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Culture Skeptic by Tom Butler
Abstract The word "skeptic" is based on a Greek term meaning thoughtful. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of "skeptic" is 1: an adherent or advocate of skepticism and 2: a person disposed to skepticism especially regarding religion or religious principles. From the Etheric Studies perspective Skeptics are a group of people with the common interest of suppressing any idea or concept they believe is not supported by mainstream science. Skeptics (with a capital "S") actively campaign to teach the public to see such new thought as a hazard to society. As is already occurring in some governments, including the USA, this vilification of frontier subjects has the potential to cause social and governmental reaction that could at the least prevent further study and possibly provoke action harmful to people studying these subjects. Because of this, it is no longer realistic to ignore Skeptics or their efforts.
Introduction It seems that virtually every parapsychologist and psychical researcher has written articles complaining about Skeptics. It is common even in the “rank and file” of the paranormal community to see people chafe against those aggressive skeptics who belittle them for believing such nonsense. Skeptics are an issue for those of us who study transcommunication and trans-survival, as well.
The motto at the bottom of every page of this website states: “Believe what you wish but know what you believe.” To “know what you believe,” it is important to examine how you develop your assumptions about the world around you. The essay, Point of View, examines the relationship between what you come into this lifetime with, how you approach new learning situations and how you develop your point of view. In this essay, I have addressed what skepticism is and what Skeptics are from the point of view of this association.
Skepticism, Pseudoskepticism and Scientism Here, I am using “Skeptic” with a capital “S.” Skeptics have adopted an ideology which effectively condemns the exploration of new ideas. Because it is important to be skeptical in the sense described below in Healthy Skepticism, alternative terms have been tried but “Skeptic” has pretty much become the standard.
One alternative term is pseudoskeptics as in “false skeptic;” however, just as we feel “pseudoscience” is a derogatory term, it is interesting how fast you can start a fight with Skeptics by calling one a pseudoskeptic. A potentially useful alternative for “Skepticism” is “Scientism.” in our context, this is a synonym really, which means the ideological belief that science—mainstream science—is the only authority on the nature of reality. This is where the idea comes from that “If it is impossible according to science, then it cannot be.” The rest of this ideology is that anything not accepted by mainstream science must be pseudoscience.
Tells of a Skeptic Skeptics attempt to show the unacceptability of an idea by belittling it and associating it with obviously silly ideas, rather than with facts, evidence and sound logic. They describe the idea and people associated with it in terms that would usually cause a fight if spoken face-to-face. They seem to assume “believers” are seen as second-class citizens by the mainstream public and thus do not enjoy the protection of social norms afforded mainstream citizens. So if you read something that calls someone a whacko or fraud, or describes a practice as fraudulent or woo-woo, then you know that the material was written by a skeptic.
Name-calling is especially true of skeptics who focus on alternative or complementary health practices. Skeptics commonly refer to these with the derogatory term of “quackery” and practitioners as “quacks.” Of course any such practice that is not specifically approved by the government is considered pseudoscience, and even some that are approved such as chiropractic feel the wrath of those who think “complementary” is just another word for “fraud.”
Without research to support their accusations, Skeptics seldom add knowledge to the subjects they attack, but are only able to destroy knowledge. Here, the Latin term, “a priori” has special meaning. Skeptics routinely make statements about subjects for which they have no knowledge other than that their peer group is against it. In this context, the term means without prior knowledge and is used to say that the person is judging without having become informed about the subject. The practical result of this book burning mentality is that new ideas are suppressed and examination of new ideas by academically trained researchers has become probable professional suicide.
Comparing the view of science with the view of Skeptics Wikipedia editor Ludwigs2 expressed one of the better descriptions of the Skeptic view: Science and skepticism are entirely different projects; they share the word skepticism, but it has different meanings for each group. For a scientist, skepticism means (roughly) “I choose not to have any beliefs about a subject in the absence of evidence.” It’s a philosophically conservative position designed to keep people from making a priori assertions about the world (except those dictated by logic or math). For skeptics, by contrast, skepticism means (roughly) “I choose to believe that non-conventional ideas are wrong until they have met some burden of evidence.” This is an ideological position designed to advocate against certain kinds of viewpoints. See how these differ on (for example) acupuncture:
Science and skepticism overlap in the assertion that one should use practices that have been born out by systematic experience. But that’s where the similarity ends: skepticism goes on to make moral judgments about practices that science can never make, and to engage in advocacy with respect to those moral claims. I mean, look at the vast range of skeptical literature, almost none of which contains any actual research (aside from literature reviews of other people’s published work), and which is almost entirely dedicated to critical declamations against one or another questionable activity. Skepticism is (frankly) scientific punditry, and while I won’t deny its value in that “consumer advocate” sort of way, one needs to be cautious with it as an intellectual enterprise.
