Opinion of Skepticism

[dead0man]

The paranormal community, for instance, would claim that Michael Shermer is a 'debunker' and not a true skeptic in that he doesn't even read the evidence before offering counter arguments.

Stanton Friedman, who is a believer in UFOs but also has a MSc in nuclear physics, has been very critical of Shermer for this.  They have debated a number of times and maybe Shermer has learned some of the evidence since then, but when I first heard them in a debate, Shermer frequently said "I don't really know much about the specifics of the case, but...."

I can understand if you don't believe something or if it's counter to your world view that you aren't going to look in to it all that much, but if you are going to be so arrogant as to not only call yourself a skeptic but to found a society claiming yourself as a skeptic, I think you should make much more of an effort.

it can be frustrating when you, day after day, deal with people that think a photo is solid evidence of something or that unidentifiable lights in the sky are proof we are not alone.  Sure, if you're going to get in the business of skepticism, you have to to expect you're going to be dealing with the "true believers" all the time, but it doesn't mean that should be your job 100% of the time.

I'm a skeptic because of Carl Sagan.

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[dead0man]

The problem is, the skeptics, or 'debunkers' seem to treat all belief in the paranormal and all paranormal evidence in this way, that there is no good evidence out there.  That is easy to maintain if you don't learn any of the details of the evidence, I find with some of these cases that it's much harder to be a 'debunker' when I read the actual evidence.

I've never had that problem.  Certainly there has been things I could not explain, but not being able to explain something is nowhere near proof of anything.

[dead0man]

The problem is, the skeptics, or 'debunkers' seem to treat all belief in the paranormal and all paranormal evidence in this way, that there is no good evidence out there.  That is easy to maintain if you don't learn any of the details of the evidence, I find with some of these cases that it's much harder to be a 'debunker' when I read the actual evidence.

I've never had that problem.  Certainly there has been things I could not explain, but not being able to explain something is nowhere near proof of anything.

Explain these:

1.This event was very well known up to the 1970s. Sadly seems to be forgotten:

15 people were supposed to show up to church for choir practice and 12 of them were going to come separately.  They made a point of showing up on time every week on time. However, on the time of the week when the choir singers were supposed to be there and an underground gas leak caused the church to explode, not a single choir member was in the church.

This was the West Side Baptist Church in Beatrice Nebraska and it occurred in 1950. There was a television 'movie of the week' made about this in the 1970s, but I can't find it.

http://www.snopes.com/luck/choir.asp

If the odds is 1 in 50 that one would miss the choir practice, then the odds of all 12 missing the choir practice is 1 in 244140625000000000000.

According to the Snopes story, they were late for practice on average one out of every four times so the odds of all 12 missing the choir practice was 1 in 1,000,000 according to Snopes.  However, I don't think they've calculated the odds correctly.  The calculation is .25^12 which I can't do with an internet calculator because it goes to e, however, the odds of nine missing when the odds are 1 in 4 of any missing are already over 1 in 250,000.

From what I'd heard about it from Unsolved Mysteries and read about it from a book called Amazing Coincidences, the odds were greater than one in four as any member who was late for practice was punished (I think they weren't allowed to attend the next week.)

2.Unless this whole story is made up (and I think the recordings exist, so it's not likely.)

"Towards the end of the program, she also discussed telepathy being a part of these paranormal experiences during extreme conditions. Coffey told an amazing story of a culturally diverse mountain crew that encountered a harrowing blizzard. Communicating via radio, they navigated the terrain safely. Upon returning to base camp, they listened to a recording of their conversation and were astonished to hear that they had all been speaking their native languages, yet understood each other perfectly."

https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2008/07/13

what part of "not being able to explain something is nowhere near proof of anything" was hard for you?

[dead0man]

I didn't like it, because as I explained above, it's a dodge:

"That is easy to maintain if you don't learn any of the details of the evidence, I find with some of these cases that it's much harder to be a 'debunker' when I read the actual evidence."

what's there to learn?  Some place claims a bunch of people missed choir practice one night and the church happened to blow up that night.  What is this supposed to be evidence of?  If it's anything more than "sometimes weird sh**t happens" then it's woo.  Certainly not proof of "God".  Some people communicated weirdly....and?  It's weird, sure, but it's not proof of anything.

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yep, that's exactly what I'm saying

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a good skeptic (or "science") should only dismiss something that is woo, when it's presented as some kind of "proof of something", not "unusual".  "hey look at this weird spot on my wall, that's weird right?" is very different from "hey, look at this weird spot on my wall, must be ghosts".

