Introducing ‘A Battle Plan For The Skeptic Movement’: The Word ‘Skeptic’
Welcome to my blog. I’d like to start by introducing myself. My name is Will and although I’ve been deeply concerned with all manner of woo-woo for some time now, it is only recently that I have stumbled across the notion of ‘Skepticism’. Thanks for having me.
I deliberated over what should be the umbrella topic for this blog for some time; familiarising myself with many of the fantastic existing Skeptic blogs in the process; I concluded that the main gap in the regular discussion is an area that I think should be a primary focus of Skeptics everywhere: methods for advancing the Skeptic Movement.
This blog will not attempt to map out a definitive blueprint for this advance, but rather, I will be addressing what I consider to be the obstacles that we face, as well as offering my own ideas for overcoming them and inviting you to share yours with the Skeptic community.
As this is the blog’s first post, where better to start than the fundamentals? Since having become aware of the term ‘Skeptic’ as it is used on this website and others like it, I have been slightly concerned with the word itself. Although technically fit for purpose, I worry that in common parlance it has negative connotations. In everyday conversation it seems that the word ‘sceptic’ is strongly tied to or even synonymous with the word ‘cynic’.
This has been demonstrated recently in light of the Climate Gate ‘scandal’, where media outlets uniformly refer to those who doubt that Climate Change is significantly influenced by mankind as ‘Climate Change sceptics’. In actual fact, it is those who form the vast majority of scientists that makes up the general consensus regarding Climate Change who are most likely to be the sceptics. Surely the term ‘Climate Change deniers’ would be more fitting to the fringe group. I do not believe, as many I have spoken to do, that this is an unimportant case of mere semantics.
Richard Dawkins has expressed similar concerns with regards to the term ‘Atheist’; worrying that preconceived, negative notions may be partially responsible for some people’s unwillingness to identify themselves as such, even where technically the term is perfectly fitting to the individual. In Dawkins’ own words, “You can do two things: one is to try to rehabilitate the word ‘Atheist’… [The other is] to do some pneumatic engineering”. Dawkins empathises with some people’s concern that to attempt the former is to fight a losing battle, which influenced him to back the unveiling of a new noun: ‘bright’, to replace ‘Atheist’. Although this has been likened to the engineering of ‘gay’ as a noun to replace ‘homosexual’, it is clear that ‘bright’, first coined in 2006, has not caught on and is unlikely to. To coin a term that will be accepted by all is, in my mind, a far more difficult task than to rehabilitate a term that is at least already accepted by those within the community in question.
‘How best to achieve this?’ is a difficult question. One thing is for certain: We cannot be lazy and simply leave the goal at “we must strive to rehabilitate the term ‘Skeptic’ so that it becomes more favourably perceived”. This is a good umbrella goal, but it is important that specific sub-goals are devised to address the ‘how?’ part of the umbrella goal.
One central theme that I will advocate repeatedly is the use of creative solutions. I believe that it will often be useful to take a leaf out of the advertising industry’s book and think outside the box, not for its own sake, but so that we can explore avenues that would otherwise be left un-trodden. I will give one such suggestion here, and I invite you to leave your own in the comments section below, no matter how mundane or off-the-wall they might at first seem.
We create a Facebook application titled ‘How naive are you?’ in which the user answers questions regarding their beliefs in a range of supernatural phenomenon. An example question might be ‘Does the Loch Ness monster exist?’ At the end of the quiz the user is given a score that is shown along a sliding scale that reads ‘Dangerously naive’ at one end, and ‘Well-informed Skeptic’ at the other.
This application could reach and influence the perceptions of many. A link to ‘further information’ regarding the questions answered incorrectly will help to introduce newcomers (particularly those who scored worst) to our websites. I must admit that I do not know about the feasibility of this suggestion logistically.
This could clearly only ever be one weapon in an arsenal of steps that must be taken to address the issue, but I strongly believe that it is solutions like this, particularly those that utilise the virtual spaces capable of reaching a wide audience, that can help us to take progressive steps forward.
****************************************
I am hoping, I’m sure naively optimistically, that this blog can become a hotbed of useful discussion. I therefore encourage you to share your thoughts. Maybe you disagree that this is even a problem, or maybe you disagree with my suggestions for tackling it. Maybe you have suggestions of your own, or maybe you have expertise in a potentially useful area and would like to offer your assistance. Whatever your contribution to the discussion, I will do my best to reply as quickly as possible. Thank you.
Skeptic Battle Plan | 
Will | Friday, 15 January, 2010
By Jim Lippard, Friday, 15 January, 2010 @ 17:41
Your proposed quiz for how skeptical you are presumes that “skeptic” means one who agrees with a set of skeptic-endorsed conclusions, rather than one who doubts and uses critical thinking to come to conclusions. Such a quiz would label someone as a “well-informed skeptic” even if they were someone who simply uncritically endorsed conclusions of well-known skeptics and skeptical organizations.
