evidence" from those that are challenging the current scientific paradigm is because of this rigorous testing and objectivity of the theory has earned it provisional agreement, and to accept any hypothesis thrown at it and go through the testing is a waste of time and resources.
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I believe Huntster's problem with this is that we, as skeptics, are taking it on faith that scientists have actually done the research they claim and that they are not lying about the results. This is where our bias toward peer review comes in: fooling one person is much easier than fooling a lot of experts about something in their area of expertise. But at some point we are taking the contents of Science, Nature, The Lancet, etc etc on faith.

I still think it's better than just taking a vote among the people you happen to know, unless the people you happen to know are also experts in the subject at hand. My father-in-law the country boy is the first person I'd ask about how to keep the coyotes away from the chickens, or about grafting maples, but for preventing intermetallics in lead-free solder I'll go with my coworkers (I work at an electronics manufacturer).
 
Numenaster said:
I believe Huntster's problem with this is that we, as skeptics, are taking it on faith that scientists have actually done the research they claim and that they are not lying about the results. This is where our bias toward peer review comes in: fooling one person is much easier than fooling a lot of experts about something in their area of expertise. But at some point we are taking the contents of Science, Nature, The Lancet, etc etc on faith.
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Except we're not. I still have evidence that the contents of Science are accurate, because I have evidence that if they were not, I would have found out about it.

It's a long chain of evidence, but it exists nonetheless. Hell, the computer I'm writing on is evidence that I can trust the science that I hear about - if it were all false, this computer simply wouldn't work.
On the other hand, if I were going to base my life on a specific scientific claim, I'd do more than casual research to find out if it were true or not. But for the less important claims I see, there is already sufficient evidence that I'm willing to accept them on a provisional basis.
 
Numenaster said:
I believe Huntster's problem with this is that we, as skeptics, are taking it on faith that scientists have actually done the research they claim and that they are not lying about the results. This is where our bias toward peer review comes in: fooling one person is much easier than fooling a lot of experts about something in their area of expertise. But at some point we are taking the contents of Science, Nature, The Lancet, etc etc on faith.
...
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Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodies?

If we assumed that every other person was either (1) lying to us or (2) mistaken and we had to verify for ourselves then nothing would ever get done. We're skeptics/critical-thinkers not nihilists/cynics.

I have "faith" that my autonomic breathing will continue while I am asleep. That is irrelevent to my capacity to think critically and apply reasoning to situations. If we are going to argue that about "faith" as being an issue, regardless of context, then we might as well take it to its illogical extreme and state that "we merely have faith that what we think, and remember, is what we are actually thinking and did." It's moot. It's droll. And it's best left to philosophers.
 
Huntster said:
I agree. It's the same phenomenon, and it is exercised in the same way, for the same reasons, and with the same results.

The demand for evidence by skeptics as well as the demand for biblical fundamentalism are both tools used to shut the opposing viewpoint down.
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Tripe. Would you accept a guilty verdict if no evidence was presented to support it?

Do you go through life blindly accepting proposals without anything to back them up?

For your sake I hope not.
 
Dcdrac said:
....Would you accept a guilty verdict if no evidence was presented to support it?

Do you go through life blindly accepting proposals without anything to back them up?....
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Nope and nope.

And that has nothing to do with zealots (on either the side of religion or the side of anti-religion) using their fundamentalism as weapons.
 
Huntster said:
Nope and nope.

And that has nothing to do with zealots (on either the side of religion or the side of anti-religion) using their fundamentalism as weapons.
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You said:

The demand for evidence by skeptics as well as the demand for biblical fundamentalism are both tools used to shut the opposing viewpoint down.
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Basically claiming that demanding evidence is but a tool. You're effectively claiming that evidence is useless, am I right ? Otherwise it's just a clever ploy used by those pesky skeptics.
 
Belz... said:
Huntster said:
In fact, fantasies get in the way.
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You're talking about religion, now, right ?
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Belz... said:
Huntster said:
Ah, the famous and well utilized "burden of proof" avenue! There simply can't be a single thread on this forum without that gem, as well as the "strawman" accusation.
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Must I assume that you don't know what those are ?
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To justify your general disdain for religion, I would say you folks have pretty much turned it into a strawman.
 
Huntster said:
Ah, the famous and well utilized "burden of proof" avenue! There simply can't be a single thread on this forum without that gem, as well as the "strawman" accusation.
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You must hear those two phrases very often, yes. Doesn't the fact that people keep correcting you for making exactly the same clumsy stupid errors tell you anything?

No, I don't suppose it does.

It can't, or you wouldn't think that pointing this out was in some way a snappy answer to my post, instead of an embarrassing admission.

How dumb can you get?
 
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