I am a skeptic.It seems today that many atheists all but lay complete claim to the term skeptic*. A very large number of atheistic organizations include “skeptic”, or some variation, in their name and many atheist blogs talk about skepticism on a regular basis. But what you almost never see or hear is someone saying that it is possible to be a skeptic and religious. I think this is partially responsible to an underlying implication that in order to be skeptical of something, one must either reject it or remain neutral towards it. Thus, the implication is that when directed towards religion, to be a "skeptic" one must, to some degree or another, reject religion. I am not saying that this idea is advocated directly and intentionally, but it definitely is implied in many instances.
His testimony is very worth reading and I suggest it even to atheists as a way to understand why some of us believe.
*Here is an example of the internal debate over if being a skeptic requires being an atheist.
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Well said. That is indeed a very common and very annoying misconception that many have, assuming that you can't be skeptical and religious at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. :)
ReplyDeleteTwo points:
ReplyDelete"But what you never hear is someone saying that it's possible to be a skeptic and religious" - I think we do hear that a fair bit, and this is demonstrated by the fact that there's a debate about this in the skeptic community right now, not a single shared consensus.
"I think this is partially responsible to an underlying implication that in order to be skeptical of something, one must either reject it or remain neutral to it." - I don't think that's quite it. IMO, it's more that religious claims should be treated like other claims, not that it would be impossible for a skeptic to ever accept a religion as true.
Compare this to other issues, like homeopathy. By and large, the skeptic community has a pretty negative attitude toward homeopathy, but this (hopefully) isn't based on an a priori rejection of the idea that homeopathy could ever work, it's based on a consensus that the available evidence doesn't support homeopathy's claims... at least, not to the extent required to accept the idea that homeopathy is probably effective.
Same for religion, IMO. It would *not* be proper skepticism to simply reject religious claims out-of-hand without some sort of test or rationalization to figure out whether or not they're likely to be true. However, from where I sit, I think it's reasonable to say that I haven't seen a religious claim yet that meets the sort of evidentiary standard I would need in order to accept it.
Whether it would change my mind to have the sort of evidence Ron Hellings apparently had... I don't know. I can't get in his head to see what he experienced. I do appreciate his point about subjective vs. objective evidence, though. Just because I was the only person to see or hear something unexpected doesn't mean it didn't happen. OTOH, the fact that I thought I saw or heard something doesn't necessarily mean that it happened anywhere outside my own mind, either. The things I experience *are* evidence, but there are sometimes multiple possible causes for any given piece of evidence.
“I think we do hear that a fair bit, and this is demonstrated by the fact that there's a debate about this in the skeptic community right now, not a single shared consensus.” – I disagree that we hear it a fair bit. I only discovered the page I linked to about a debate over this issue after intentionally looking for any kind of information on this subject within the atheist community. It just is not something that is very prominent at all. Overwhelmingly every time I have seen a piece written about skepticism it has had an atheist slant.
ReplyDelete“I don't think that's quite it. IMO, it's more that religious claims should be treated like other claims, not that it would be impossible for a skeptic to ever accept a religion as true.” – I agree that what you say hear plays a part, but I just think in many cases there is also the insinuation that you must reject or remain neutral towards religion on top of treating it like other claims. But I do not deny that it is possible for a skeptic to accept religion, Ron Hellings did. ;)
As for your comparison to homeopathy, I think your comments present the ideal case that everyone should follow. It has just been my experience that this is not always the case when it comes to religion. However, I also admit I may just be reading too many atheist blogs of the more militant variety.