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I like weird sh**t as much as anybody, but it's when it's claimed that "this weird thing is proof of something" that the problems start.  Pictures of strangely shaped wood in Scottish lakes are not proof of prehistoric monsters.  Videos of a dude in a monkey suit walking through the woods is not proof of big foot.  Dust particles floating close to the camera lens and oddly illuminated by the flash are not proof of ghosts.  Even finding ships floating the ocean with no crew and no evidence of shenanigans, weird noises when you know you're alone or people that just up and disappear are not proof of anything.  Some things are unexplainable.  It sucks sometimes, but life would be boring without a little mystery.

background-I grew up in "America's Most Haunted Town", so I've been hearing bull sh**t since before I could talk.  My Dad is/was weird and had lots of books on strange things, paranormal, etc...they went well with the books on Christian "End of Days/Rapture/'Jesus is coming, so look busy!'"... those scared me way more than the ones about ghost ships and alien abductions.  Thankfully he also had a book called The Straight Dope that were collections of a column in The Chicago Reader (and syndicated).  People would write in and ask strange questions, like "how many calories in cum" or "are the 85mpg carburetors real and just being hidden by the oil industry".  The answers would be funny, usually fully investigated, informative and free of BS.  They showed how sometimes even the "authorities" were wrong, and that you really should question everything.  Those books started me on a road to skepticism.  Johnny Carson, Carl Sagan, James Randi and Penn Jillette carried me rest of the way.  I'm still fascinated by stories of the unexplained, like all skeptics I think.  The thing "true believers" like to not appreciate is that we skeptics want aliens to be real just as much (if not more) than you do.  Nothing would be more awesome to science than finding a prehistoric fish in a pond or a bipedal mammal so far not seen.  Hell, I can even enjoy the stories the Bull sh**tters tell, but only when it's good and original....somebody trying to say "yeah, I don't buy into 9-11 conspiracy theories either, but tower 7 got pulled down by the govt to hide something and I know Trump is going to start a war with Iran" for the hundredth time is frustrating.

[dead0man]

The problem is, and this is basically what I've been saying about 'debunkers' is that you are nowhere near as skeptical of the supposed explanations as you are of the original claims.  A true skeptic should be skeptical about both the claims and the purported explanations.

For instance:
1."Some place claims a bunch of people missed choir practice one night and the church happened to blow up that night." 

This was not a 'claim' this was a well documented occurrence. The odds of this incident occurring are at least 1 in a million (according to Snopes) and probably much higher.  Again, does it prove anything? No. In this case, I'd agree I'm not sure what can be investigated.

2." Videos of a dude in a monkey suit walking through the woods is not proof of big foot."

This suggests to me you are a 'debunker' and not really a skeptic.  You are obviously referring to the Patterson/Gimlin video, but it is highly unlikely it was a person wearing a 'monkey suit'.

A.A suit like that could not be bought off the shelf when that video came out.  And, I was told by a film buff friend of mine, that the movie Planet of the Apes was supposed to have a whole bunch of additional things in it, but that the budget was shot in making all the ape costumes.  Planet of the Apes came out several years after the Patterson/Gimlin video, so the technology to make a suit like that would likely have even been more primitive. The estimates I've read I believe were that to make a suit like that would have cost at least $10,000 in 1968 dollars. It's hard to believe Patterson and Gimlin would have gone to that much trouble (and where would they have gotten the money from?  Maybe the guy in the suit was wealthy, there is that possibility.)

B.The biggest evidence put forward by the 'debunkers' is that many years later, a person came forward and said they were the person wearing the suit and the 'debunkers' said 'well there you go, it was a hoax.'  This was my first encounter with so-called skeptics (who I now refer to as 'debunkers') not holding purported explanations to the same standard that they hold the initial claims to.  I mean, if an anonymous person comes forward claiming to be the someone completely covered up in a suit, he couldn't be lying, right? 

I have the book 'The Straight Dope.'  I've read parts of it from time to time.

wait wait wait....you actually believe that big foot video?  Do you know how I know it's a guy in a monkey suit?  Because it looks like a guy walking in a monkey suit.  The fact that the guy that did it admitted it and that they bought a monkey a suit before the video was released and that they had a history of being con men just further proves it.

but lets say it didn't look like a human male walking in a cheap monkey suit and all the other evidence proving it was a couple of bad guys trying to make money off of morons was gone, it still wouldn't prove a large bipedal primate was undiscovered in western North America.  It's not odd to you that a guy who wrote books on big foot and who was making a "documentary" about big foot has created the "best" proof of big foot?  Do you have any idea how many hunting cameras are out there?  None have ever captured a big foot.  No body ever recovered, no skat, no hair on a tree, none hit by a car.

There are no large (bigger than a beagle) undiscovered land mammals, anywhere.  I wish there were, but there are not.

[dead0man]

Now you're doing what you accused me of doing earlier.   I believe the Big Foot video is evidence of something.

yeah, that video cameras existed in the 70s. It is NOT evidence of big foot.  It's not evidence against big foot existing either.....liars lying isn't proof that what they are lying about isn't true.