Category: skepticism

A skeptical rant

A while back I started to occasionally cruise the local atheist/skeptic sites from around Winnipeg.  It was an interesting cultural experience.  It made me think of what some non-religious folks might (possibly) experience when they encounter  particular church cultures.  What I am thinking of primarily is the seemingly unconscious maintenance of a certain in-house mindset that helps support and perpetuate a larger view of the world that is not held by popular culture.  This was strikingly impressed on me in a recent post at Winnipeg Skeptics entitled, Top Ten Reasons Why Being a Skeptic is Fulfilling.  Now there really is nothing to criticize here as the post is about a subjective experience, that is, being fulfilled.  However, the experienced fulfillment strike me as either unhealthy or simply generic and so confusing in terms of its being unique to skepticism (though I did admit the author did not claim uniqueness for many of the reasons).

First is the prescriptive nature of the post.  Here are a few excerpts,
As a skeptic you love science
Through your skeptical endeavors you have found your social conscience, a sense of camaraderie and have made friends for a lifetime.
I feel bad for the poor skeptic who remains unconvinced of the current employment of science as an effective means to address human well-being and in so doing finds him or herself ostracized from this fraternity for such contrarian views.

More than this defining of what a skeptic loves and will experience is the nature of the claims.  So take the full sentence of the first reason skepticism is fulfilling,
As a skeptic you love science and know that the scientific method is the best method mankind has ever invented to understand who we are, how we got here, and how we can improve our lot in this universe.
Okay I will grant the how we got here but who we are and how to improve our lot, really?  I’ll leave a comment over at that post and wait for some elaboration because I don’t even know where to start on that claim.  But more to the point.  This post is about fulfillment.  Skepticism is fulfilling because it is the best.  How is it the best?  It is the best not because of demonstrable realities but because it is fulfilling for this individual.  It provides a subjective condition which the author enjoys.  Shouldn’t there be reasons to be skeptical about that?

Here is number two,
You know that reality is a puzzle and that it will take a lot of effort to understand it. At times truth goes against what seems to be common sense. You have discovered that the struggle to understand reality reveals truths that are, at times, deeply profound. That knowledge will keep you searching the for the truth for the rest of your life.
That may well be true of skepticism but I am going to go ahead and say that is true of anyone who is semi-conscious or attentive to life.

The author goes on in number three,
You possess a willingness to learn accompanied by a willingness to change, that’s why your skepticism makes you a better person.
How does a willingness to change make anyone better?  There is simply no relationship here.

Number four,
I have only ever met one group of people who cheer when they have been proven wrong. Skeptics. Especially those who employ scientific skepticism. You may be bold when you ask those annoyingly tough questions, but underneath it all you are humble enough to know when you have discovered the truth. After all, evidence is evidence and that’s good enough for you.
This is about as laughable as the Christian radio station that claims to only use ‘safe’ language. Hmmm, agreed upon in-house rules are cheered upon when followed by one another?  Strange.  I am still waiting for evidence of things like, say, the above claim about how science is the best mode of ‘improving out lot in life’.

Bizarrely perhaps this post reminds me of certain strands of pentecostalism.  The nature of these claims reminds me of the pentecostals who tried to show me the fulfilling nature of speaking in tongues.  They just wanted me to try it and if I opened myself to it I would see its value.  I tried.  I did not see.  I have the same feeling about these models of skepticism/atheism.  They continue to strike me as so profoundly lacking as an overall approach to life.  It is almost as though the author knows this and instead simply tries to amp up the volume to create a kind of Prosperity Gospel for skepticism.
Do this and you will end up fulfilled, isn’t it wonderful.
Sure, the author of this post is someone who apparently was an Anglican Minister and now an enlightened skeptic so I guess I should forgive him the zeal of conversion but these expressions strike as so terminally unfulfilling that I can’t even begin to wrap my head around them.  I want to be clear that author does admit that “You understand that being skeptical on it’s own just doesn’t cut it.”  But this is followed quickly about an apparent openness to letting others ‘prove themselves’.  I think most people with any familiarity to this discussion knows how this goes.  Two sides with differing foundational logics attempt to ‘prove’ something and surprisingly no one is convinced.

