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Ebone4rock
SFN Regular
USA
894 Posts |
 Posted - 07/20/2010 : 13:54:07
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Since I have been interacting with you fine folks the past few months and reading the many articles and links to other blogs I have noticed that a great many skeptics "became" skeptical. It's like it was some sort of revelation to many people. For some reason I am different. I have ALWAYS been skeptical ever since I was a kid. There was never a time in my life when I believed in any kind of supernatural entity except maybe Santa but I know I didn't believe in him past 5 or 6 years old.
I seem to be a bit obsessed with over-analyzing myself. I guess I have been spending my life trying to figure out WHY I think so much differently than everyone else I know....which brings me to the debate. Skepticism: Is it natural or is it something that has to be learned?
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Haole with heart, thats all I'll ever be. I'm not a part of the North Shore society. Stuck on the shoulder, that's where you'll find me. Digging for scraps with the kooks in line. -Offspring |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2010 : 19:23:24 [Permalink]
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Ebone.....
You ask " Skepticism: Is it natural or is it something that has to be learned? "
I believe the answer is "both or either" Depending upon an individual's 'native intelligence' (an extraordinarily difficult term to define) and the nature of her early nurturing, a person may very well be born with some proclivity towards questioning authoritative statements and personalities, or dogma offered without substantiation. Obviously, any type of early formal religious training may significantly weaken such a tendency to doubt that which lacks evidence. Those fortunate enough to inherit or possess from birth an inborn nervous system complex enough to drive curiosity and a need for understanding may well be "born skeptics" -- as long as misguided early doctrinaire imposition on the part of parents or those fulfilling that function does not impair the maturation and development of the natural curiosity and need to understand that most infants possess to one degree or another.
Certainly, there are many who have been subjected to rigid religious concepts or authoritarian parenting during their developmental years, and yet succeed, in maturity, in shaking off such shackles and in adopting the intellectual posture of skepticism, "critical thinking", and using the tools of logic and reason to realistically appraise the world that they live in. These would be those who have learned to be skeptics.
However, even those that have not had impediments crippling their intellectual need to know, certain disciplines need to be learned. The skills of deductive and inductive logic, an ability to research complex issues (much easier now in the era of the Internet), and some knowledge of scientific procedure and protocol are important to maintain a genuine skeptical profile. Also, a person has to develop the ability to differentiate between intellectual conviction and emotional (non-rational) persuasion. Some excellent skeptics still carry irrational mental baggage which they are not capable of recognizing or eliminating.
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2010 : 19:51:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ebone4rock
Since I have been interacting with you fine folks the past few months and reading the many articles and links to other blogs I have noticed that a great many skeptics "became" skeptical. It's like it was some sort of revelation to many people. For some reason I am different. I have ALWAYS been skeptical ever since I was a kid. There was never a time in my life when I believed in any kind of supernatural entity except maybe Santa but I know I didn't believe in him past 5 or 6 years old.
I seem to be a bit obsessed with over-analyzing myself. I guess I have been spending my life trying to figure out WHY I think so much differently than everyone else I know....which brings me to the debate. Skepticism: Is it natural or is it something that has to be learned?
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Both.
Critical thinking usually has to be learned. But having a questioning disposition at times, not so much. Most people are skeptical about something. As Carl Sagan said, it might be something as simple as kicking the tires on a used car that you are thinking of buying. You might want to believe the used car salesman, but there is usually a nagging doubt, and not without reason.
Those who call themselves ''skeptics" have taken that kind of thinking to another level. And yes, there is much to learn because skepticism is a tool, not an ideology or a belief. It's a way to evaluate claims of fact. There is a method to it, not all that unlike the Sci method, which employs skepticism as well.
I figured out that I was a skeptic way back in the late seventies. And from there I began a long learning process that I will probably never complete...
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2010 : 20:30:46 [Permalink]
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bng and kil have it right I think.
From my own personal perspective I was always skeptical of things people said. I could spot bad logic well before I could articulate why it was bad logic. Like you I never bought into any of the usual stuff. Dude, circa 1973 (4 years old or so): "Fucking Reindeer can't fucking fly! What's WRONG with you people? Jesus fucking h crist... flying reindeer..."
But I know many people who have come around from the deeply true believer side and learned critical thinking, skepticism, logic, and all that.
The skill of critical thinking is a learned ability. We all get some of it from our everyday life experiences, and we can study it to learn more.
So yeah, skepticism is both inherent and learned.
