OK, I'll play. Please list any quotes from posters you think are sucking up to Randi as their main motivation for being here.
Who said 'sucking up to Randi'? I didn't, you did. That's the kind of flim flam flummery that masquerades as skepticism on this site(Gen.Skept/CT)
You are being disingenuous by trying to reframe and color my post. Randi is where this brand of debunkery came from. He's the granddaddy of the modern form of psuedoskepticism. Yes, yes, I know, Martin Gardner and all that, but he is not the name that comes up when the topic of debunking is, Randi's is. Randi is the public face of debunkery. You can also throw CSIosaurus into the mix, too.
This site was called James Randi Educational Foundation and here is his type of debunkiscism
Sleight of mind™ – Perhaps the greatest trick Randi ever pulled. He is able to appear to be debunking (Faith Healer, where he did not debunk, but rather, only showed decent slight-of-hand abilities) and all his followers buy into it hook, line and sinker.
Fascinating, and yet off-target. Please quote anyone from the skeptical side expressing these kinds of sentiments. On the other side, I give you Jodie, OntarioSquatch and Jabba.
Please quote anyone here claiming total objectivity and a lack of cognitive bias.
I didn't say anyone was claiming total objectivity and lack of cognitive bias, you did. That’s a strawman, isn’t it? Or is it a red herring? Wait, I’ve got it, it’s a strawman baiting his hook with a red herring
What part about the obvious do you not get? Just read that part of my post again. Apparently, you can’t see the wood because the (b)snark is in the way.
A re-reading of, for example, JayUtah, Oystein or many more posters should impress you with the complexity of what they are saying. I struggle to follow some of it, to be honest. On the converse side, we have bare assertions of conspiracy or the existence of imaginary animals with no corroborating evidence or coherent explanation. So, considering complexity, I find many of the skeptical explanations more complex than the "It's true it is!" assertions of non-skeptics. These explanations follow the evidence, rather than what you assert: again, feel free to quote anyone you think is trying to shoehorn a 'mundane' explanation into an exotic theory. Moreover, is there something wrong with positing a plausible explanation? Would you rather we posited the implausible?
Implausible Plausible
Example:
Here is post I made just so you know I’m not being disingenuous. The link itself is no longer active, so this is the best I can do right now. If you or anyone can find this vid, I would appreciate you posting the new link.
Thanks in advance
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5146548&highlight=shamless#post5146548
the Law of Forced/plausibles – Trying to make something fit where it doesn’t fit. Every explanation MUST be a plausible and mundane one, even when it doesn’t fit, it fits.
It is better to be mundane and wrong than to be complex and right. It is the antithesis of Ocaam’s Beard – the simplest solution isn’t always the right one)
For a classical example of this and for a good belly laugh, go to this site. It is a History Channel special on Human Levitation. Go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwvEPeGPxeU
Go to the 1:15 mark and hear Shamless Joe Nickell give the most ridiculous, ludicrous, pathetic attempt of a Forced Plausible I’ve ever seen. Any debunker worth his salt would denounce him tell him to get out of town.
Unfortunately, the link has been removed from youtube, but here is a quick overview:
1. History Channel special on ‘Human Levitation’.
2. Approx. 1:10 minutes in, they talk about the “Flying Friar”, Joseph Capertino(sp) and how he allegedly levitated from a 2-3 foot raised stage up and over a balcony railing
3. Shameless Joe sitting in same church giving his take on the issue. Starts off with the usual logic of ‘folklore, superstitution, etc.; so far so good.
4. But then his gives implausible plausible by saying something to the effect of, “Perhaps he was very athletic and jumped over the railing”
5. Visually, you can see the height and distance to be so great that no known athletic in the history of the world could even come remotely close to making the jump.
And there you have it, the Law of the Implausible Plausible.
Side note: This ‘shameless’ attempt at debuggery earned Shameless Joe the first ever Cycloptic Award(Cyclops, one eye, tunnel vision, get it!) and the first ever place of dishonor in Debunkers’ Hall of Shame.
Also, mundane explanations are almost always the first and best place to start, but it's when you completely exclude the possibility of a more exotic possibility, then you've gone from rational skepticism to psuedoskepticism.
Here we go again with that strawman. I have asked you, Jango, bubba, and I'll now ask OntarioSquatch as well, to quote anyone here who has said anything remotely like that. Perhaps the four of you working together will eventually stumble upon something. Says a lot about your collective research skills, by the way, and also about your process of forming conclusions.
I am talking about the
psychology of a debunker and why there is no psychology forum when it should required reading by anyone who wants to sling cognitive bias claims at someone. The fact that there isn't one creates a thunderous silence. In other words, Debunker, know thine ownself first. Don't see a whole lot of that going on here.
