Was Randi Wrong about Uri Geller?

[Kevin Kane]

[ProfWag]

[Kevin Kane]

Look up the definition of skepticism. If we described skepticism as a medical pathology, it would be: chronic mental doubt. Obsessive and compulsive doubting. Depressing, isn't it?

Science already provides a method of checking and double checking subjects. So why are skeptics needed?

[NinjaPuppy]

Yes, the Wikipedia definition is very interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism

[NinjaPuppy]

[highflyertoo]

Michael Savage wrote a book called ''LIberalism is a mental disorder''....... I think Skepticism is a mental disorder.... Why?,because the skeptics are constantly searching for doubt

Ciscop is the classic example... skeptics say they will only believe the paranormal exists when written in a Science Journal.... So if ciscop was to witness and or experience a paranormal event(s) HE ciscop would dimiss the self witnessed experience as visual gobbledygook......

Come on skeptics,how about thinking for yourselves instead of requiring your parental supervision of the psuedo-scientists to keep you functional (non functional).

[Kevin Kane]

So "critical thinking" is the equivilant of sticking a misbehaving puppy's nose in the poop it made .. only to realize that the puppy will grow up to eat it's own poop.

PS: not a reference to "Ninja Puppy"

[ciscop]

[Kevin Kane]

Who is Uri Geller "scamming"? He's an entertainer. Eat your dinner and sit back and enjoy the show. He's not selling used cars. He's not selling drugs. He's not doing anything illegal.

If you don't want to believe Uri has psychic powers, that's your right. Personally I wouldn't make a religion out of disbelieving people.

[ProfWag]

[ProfWag]

Ninja, I fopund the first sentence in your critical thinking definition quite initeresting which essentially says to develop critical thinking means one must suspend judgement. As a skeptic and a self-proclaimed critical thinker, I agree wholeheartedly with that, but it may come across a bit deceiving. When developing an opinion of something, then suspending judgement until all of the facts are in is vital. When it comes to psychic abilities, for example, I suspended judgement for quite some time until I became convinced myself that it probably doesn't exist. That doesn't mean that eventually someone could prove it's reality which is why we say "probably" a lot, but out of all of the evidence presented to date, I've judged and made my determination as of now. If someone shows us skeptics something we haven't seen before, then we'll re-look at the evidence.
Another point I'd like to make, we skeptics probably want psychic abilities to exist as much as, if not more than, non-skeptics. We just need to see valid, repeatable experiments.

[NinjaPuppy]

[ProfWag]

[ciscop]

[highflyertoo]

Last edited by highflyertoo on 06 Feb 2010, 00:39, edited 1 time in total.