I think.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2010 : 23:16:18 [Permalink]
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bng said:
Some excellent skeptics still carry irrational mental baggage which they are not capable of recognizing or eliminating.
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Going out on a limb here.... I'd say that all of us have a little of that. It is a significant challenge in the life of a skeptic to recognize and eliminate personal bias. This is a major reason why we place such a high value of the peer review process for science.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 07/21/2010 : 03:33:30 [Permalink]
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Both, certainly. I got pushed into it at a single-digit age debunking nonsensical snake myths and sometimes getting hollered at for the effort. That has changed only in scope.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Ebone4rock
SFN Regular
USA
894 Posts |
Posted - 07/21/2010 : 05:38:25 [Permalink]
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From my own personal perspective I was always skeptical of things people said. I could spot bad logic well before I could articulate why it was bad logic. Like you I never bought into any of the usual stuff. Dude, circa 1973 (4 years old or so): "Fucking Reindeer can't fucking fly! What's WRONG with you people? Jesus fucking h crist... flying reindeer..."
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Same thing happened to me. I couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 when I started asking my mom the tough questions " How the heck is Santa supposed to deliver presents to the whole world in one night?". She told me it was "magic" but I wasn't buying it.
Maybe the whole Santa myth is a catalyst to start naturally skeptical kids on the path to critical thinking. |
Haole with heart, thats all I'll ever be. I'm not a part of the North Shore society. Stuck on the shoulder, that's where you'll find me. Digging for scraps with the kooks in line. -Offspring |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 07/21/2010 : 08:13:44 [Permalink]
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Dude states:| Going out on a limb here.... I'd say that all of us have a little of that. It is a significant challenge in the life of a skeptic to recognize and eliminate personal bias. This is a major reason why we place such a high value of the peer review process for science. |
My own personal bias makes it difficult for me to agree with a young whippersn...., a bright young fellow like Dude who blows his fucking top..., exerts commendable control over his emotions while posting on SFN; but agree I must.
We skeptics ALL have our sloppy, largely uncontrolled emotional biases, and display them all too frequently in supposedly rational debate. The most difficult task that an ostensibly objective intellectual faces is to confront his own occasional irrationality and conquer it. Sadly, I must confess to one and all that I, too, suffer from this problem, even after well more than seventy years of recognizing and fighting it. Civility and objectivity come hard to the highest of the hominids. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 07/21/2010 : 08:28:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Dude states:| Going out on a limb here.... I'd say that all of us have a little of that. It is a significant challenge in the life of a skeptic to recognize and eliminate personal bias. This is a major reason why we place such a high value of the peer review process for science. |
My own personal bias makes it difficult for me to agree with a young whippersn...., a bright young fellow like Dude who blows his fucking top..., exerts commendable control over his emotions while posting on SFN; but agree I must.
We skeptics ALL have our sloppy, largely uncontrolled emotional biases, and display them all too frequently in supposedly rational debate. The most difficult task that an ostensibly objective intellectual faces is to confront his own occasional irrationality and conquer it. Sadly, I must confess to one and all that I, too, suffer from this problem, even after well more than seventy years of recognizing and fighting it. Civility and objectivity come hard to the highest of the hominids.
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Really, it ain't all that hard. All you've got to do is grab the misguided mutha by the throat and tell him/her, through clenched teeth, exactly what will happen to him/her if he/she doesn't aim his/her act in the direction of your opinion. What could be simplier?
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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welshdean
Skeptic Friend
United Kingdom
172 Posts |
Posted - 07/29/2010 : 09:48:58 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by filthy
Really, it ain't all that hard. All you've got to do is grab the misguided mutha by the throat and tell him/her, through clenched teeth, exactly what will happen to him/her if he/she doesn't aim his/her act in the direction of your opinion. What could be simplier?
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That's why I'm back. I missed your diehard honesty, truthfulness, abrubtness I'm telling you like it damn well is muthafucka attitude.  |
"Frazier is so ugly he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wild Life."
"I am America. I am the part you won't recognize, but get used to me. Black, confident, cocky. My name, not yours. My religion, not yours. My goals, my own. Get used to me."
"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."
---- Muhammad Ali
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2010 : 11:38:18 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ebone4rock
Skepticism: Is it natural or is it something that has to be learned?
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Flip the first two words of the question and change "Or" to "and", to get the correst answer. Duality is almost always an innacurate view of reality. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
| Edited by - BigPapaSmurf on 08/04/2010 11:39:52 |
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Skepticism: Nature or Nurture