Wouldn’t actual skeptics be better identified by questions about *how* a person could come to have reliable answers about various kinds of issues? It seems to me that what makes a good skeptic is engaging in skeptical inquiry rather than necessarily reaching the approved skeptical conclusion. What makes some people “deniers” rather than skeptics is that they aren’t consistently engaging in skeptical inquiry and critical thinking–they are directing skepticism against a particular target, but not against the arguments and evidence they themselves are using in the process.
By Will, Friday, 15 January, 2010 @ 18:03
Hi Jim
Thanks for your (incredibly quick) reply. The point you make is completely correct and in hindsight the quiz idea does need tweaking to accomodate it. The only possible problem I that I can foresee as a result of this is that it might be difficult to retain the pithy feel that makes these kinds of quizzes attractive to Facebook users in the first place.
By Greg Antonacci, Saturday, 16 January, 2010 @ 13:34
Will,
While I think Jim’s got a good point in saying it’s more about how one gets to conclusions than what conclusions one reaches, I think there’s also a danger of disagreeing for the reason of APPEARING to be a critical thinker. There seems to be a kind of continuum from blind agreement to blind disagreement with sceptism somewhere in the middle.
Perhaps the cause would be better served by trying to migrate to the term critic from sceptic. The notion of critic is something people can get behind more easily.
By Will, Saturday, 16 January, 2010 @ 17:46
Hi Greg
I agree that some users might do that. However, if my quiz idea were to become a reality, I fear that accounting for these criticisms might detract from the extent to which the application is user friendly. To accomodate for Jim’s would, as I see it, mean asking questions such as ‘which of the following is necessary for a fair scientific test?’, which is not the light-hearted kind of quiz people would bother with, and to account for yours would mean asking users to cite their sources, which is ambitious at best. Let me know if you see an easier way around either problem though.
As far as migrating to the term ‘critic’ is concerned, it would be nice, although if I were to change the word I would probably favour ‘rationalist’. However, as I mentioned in the article, I do not believe this to be doable. The ‘sceptic community’ has invested too much in the word. For example, magazines are already in publication with ‘Skeptic’ in the title, and people already know what to google if they want to read up on the latest blog posts and the like. Perhaps most importantly though, I do not believe that we could get everyone to agree on and adopt a new term. Organising atheists has often been likened to herding cats, and the same may be true of sceptics. I believe that in order to get things done and make our voices heard, we need to come together as much as possible, and I worry that a migration to a new term might make this task harder.
By Greg Antonacci, Sunday, 17 January, 2010 @ 12:52
You have to be careful that “rational thinking” doesn’t become another bloated and stagnant institution. I think there’s some really important facts that we can’t ignore. The first is that we didn’t “think” our way to where we are. We were what we are long before we EVER had the ability to think about anything! Second, there are thousands, if not millions of species that are extremely successful but show absolutely no evidence of rational, or any other kind of thought. So I challenge you to prove that thinking has any value whatsoever. If you ask me, thinking is the PROBLEM, not the solution.
I don’t think that using “critic” means thowing out “sceptic”. I think it can be a bridge to sceptic in the classic A=B, A=C, therefore B=C kind of way. Perhaps your app could focus on how much like a certain person the user is rather than how much of a sceptic they are. People love to compare themselves to other people.
Personally, I’m highly sceptical of any situation in which too many people agree on the same thing. It goes against my sceptical grain. I think the natural state is for people to disagree. It’s only stress and adversity that get people pulling together. In my world view there is really only common thought when there’s a common problem. So I don’t share your enthusiasm for organizing.
I think you may also be surprised by the extent to which many people reject the notion of rational thinking. They believe the world is what it is and no amount of thinking it through will change it. These people believe that life is about action, not thought, that you change the world by acting in it and not by writing about it, or thinking about it.
As you can see, one of the things I am most sceptical about is thinking itself, and it’s cousin, consciousness. We humans are dazzled by our ability to hold thoughts in our heads, to conjure up memories and to learn from them. We love ourselves because of it and use it as an excuse to meddle in all kinds of things. Here’s an example; we recognize that our actions are endangering various species. The rational thought is to take more action to save these species. However, the actions we propose are just more meddling like the meddling that endangered these species in the first place. Who are we to think we know anything at all about these things? Isn’t the MORE rational thought to DO LESS, not more? Wouldn’t doing less have a better chance of success because it leads directly to an environment more like the one that used to support the species in the first place?
Just a couple of things to think about, ironically!
G.
By PaulJ, Saturday, 23 January, 2010 @ 22:32
Before we get to grips with whether the word “skeptic” is suitable for our purposes, perhaps we ought to agree on its spelling.
As a Brit I have hitherto used the British spelling, “sceptic”, but as the skeptical movement as a whole is undoubtedly global I’m seriously considering the wholesale adoption of the American spelling (as certain Commonwealth-based publications have already done).
By Will, Sunday, 24 January, 2010 @ 12:40
Hi Paul
To be honest, I was unaware that ‘skeptic’ was the proper American spelling of the word. I always thought it more a brand name of sorts, which I think is useful when using Google and the like. I also agree that it is useful to conform to the American spelling in this case, for the sake of unity.