Wow! It's almost uncanny.....
To you it probably is uncanny because you were about to do just that, weren’t you? Actually, it’s just being able to anticipate predictable knee-jerk
Name one time anybody on this site has ever gone with anything but the Official Story, whether it be a JFK type official story or a common consensus Official Story on any type of UFO, Bigfeets, scaly sea monster, etc.. The best you can do is say, “Show me proof” or ‘can’t prove a double negative. Of course, if someone is making a claim they have the BOP, but that also applies to someone who says, “There are no alien UFOs, there is no God(s)”, then the BOP is on that person. And, again, the best you can do is say, “Well, I see no proof for the existence of one”, which again does not disprove anything.
Law of Ocaam’s Broadsword™ – the simplest solution is not usually the best, it is always the best no matter what.
In other words, in six years on this site I have seen very few members ever come up with anything but plausibles, which most things probably are, but some can't be quantified and instead of saying, "Well, it could also possibly be an (insert whatever woo topic you want-UFOs in particular).
Which leads directly into this psychological example of the J.R.'s Cult of Personality.
The Unicorn gambit™: When pressed to the wall with a close ended question, Example – “Do you think, believe or know that all UFO sightings from the dawn of man, up to and including the present, are all mundane, plausible explanations?” They will sarcastically say something to this effect: “Sure there might be a chance, about as much chance of Unicorns and Faries. This is nothing more than a way of sarcastically saying no without have to bear the burden of proof and maintain the semblance of objectivity.
Blah blah blah.....For the umpteenth time: please quote anyone here who is displaying this behaviour, or stop wasting bandwidth.
You are, take off you’re debunker hat and put on your objectivity hat, if you’ve got one laying around. If so, hopefully you haven’t sold it already to Mike and Frank from Antique Archeology. Simply look at the mood, tone and temperament of your posts. They are condescending, snarky if not outright sarcastic and rude.
If you can't see around your horse blinders, stop wasting your analog, dial up modem, low brainwidth.
Or someone will ask you (reasonably) politely to back up what you are saying. Once you do so, I will then form a conclusion about whether I think you're right or not. This is neither flying fur nor unleashed martial canines. This is discussion. This is why we are on this forum. This is perfectly normal human behaviour, so don't paint yourself as a victim because someone disagrees with you. You are not a quivering prey animal at the mercy of a pack of savage predators: grow up.
Ooooo, Quick comeback, snappy retort!
I got your ‘outraged hounds of hell’ right here:
This was my first real taste of shrill, irrational, arrogant, condescending, insulting psuedoskepticism when I started coming to this site. This is mine, but I have seen this many times on the Gen.Skept/CT forums. Don’t bother asking me for links when you’ve got two forums full of them.
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...50&highlight=Jenny+McCarthy+Body+Count+Online
I’ll just repeat the slurs and insults I’ve heard so many times; kook, nutter, CTer, woo, Xian, tin foil hatter, Troofer.
There’s a reason the neologism pseudoskepticism got coined
http://www.skeptic.com/about_us/manifesto/
“This comes from your guy. It is a classical example of how the definition of skeptic got co-opted by the modern skeptical movement
The most ardent skeptics enjoy their skepticism as long as it does not encroach upon their own cherished beliefs. Then incredulity flies out the window.
It is easy, even fun to challenge others’ beliefs, when we are smug in the certainty of our own. But when ours are challenged, it takes great patience and ego strength to listen with an unjaundiced ear. But there is a deeper flaw in pure skepticism. Taken to an extreme the position by itself cannot stand. The OED gives us this 1674 literary example (Tucker Lt. Nat. II):
There is an air of positiveness in all scepticism, an unreserved confidence in the strength of those arguments that are alleged to overthrow all the knowledge of mankind.
Skepticism is itself a positive assertion about knowledge, and thus turned on itself cannot be held. If you are skeptical about everything, you would have to be skeptical of your own skepticism. Like the decaying sub-atomic particle, pure skepticism uncoils and spins off the viewing screen of our intellectual cloud chamber.
Nor does skepticism produce progress. It is not enough simply to reject the irrational. Skepticism must be followed with something rational, or something that does produce progress.
An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. It’s passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be.
Carl Sagan sounded a similar warning to skeptics:
You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don’t see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it (in Basil, 1988, p. 366).”
Oh, and don’t forget Phil Plaitt’s TAM talk entitled “Don’t be a dick”
http://www.ucg.org/bible-study-tool...stion-does-god-exist/science-and-discomfiting
“I think part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause . . .
There, I've dealt with your foolishness long enough. Now, off with you, scoot.
And I suppose you're out in the backwoods of America doing "science?" Let me know when your brilliant non-armchair studies locate something interesting, other than your own needy arrogance. 
