The 'WHY' of PseudoSkepticism
Posted: 14 Aug 2010, 10:04
Looking at this site I'm sure we'll all agree there's a hell of a lot of information defining the 'how' of pseudoskepticism so that after reading it all I feel prepared to take on arch-skeptic Richard Dawkins himself. But what do we have about in terms of 'why', the question of motivation which so many skeptics have abused in attempts to discredit those with religious or spiritual beliefs? Of course I by no means am advocating using something as complex and irrelivant as motivation as apparrent evidence against the views of pseudoskeptics, but I nontheless think it's very important to discuss it purely for the reason that this apparrent 'lack of motivation' in my view is one of the major things convincing people to embrace the movement in the first place. My first encounter with skepticism was little over a year ago, taking the form of an article in The Big Issue of all things (for those outside the UK that's a usually-optimism-orientated magazine sold by homeless people who get to keep 50% of the profits). Before then I'd considered myself an agnostic, not really caring that much whether or not it turned out there was a God but beleiving that anything was possible and that until then I should enjoy my life. I can't remember who the article was by (it was advertising what I now know to be a typical new-atheist bestseller, its subject matter along the lines of Dawkins' religion-virus idea), but immediately my usually-open mind became convinced in its bleak certainty, largely on account of the fact that I assumed no one would hurreiedly jump to such a conclusion and then insist on sharing it with the world unless they had 100% evidence and were driven by their truth-based principles to do so. For me (despite the fact that I'd previously not spent time worrying about the existance of life outside the material world, being okay so long as anthing was a possibility), it was as though all elements of spirituality had effectively been disproven by that one article and those who still beleived just hadn't read this strange new book yet (ah, for those blissful times in which I was completely unaware of the extent to which the hornets' nest actually stretched). Basically I was ready to doubt and give up making my own decisions because while everything else had some sort of positive element to it in my eyes and thus could be seen as wishful thinking on the paert of everyone, this skeptical view seemed at the time to have no merit whatsoever and thus no reason other than 'it was the truth' for it to be right.
Since then I've realised that motivation doesn't neccessarily relate to truth and that, for the most part, try as one might, it's downright as difficult as hell to actually explain someone's actions and properly understand their motivations. Of course, there are many analogies which I now understand can be attributed to these pseudoskeptics who hurriedly dismiss claims that do not fit into their understanding of the world, sometimes in the attempt to do so resorting to refusal to acknowledge evidence, bizarre alterior explanations, and occasionally even apparrent fabrication. Analogies which range from the very specific outlining of possible reasons related to their behaviour, to the short but paranoid and somewhat-submissive "some people are dicks", a statement which I'm sure at least on SOME level is questionable in it's accuracy.
Basically, as well as the fact that I think it's important to try to gain an insight into what makes a pseudoskeptic do what a pseudoskeptic does, I admit I'm somewhat personally intrigued as to just WHY they perform all the evident fallacies that they do. Thus it seemed appropriate that a discussion be opened up on this topic in which people may debate over the reasons behind this movement, or indeed over whether we should be wasting time discussing such things at all.
Since then I've realised that motivation doesn't neccessarily relate to truth and that, for the most part, try as one might, it's downright as difficult as hell to actually explain someone's actions and properly understand their motivations. Of course, there are many analogies which I now understand can be attributed to these pseudoskeptics who hurriedly dismiss claims that do not fit into their understanding of the world, sometimes in the attempt to do so resorting to refusal to acknowledge evidence, bizarre alterior explanations, and occasionally even apparrent fabrication. Analogies which range from the very specific outlining of possible reasons related to their behaviour, to the short but paranoid and somewhat-submissive "some people are dicks", a statement which I'm sure at least on SOME level is questionable in it's accuracy.
Basically, as well as the fact that I think it's important to try to gain an insight into what makes a pseudoskeptic do what a pseudoskeptic does, I admit I'm somewhat personally intrigued as to just WHY they perform all the evident fallacies that they do. Thus it seemed appropriate that a discussion be opened up on this topic in which people may debate over the reasons behind this movement, or indeed over whether we should be wasting time discussing such things at all.