Organized Harm to Society Parapsychology, psychical research and etheric studies represent a small and mostly unorganized community that proposes hypotheses to explain reported paranormal phenomena. This community is a primary focus of attention by the Skeptic. Energy healing, intentionality, survival research and trans-etheric communication are some of the phenomena studied by this community. These subjects are the objects of contention to which the Skeptics object.
The Skeptical community, on the other hand is relatively well-organized and fast growing. In Skepticism: The New Religion, Roy Stemman notes that that Spiritualism's public outreach is contracting while the Skeptical community is becoming more organized and much more effective in influencing the media. A search of the Internet for “skeptic” will produce dozens of pages full of skeptical websites. The Association TransCommunication website (atransc.org) and this website, which contains my personal writing, are clearly homegrown. By comparison, many of these Skeptical websites are slick, professionally designed and maintained, and I am sure, well funded. It is clear that we are losing the fight to gain public respect and support. That should be a concern if you enjoy the right to study these subjects in public.
Some governments, including the US Government, have adopted the viewpoints of organized Skeptical groups and routinely label the study of paranormal phenomena as pseudoscience and cite harm to the best interest of the public caused by belief in pseudoscience. In many such claims, supporting references are skeptical sources, which in turn cite these government reports for support of their viewpoint. This is in actuality a form of circular citation in which truth is invented as a means of vilifying ideas that do not agree with the prevailing scientific ideologies.
A Case Study: Government Acting on Skeptical Views I am not well informed about how governments have acted against people who have been accused of activity deemed by Skeptics as pseudoscience, so the following is from our perspective. Please be sure to examine this for yourself. The first point I would make is that the study of frontier subjects is not protected by the law. Once it is socially okay to say that what we study contradicts science and may be harmful to the public, it becomes possible for governments and organizations to make examples of individuals. We have seen this reenacted many times in our history with everything from witch hunts to internment during the Second World War.
Review Anti-Constitutional Activities and Abuse of Police Power by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other Federal Agencies, and Growing Nonsense About Wilhelm Reich and Orgone Energy on Global Internet. Both by by James DeMeo, Ph.D. You will learn about how Wilhelm Reich discovered a form of subtle energy and spent a considerable part of his life studying the energy and how it affected the physical world.
Reviewing What is Orgone Energy? by Charles R. Kelley, Ph.D. will give you a sense of the nature of this subtle energy which Reich called Orgone. You will also see that Reich’s discovery is really just one of many rediscoveries of the same energy. Today, it is being studied as biofield energy. Because of its apparent effect on living tissue, the influence intentionality has on this energy to heal a person is a primary means of studying the energy (see An Unusual Form of Radiation has a Reproducible Effect in the Laboratory by Robert A. Charman). It also appears that meditation and group intention can cause changes in the randomness of random event generators. This effect may be the result of a change in the biofield and may also help explain how EVP are formed.
The short story about Wilhelm Reich is that he was put in jail for making claims about this subtle energy which were deemed to be unsupportable by the Skeptics. He also developed devices that might put the energy to work and claimed he could heal people of some diseases with the energy. In fact, the actual jail time was because he ignored the charges, and apparently his partner transported some of their material across state lines, turning the into crime criminal contempt of court. From the Wilhelm Reich Museum website: “While Reich appealed his sentence, the government carried out the destruction of orgone accumulators and literature. In Maine, several boxes of literature were burned, and accumulators and accumulator materials either destroyed or dismantled. In New York City, on August 23, 1956, the FDA supervised the burning of several tons of Reich’s publications in one of the city’s garbage incinerators,.... This destruction of literature constitutes one of the most heinous examples of censorship in United States history.” Reich died of heart failure while in prison and I understand his research partner committed suicide shortly thereafter.
A Case Study: Skeptical Control of the Media It is obvious from a simple search of the Internet that the Skeptics dominate the media when it comes to public outreach about frontier subjects. Yes, there are thousands of ghost hunter websites and websites promoting the many forms of complementary medicine, but if you look for substantive support for the concepts, you run into a wall of Skeptical websites supported by Skeptic clubs, universities and mainstream science organizations. One of the most dominant of the Skeptical media is Wikipedia. In nearly every search subject Wikipedia is the first website to come up.
