The typical believer is usually of at least average, and often above average intelligence, but with insufficient internal discipline to his or her rational thought processes to take any advantage from it. Elements of personal immaturity detract as well, in that wherever his limited knowledge falls short, he lazily confabulates some outre philosophy to eke out a resolution rather than deigning to do the tedious but wholly necessary research to resolve the gap with actual known experience. He cannot suffer not knowing and creates an emotionally pleasing ‘truth’ from the cloth of ambiguous data. He lacks critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking definitions:

"Critical thinking is thinking that assesses itself." (Center For Critical Thinking, 1996b)

"Critical thinking is the ability to think about one's thinking in such a way as: 1) To recognize its strengths and weaknesses and, as a result, 2)To recast the thinking in improved form." (Center For Critical Thinking, 1996c)

"Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action." (Scriven, 1996)

"Most formal definitions characterize critical thinking as the intentional application of rational, high order thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, problem recognition and problem solving, inference, and evaluation." (Angelo, 1995, p.6)

"Critical thinking means making reasoned judgements." (Beyer, 1995)

Primary factors of critical thinking:

1) Asking questions to gather all possible pertinent data.

2) Defining the actual problem, which isn't always as presented.

3) Objective examination of the evidence without injecting one's own subjective hopes and desires.

4) Critical examination of assumptions and/or any biases, yours and others'.

5) Avoidance of emotional reasoning so that hopes, fears, etc...do not cloud judgment.

6) Avoidance of oversimplification due to the inherent human desire to organize and codify the unknown.

7) Full consideration of alternate interpretations.

8) Avoidance of undue investment or adherence to any 'pet' theory, and willingness to abandon any such theory when the evidence dictates it.

And most important on these fringe boards:

9) Tolerating ambiguity. Being able to look at all available evidence and admit that you simply don't know yet. Admitting, "I don't know" is a lost art.

Too often, discussions exclude the middle ground as in: "Well, it wasn't a military plane so it MUST have been a UFO!" Or, "Scientists have failed to offer up any reasonable solution so it must have been a case of ______________ (fill in your favorite pseudoscientific phenomenon)." The implication is that if it isn't the one thing (usually the skeptical view), then it must be the other thing(zip all the way down the spectrum to the 'believer' end and paranormal view), and any of the multitude of middle-spectrum possibilities are excluded, including the most common possibility: "We don't know because we don't have enough information or evidence".

Inability to suspend 'knowing' until there is ample reason leads directly to unproven assumptions entering one’s body of knowledge, and taints any and all later investigations, experiments, examinations, etc...that have the erroneous assumption as part or parcel of their premise. This is why science seems so rigidly adamant about not considering a thing to be true until irrefutable evidence is obtained, and replication is performed repeatedly to further substantiate the utter reliability of a new piece of knowledge. Research is too expensive to afford shortcuts, and the end result of sloppy research can be gravely injurious. Of course, 'science' is a discipline made up of mere humans, and humans make mistakes. For this reason, science and critical thinking must go hand in hand, and the primary feature is self-correction. The history of science is merely an endless process of constant self-correction. That moment that a scientific 'truth' is proved to be wrong in part or in total, the books are changed, so to speak. (Emphasis on the word 'proved' -the process to prove a thing ‘untrue’ is as adamantly rigid as proving a thing 'true'). Because critical thinkers recognize the ability of humans to STILL fuck up this useful tool, self-correction is built in.

Personally, when I encounter the thinking processes of those who believe in psi, ghosts, aliens, psychokinesis, telekinesis, and the like, I always see most if not all the rules of critical thinking broken, but particularly those concerning "I don't know" and the self-correction mechanism, which is simply missing in most cases. Early in 1999 that old myth about the Apollo moon missions having been faked recurred on the Parascope UFO message board -the fourth time this myth has come to the fore since the early 1970's when I first began studying ufology. The silly, fully debunked ideas of Eric Von Danniken are also enjoying a resurgence. Uri Geller, who possesses 'powers' that I can readily perform and can easily teach anyone in about five minutes, is on the upswing in popularity again despite being fully exposed as a fraud by Johnny Carson on national TV, and repeatedly by James Randi. The paranormal thinking process has no self-correction mechanism, and that leaves believers easy marks for the con men, and we do see notions disproved long ago manage to persist decade after decade after decade. Picture in your mind a list of all the things you depend upon that have come from the realm of science and technology (including both the good and the bad, of course). Now picture a companion list of all the wonderful achievements and discoveries of the paranormal ‘sciences’. In matters scientific, once the earth was proved to be round and not flat, it remained round and not flat.

Many believers see the sciences as being a cold, emotionless, barren wasteland of intractability and rigidity, and accuse its practitioners of a lack of imagination, but in doing so they only highlight their own lack of understanding. Virtually every single TV show and movie of the last 50 years has portrayed science and scientists as mad, out of control egomaniacs hell-bent on world domination, or as socially inept asexual dweebs married to their microscopes and slide rules. Neither image approximates the truth. A fairly good movie illustrating the wonder and awe available through the pursuit of science would be "October Sky," a biographical story about the childhood experiences of a fellow who later became a rocket scientist. There exist a million other examples. "The Right Stuff" comes to mind as well. Much, if not most, science fiction comes from scientists with great imagination choosing to write (like Arthur C. Clarke), rather than purely literary writers attempting science fiction.

To me, nothing is colder and more barren than an empty premise, unproven and unprovable, undemonstrable.......and of no use to anyone.