Ok, I like skeptics. They keep the balnce in explaining paranormal phenomena. I wholeheartedly listen to what they have to say. Heck, some might even change my mind, from time to time.

What I want to know is this; are some skeptics too skeptical? Case in point-

I was watching the History Channel today, a show on aliens, (I'm not going to get into my veiws on that subject, waaaaay too long to post here) and it talked about this simple family, that lived in a VERY small town, that claimed to have been visited by, "small, silver-colored men", one night, back in the 50's. Now, the guy from the family that they interviewed, was 12 at the time of the incident, he remember's it VERY clearly. Anyway, they interviewed skeptics for this particular incident, and they all came up with; gasses being released from within the earth, causing an LSD effect, escaped monkeys from a nearby circus, intoxication from the family get-together that had happened eilier in the day.

All are vaid points and alternitive explanations, (even though the man they interviewed insisted that there was no alcohal involved in the get-together, his mother was very religious and wouldn't allow it in the house). I just wonder if skeptics look for ANY other explanation for whats put before them, in a fevorish way. Believing that the incident could NEVER have happened, so it must absolutely be , this, this, and this. Silver monkeys escaped from the circus? It could happen, I guess, but isn't it just as far-fetched as aleins, in some people's minds?

Thanks for your input!

I think some are too skeptical (hey Chauncy, I did it). But, the way I see it is they keep me on my feet. They keep me looking for information to argue back with and keep me from being an even bigger weirdo than I already am.

What you're talking about are Pseude-Skeptics. A Pseudo-Skeptic will use any explanation in his power to prove his view against Aliens or the Paranormal is right. On the other side is the Blind Believer who will disreagard any evidence that Paranormal evidence might not be real..
A true skeptic doesn't believe or rule out anything right away, but refuses to accept something as true or untrue without evidence to support it and application of the scientific method.
That's an oversimplification, but I think you'll get the gist..

I don't know if I'd consiter myself a skeptic. I want to believe, but I also welcome anything that might explain the phenomena. I think I could argue both sides, for instance-

There was a incident, where a friend of mine told me how her roomates were convinced that shape-shifting lizard people were in charge of the government, and are all around us. Now, my first thought was, how much LSD are they on? And, there is no such thing.
But then again, if they were shape-shifting, how would I know? Plus, I haven't been around the entire universe. There could be shape-shifting lizard people out there, I just haven't met them yet. I'm not going so far as to say I believe them, but hey, in my mind, anything is possible.

There are extremists in every camp, of course. Those who insist that absolutely nothing paranormal could exist, now or ever, pretty much firmly shut their mind away as effectively as the most devout fanatics. The guiding principle for the skeptic is Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Not always, not inevitably, but usually. Between an entire race of complex life-forms evolving, traveling through the cosmos, yet somehow completely unable to figure out how to communicate with us and treating us like zoological curiousities instead, and a mistaken identity of a known creature, I would wager on the latter.

I think that sometimes the lable skeptic is misapplied or assumed to apply to every issue the skeptic is discussing. Where as logical reasoning can be misconstrued as a skeptical devotion .

Mind you there are the extreme cases of skepticism where it seems the sole purpose is to hinder the path to the answer, and in some cases this deliberate hinderence changes to denial. This is what to look out for, any sign of denial will almost guarantee you that the extreme skeptic may have other motivations at hand.

Logical reasoning is essential, where as the path to the answer should always be moving. People that use logical reasoning usually start from square one, then will examine each aspect of the question all the while eliminating or qualifying options or hypothesis. The final goal should be the answer....regardless of what it is.

I don't feel that logical reasoning should ever be thought of as debunking, in my opinion, unless the debunking just happens to occur through logical reasoning.

Sometimes people are unintentionally wanting the answer to be a specific way, this is where an honest skeptic comes in handy. In an ideal world we would all be our own skeptics.

