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re: "skeptical movement"

Moochie said:
And I am still not convinced of an "organized skeptical movement."
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You're conflating two claims:

1. that there is such a thing as "organized skepticism"
2. that there is such a thing as "a skeptical movement"

Organized skepticism is part of a skeptical movement.

The same way that Susan B Anthony and the National Women's Suffrage Association was part of a women's equality movement. So was the National Women's Party. They all had similar goals, but approached them in different ways. Total membership in these groups was only in the thousands, but millions of women were involved in the protests they organized.

Nothing gets done without organization. Nothing.

This is one of the reasons I spend less time on the forum than I did even a few months ago. I've taken the Kiless approach: online communities are interesting to visit once and awhile, but they don't do... anything.
 
Dunstan said:
My only quarrel with the term "organized skeptical movement" is the lack of definition. I don't have any aversion to the words or to the notion of a movement. The problem is that the phrase is being used in a deliberately vague and undefined way (mainly by our resident quasi-concern troll). It's seemingly used to tar all skeptics with the same brush, but when challenged, he retreats behind the vagueness of the term.

It's akin to referring to the "scientific establishment" or "the elite." It's much easier to slag off a vaguely defined group, because when presented with contrary evidence, you can say "oh, I don't think of X as being part of that group." Sort of a reverse No True Scotsman fallacy.
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This is a pretty lucid concern. Thanks for clarifying.

Indeed, I think part of the reason skeptics recoil from the assertion is that they are responding to the perception that the expression "organized skepticism" can only be pejorative.

I'm reminded of friends in the 1980s who emigrated from Poland. Another friend referred to them as "a bunch of communists," and it took them about three years to understand that in Canada, that was actually an insult rather than an observation.

Organized skepticism exists, has an agenda, has goals, has a vision, wants the world to change, and invests time, money, and effort to acheive this. The forum member who thinks that's a bad thing may have some thinking to do.
 
I hope you folks sort this out soon. I'm dying to find out whether I'm part of an organized skeptical movement or not.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
quixotecoyote said:
Would we get helmets? I like helmets.
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That would have to be voted on and aproved by a 2-1 margin and then signed into enactment by the head skeptical non-believer (its very hard to get him or her to do this because he or she does not believe many things are necessary without lots of studies).

Of course then it has to wait for the appropriations commitee to allocate the funds.

Then it goes to the purchasing branch of the supplies arm in the non-hierarchical division.

And then we get helmets.
 
Myriad said:
I hope you folks sort this out soon. I'm dying to find out whether I'm part of an organized skeptical movement or not.

Respectfully,
Myriad
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You do realize that the "organized skeptical movement" is a straw man of both those who dislike skeptics and skeptics themselves. On the one hand, skeptic-"haters" refer to it because it makes skepticism look like a huge monolithic means of social control that is dedicated to stamping out all opposition, much like a religion. Skeptics, on the other hand, like to refer to it because they know that it is used most often as a "hater" canard and therefore allows then to pass off any phrase that resembles "organized skeptical movement" as such.

Such a dismissal of any phrase that contains some form of "skeptic" and "movement" seems to, in my observation, allows skeptics to ignore the possibility there are influential self-styled skeptics exert a certain amount of social power and that such social power maybe the reason that people reject an idea rather than it actual truth or falsity.
 
John Jackson said:
I think the original term was "organised skeptical movement".

That term was never defined and so all that has occurred is that people have interpreted it to mean what they want it to mean and so everyone thinks they're winning the argument.

The fact is that no-one is winning any argument as the argument was never defined.
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Good point. I wanted it quoted so people could see this again.

The term has no strict meaning, so it is left up to the meaning people gather from it; the implications of the term as well as the dictionary meaning. Many people don't seem to see the level of organisation or energy one would expect when confronted with the term 'organised movement'. Sure, call it that if it makes you comfortable, and you might technically be correct. But what baggage comes along with the term that is unintentional?

Athon
 
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