Defining Skepticism......February 4, 2008

Gino D., Co-Founder of IPR





When is someone considered skeptical and when are they considered a non-believer? There is, as some do not care to see, a difference between the two. Skepticism falls in that gray area between believer and non-believer, it is a neutral. On the believer end of the spectrum fall the ones who take the evidence as given to be proof of something supernatural. On the other end of that you have the ones who decide that insufficient evidence is proof of a natural phenomenon. A skeptic, in that gray area, is neither a believer nor a non-believer; it is in between, accepting of any and all evidence. What do I call a skeptic? The best words I can find to describe it are not my own, but of Michael Shermer, editor of skeptic magazine and author of Why people believe weird things, "What I mean by a skeptic is one who questions the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it."



A simple fact is that most believers see skeptics as somewhat of a threat, but they are not against us believers or for us, they are exactly, as I stated earlier, neutral. The only flaw I see in skepticism is that some supernatural phenomenon can not be tested in controlled experiments and most skeptics can not accept that. My brother, as a former skeptic, based his beliefs only on insufficient evidence. I stand here as a believer, but at the same time I have nothing against those neutral people. So do not hate the skeptics, they are only gathering evidence good or bad.



Gino D., Co-Founder of IPR