As I reflect on this post, which I was originally going to scrap, what remains most impressing is this notion of hope.  Why should there be hope in this?  I am guessing there is hope because of this author’s experience.  This all strikes me as somehow strange.

Debating whether or not I care

I recently crossed paths with someone heavily involved in an atheists group at the local university.  This person was not of the ‘sort’ I expected.  In any event the encounter spurred me to do a little snooping around on the internet for local atheist blogs and see what was happening.  In the process I ran into The Winnipeg Skeptics.  One of the contributors has his own blog Startled Disbelief.  I started reading various posts and before long I chimed in with a few comments.  Now I have to say I appreciate Gem Newman’s tone at Startled Disbelief and so was quite open to hearing his positions.  After my initial comment Gem directed me to an earlier post which outlined in broader terms his position as a skeptic.  We had a decent little exchange going before I realized that the arc of the conversation was quickly moving into territory I simply had no interest in pursuing.

If you are interested in the full conversation see the last link (I did quite appreciate his overall presentation).  In any event there was one aspect to the conversation that continued to trouble me.  Gem constantly pushed the notion that skepticism was somehow non-political.  Skepticism is simply a method of critically examining claims (as he puts it).  I didn’t think anyone believed in a neutral mode of scientific inquiry anymore.  Gem went on to say that skepticism does not “provide a personal moral framework” and also that “atheism says nothing about politics, economics, or even belief in the supernatural.”  He claimed I was confusing the politics of particular atheists with the politics of atheism (I had earlier proposed that atheism was actually a much more robust approach than skepticism . . . for him atheism is a one-off subject).  Gem claims that he is “a skeptical, liberal, humanistic atheist.”  I suppose it is this combination that clarifies his politics.  However, he continues to maintain a broader skeptical orientation in saying, “I think that everything should be open to question. All conclusions are provisional.”  How is this not political?  How will that not continue to deny participation to decisive and potentially life-threatening postures that need to be taken in response to abusive powers?

Now so far as theology goes I would agree that a skeptical atheism comes much closer to biblical faith than many other contemporary theologies do in its rigor for idol-smashing.  However, biblical faith is a decidedly declared position.  That is, biblical faith will always ultimately undermine earthly authorities which abuse power.  This is Christology (as well as good Old Testament theology).  So I put it to Gem saying that I am much more interested in the proposition ‘love everything’ as opposed to his tagline ‘question everything’.  Love maintains a critical posture (because of its love for others) but always orientates the person towards a constructive and engaged posture.  This is where things started coming off the rails in my mind.  Here Gem began ‘applying’ his method.  His defense of and basis for skepticism was simply the apparently self-evident role of the Enlightenment as “proven to have held up.”  This is exactly my criticism he does not address.  The Enlightenment does not hold up because it offered nothing socially or politically substantive to engage the West.  I am then accused of a ‘false dichotomy’ in my opposition of love-or-question everything.  Though, I should add that love under Gem’s definition is some sort of fond cuddling.  When I advanced my view of love (as something restorative) I was accused of having a definition that “seems vague, misleading, needlessly complex, and in some cases probably guilty of equivocation.”  Oh man, I guess Gem has the definition down for love.

It is at this point at the end of the conversation that Gem offers the strange example of giving lectures to teachers on how to teach mathematics.  In this example it would not interest him to consider how to integrate the possibility that some children are unable to learn due to unstable life circumstances.  That sort of clinched it.  I suspect he would say that indeed would care about it but he also says that he has “neither the skills nor the inclination to be a counsellor, and the fact that some of them may need counselling does not make teaching mathematics any less important.”  Who the hell would argue from that example that mathematics are not important?  Yes, fine we are all able and limited in various capacities but to consider one aspect of education as ‘pedagogically pure’ regardless of circumstance seems unhelpful.

Why am I recounting this?  I guess I wanted to process it for myself.  Christian and skeptical/atheistic apologetics are pretty big these days.  I thought it might be a good exercise to understand why I don’t care.  What this has clarified for me is the reality that by and large these expressions (on both sides of the fences, as I have encountered them) have a drastically insufficient or at least dis-integrated view of politics as though they can go about their business because they are a-political.  Its not my responsibility for what others do with the sacred truth I discover.  In any event it seems more like bullshit than before.