Odinsgirl,

You are right that some folks are far too skeptical! Skepticism simply for the sake of skepticism is always unhealthy, just as gullability is always unhealthy. Most people do strive for a kind of open skepticism. Open skeptics are folks who are honest about the filters they use to interpret reality. For instance, in the History Channel's UFO program you mentioned, those who came up with the hallucinagenic gas theory to explain the family's possible alien encounter are not being completely open about their skepticism. Keep in mind, I didn't see the program. But I could imagine that people who would propose such a theory would claim that they do so out of a commitment to rationality and scientific integrity (both of which are great things!).

However, there is more operating below the surface. There are very powerful value judgments that dictate the way they handle an alien abduction report that are not necessarily "scientific". Many people approach the UFO phenomenon with a belief that such things can't happen. This has nothing to do with science as much as sheer belief in what can/cannot be.

Others value evidence only if it can be submitted to scientific scrutiny under controlled conditions. But how do you get technologically advanced extra-terrestrials to behave and hold still so that you can dissect them? What's beneath this particular unwillingness to believe in aliens or abduction phenomenon is more than a commitment to science. Here we have people who believe that something is true or real only if they can control it or scrutinize it using instruments and measurements fashioned by human beings.

Keep in mind, though, that I'm not trying to diss science or scientific methodology on the whole. It's just that people need to be more honest about the values and world-views through which they filter everything. If a scientist is really committed to the scientific method (among other disciplines), then she should accept the evidence, whether it leads her to little grey cosmic abductors or not. She's got to suspend her world-views for a time to arrive at a valid conclusion, even if the conclusion challenges her world-views and/or values.

As for your friends who believe that shape-shifting lizards control the government...Well you don't have to know everything to prove or disprove anything. So you don't have to have vast or infinite knowledge of the entire universe to be able to make an informed decision on whether or not the world's political leaders are shape-shifting lizards. Now, whether or not you can convince them that political leaders are humans (despite the inhumane policies and actions of some), is a whole different issue....

Chauncy....trblvr......both of you hit the nail right on the head, and your 3rd and 4th paragraphs, trblvr, went even further than that. I only wish more scientists would read statements like this. There's too much academic and personal hubris getting mixed up with proper scientific investigation. It seems academic and personal beliefs and reputations are more important than finding the truth (or at least the facts as they present themselves). And that's wrong.....that's not true science and those that act in that way aren't really true scientist, no matter what they call themselves or what their qualifications are. That's more akin to religion.

Carl Sagan once said that to make an extraordinary claim, you have to have extraordinary evidence to back yourself up. Regardless of its veracity or not, what could be more extraordinary than the UFO phenomenon and the evidence that does exist......even if it is anecdotal and larger circumstantial. Hell, science has gotten by with some of its most cherished laws and theories on less than that.

If we really look into what's occuring and study it in scientific detail, I think we're going to findout a very many surprising things.

Odinsgrl....the case in question, that you mentioned, became known as the "Hopkinsville Goblin" case. I think it was 1955 it happened (I maybe incorrect there, so don't quote me ). The hallucinogenic gas and escaped monkey explanations were found to be incorrect on study of the case. There were no escaped monkeys from circuses or other places as the local sherrif had confirmed himself. And the hallucinogenic gas theory was discounted on further study by county authorities. Anyway, if they were monkeys, they'd be the weirdest ones around, as the people who saw them actually shot some of them, with no effect apart from the "monkeys" floating down from the trees and running away.

Here's a good link about the incident......

Hopkinsville Goblin

The great philosopher David Hume once wrote about evidence for "miracles". In this instance lets let miracles mean simply anything that can't currently be explained by science.

Hume said the only way to prove that a miracle had ocurred was if it having NOT occurred would be an even greater miracle. Meaning which is the more improbable, that people were visited by silver colored aliens, or that monkeys escaped from the zoo,

Which is more improbable:
People visited by aliens for which we have no evidence
People being affected by some type of hallucinogenic gas for which we do have evidence

Which is more improbable:
SOmeone being visited by aliens
Someone mistaken a lucid dream for aliens

Which is more improbable:
Someone being possessed or
Someone suddenly coming across with schizophrenia symptoms

See the point?

I think that the possible and the probable are alot closer than many of us would care to admit. Unless we can totally rule something out as being factual, I think that it's our duty as thinking individuals to at least consider the alternatives to whatever it may be that we personally believe to be true.