If you are surprised to hear that Wikipedia is counted at the top of the Skeptical media, I recommend that you take some time to read the talk page associated with your favorite frontier subject. There is usually an ongoing discussion about the struggle to balance the point of view of the article--a cardinal rule of Wikipedia. The problem is that the rules favor the majority group of editors, which are Skeptics and nearly all of the editors who seek a true balance have been permanently blocked from editing or simply run off. Subject-matter specialists are not allowed to edit subjects in which they may have a conflict of interest.
The essay, Concerns with Wikipedia explains some of the issue. In a nutshell, a group of determined people hiding behind screen names have managed to gain control of what is thought by the public to be a respected online encyclopedia. Rather than writing the articles as "This is what is the subject is about, and here are the various viewpoints about the subject," articles about what they call "fringe" subjects are written in a tone that subtly gives the sense that the subject is nonsense and a danger to society. The articles may have a lot of information, but it is always couched in terms of "believers," "proponents" and how it is pseudoscience or quackery.
One of the ways you can see the extent to which the Skeptics are using Wikipedia to attack frontier subjects can be seen in the many articles that are pretty much the same. Here is one list:
The Internet has given Skeptics considerably more access to the public so that anyone with a strong opinion and too much time on his or her hands can substantially influence the opinions of many people. A little time spend reviewing the James Randi website discussion board might shock you as to the strong opinions against frontier subjects spoken by ill-informed people hiding behind screen names.
So what are the alternatives? Should a person simply accept anything as truth? The answer is definitely not! Not all claims are even reasonable. Many reported experiences are clearly delusion or the ordinary mistaken as unusual. Every bump in the night is not a ghost and not every instance of improved health is because of energy healing. The problem is that some of these reported experiences are not explained by current principles of science and may point to new understanding of nature. It is not reasonable to assume the extreme explanations without substantiating research but it is also not reasonable to discount the reports because they are not currently part of known science.
“Know what you believe” is based on the idea that you should practice critical thinking leading to discernment. That means you take the time to examine the evidence before adopting a conditional opinion. I say “conditional opinion” because the rest of the story is that whatever is decided should be routinely reexamined to see it is still makes sense. If possible, the opinion should be tested. If the opinion cannot be reasonably based on evidence, then you should remain undecided. If there is not sufficient information to arrive at an informed opinion, then no opinion is the only answer. To do otherwise is to base the opinion on faith derived from popular wisdom, superstition and/or the opinion of others who may be acting on an undisclosed agenda.
You should know that there is a fair portion of academia that believes all major principles in nature have been discovered and that all we are doing now is filling in the details. Basically that is to say that there is only the physical universe ... period! Anything outside of that such as subtle energy, etheric personality and survival of personality after bodily death is not included in these major principles of nature and therefore cannot be. This a priori assumption has developed in Scientism at its worst.
Each of us has a responsibility to practice discernment about what we believe. At the same time, anyone who makes a claim about these phenomena has the responsibility to clearly distinguish between what can be experimentally proven and what is believed as a matter of faith. The essay Pseudoscience is a discussion about what these terms mean. In essence, if study is not based on ideas developed from a clearly stated hypothesis (theory about the subject) following a predefined protocol (methodology of how to conduct the study) with the intention of publishing a report that will be vetted by subject-matter specialists, then resulting opinions cannot be claimed as “experimentally proven.” Fruits of the study can be described as “ongoing study,” but be careful not to claim science unless reasonably well-considered methodologies have been applied.
What you say need not be based on your research alone. This website and atransc.org are efforts to provide a growing body of material you can refer to. There are other association journals and judicious use of Internet material can help you develop a supportable statement about your understanding of these phenomena. Be careful of the “Trojan Horse effect,” however. Skeptics are sometimes members of organizations that are involved in paranormal research. In some cases, these organizations effectively function as debunkers for some concepts, especially etheric studies. There is a hierarchy of approval for concepts, so that while the mainstream objects to things paranormal, many paranormal organizations regard the idea of survived personality as pure nonsense. Use discernment.
Each of us is representatives of our field. The skeptics have influence because they are zealous but mostly because we do not represent ourselves in a defensible way; not because they are right. Yes there is still the problem that things paranormal are outside of known and therefore acceptable science, but that can never be addressed so long as the Skeptics are able to make their ridicule of us so believable by using our own words and actions. It is for us to show the world they are wrong.
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