One thought which regularly occurs to me whilst listening to various topics relating to the skeptical movement is if you don’t consider yourself skeptical then what does that make you?
I don’t mean that in a bad way but, to me, being skeptical doesn’t mean not believing in something just for the sake of it (that would be cynicism) but merely not believing in something until there is sufficient evidence to do so. The question is, if you don’t do that, or don’t consider that you do that, then does that mean you just believe everything that you are told?
Someone says “if I stick a needle in here then all the pains will go away” and you say “okay”? Someone says “actually don’t even stick a needle there, I’ll just wave my hands over it for a bit and you say “okay”? Someone says that purple aliens landed in their garden and replaced them with a robot replica of themselves and you say “okay”?
Surely it’s not about whether you are a skeptic/skeptical or not but how skeptical you are? Everyone, surely, when told something, will analyse it somehow and then come out with a conclusion to either believe it or not believe it. And if you’re not going on evidence then what are you basing your decisions on? Faith? Trust? Opinion? All of those, to me, are scarily subjective and subject to massive margins of error.
If a whacko comes up to you in the street and tells you that you should never again wear a green t-shirt because they can only get into your head when you wear green do you not assess the likelihood of this being verifiable true? Does the guy seem mentally stable? Does his statement seem likely to be true? Is there any precedent you are aware of for them (whoever they might be) being able to use the colour of a piece of clothing to interfere with your mind? Surely these sorts of questions, looking at empirical truths which can be queried in order to lead you to your conclusion, are all the scientific, skeptical method at work?
Surely we’re all skeptics – it’s just a case of how skeptical.