All very interesting and valid points. Do you all happen to think that if a hardcore skeptic were to come face to face with, say a ghost, they would change thier tune? Or do you believe they would still try to argue a logical explination out of it?

I'm a hardcore skeptic, and if a point, say, ghosts or aliens, were proven true with undeniable scentific fact, i would wholeheartedly believe in them.

Ok, Burnside. I respect that.

But say there were no hardcore fact. Let's just say you're stolling down the street one day/night, and you encounter a group of aleins. You see them with your own eyes. They let you touch them. You see thier weird spaceship. Would you believe then? Or would you still say, "There's a logical explination."?

I really am intrested, in the way some hardcore skeptics think.

Like everyone else, I'm a believer in some things and skeptical about others. IF something occurred that I had previously been skeptical about, then I'd investigate the new evidence until I was sure that it was trustworthy and if it passed that test, then yes I for one would believe that which I had previously not believed.

That being said, remember that to a skeptic, seeing is not necessarily believing. A skeptic is fully aware of the limitation of the human senses, and always ops for imperical evidence as opposed to subjective evidence, even if the subjective evidence comes from himself.

Being a skeptic does not mean that you adamantely deny the existance of anything. And it certainly doesn not mean that you will never believe in something that you do not believe in now. All that skepticism means is that you will judge phenomena using scientific methodology. And no, that does not specifically rule out the paranormal.

There seems to be a general impression that skepticism is the same as stoneheadedness. Skepticism isn't a mindset or a philosophy. It is a method of evaluating information.

Everyone has the chance to be everything skeptical, not skeptical.
Until you experience something, you never truely understand it.
I think that being skeptical is just another human mechanism, like the opposite of belief is disbelief. Being too skeptical, I guess would make you "closed minded" as some would say.

After, we wouldn't be the first people to be fooled by 'aliens' coming up to us, showing us their ships, and offering to take us to their world if we're willing to prove our loyalty by signing over all our wordly possessions.

Oh, I completly agree with normal skepticism. I do not blindly believe everything I'm told.

I do not believe that normal skeptics are completly stoneheaded, as you put it. But there are some out there, (that's what I started the thread about), who, would not except something even if it were right in front of them, and they were able to interact with the phenomena, whatever it might be.

I value skeptisism in this world. It is definately what we need to counter the blind believers. I just have a problem with the "stonehead" ones, as you put it.

I'm not sure I catch the gist of this. Are you talking about Native Americans, or other civilizations? Please clue me in.

odinsgrl I was referring to aquatus1's comment that "we would'nt be the first people to be fooled by "aliens" coming up to us, showing us their ships, and offering to take us to their world if we're willing to prove our loyalty by signing over all our wordly possessions". Now color me clueless here, but I have no idea who said "aliens" are supposed to be here.

Lol, ok. Your comments just seemed kind of odd. Lol

Thought we lost you there, pal!

I'm glad that I can be reasonably assured now that I'm somewhat in control of my faculties. But seriously....WHO WERE THE ALIENS????? If I don't find out soon I'll start pacing around chanting "Red Rum", "I see dead people", or "Five minutes to Wapner..definetly five minutes to Wapner".


{NOTE} Not so obscure movies referanced are "The Shining", "The Sixth Sense," and "Rainman" respectively.

Hee, hee! No, Todd, I wasn't referring to civilizations as a whole. It is actually a scam that has been run more times than one would think. A person or a group of person's put together an elaborate alien act and scam an unsuspecting family (and on one occasion, an entire community) into believing they are from a utopian planet, and can take them there, but only if they prove they can be loyal to the aliens by seperating themselves from their material goods (which the aliens just happen to have the power of attorney paperwork for).

Back in the eighties, this scam was so widespread it was even worked into a few TV shows, like McGyver.

This is the unfortunate result of people using too much faith and not enough skepticism. Like anything else, a lack of balance (either way) is detrimental, and leaves you open for manipulation.

Thanks man!

Maybe now, I'll be able to sleep good at night!