By Fred Askew

Belief is generally an emotional or non-rational choice. After a belief is established people seek rational confirmation for it but the belief itself is not altered by either the lack of confirmation or even contrary evidence. Rational discourse will only alter beliefs in a very small number of people.

My personal opinion is that the best skeptics can ever do is to convince believers that we are not demons out to destroy their world. We shouldn’t attempt the impossible goal of getting people to base their important decisions on rational thinking (almost none are), but instead we should aim for more limited objectives such as not being burned at the stake or otherwise persecuted. We can best do this by the following.

(1) Don’t attack people for their beliefs. As soon as you call someone an idiot they stop listening to your words. In fact, frontal attacks on beliefs will actually make them more entrenched. People, in general, don’t believe stupid things because they’re stupid, they believe them because they grew up that way or no one has ever offered a viable alternate.

(2) Remember that the best way to change a behavior is to substitute a new one. You can’t ask someone to give up a belief that reduces anxiety and not give them something to replace it with. Since rational thought is nowhere near as comforting as magical thinking, the skeptical viewpoint will never be the majority.

(3) Find common ground rather than focusing only on differences.

(4) Explain why you think certain things. It isn’t enough to say that something is nonsense, you need to explain its problems in detail. Start with commonly agreed-to facts and work outward. This is difficult because you may find yourself repeating the same stuff over and over and over, but it’s a necessary effort to make someone who’s never heard the rational side of things understand how you think. There a many good books to recommend, if you find someone who might actually read them.

(5) Listen. Feedback tells you whether you’re being correctly understood or not and how the other person is reating to your words. Again, you’re not waiting for believers to see the light and become skeptics, you’re waiting for them to grant that maybe you’re not such an idiot for being a skeptic.

(6) Cut your losses. There are some people with whom it is pointless to talk. If there is no dialogue (two-way communication), you may as well give up.

Consider the medical term "triage". In WWI battles the number of wounded could quickly exceed available medical facilities. French doctors developed the triage system to deal with the problem. As patients were delivered, they were divided into three groups: those that would die regardless of whether they were treated, those that would live even without treatment, and those that would die unless they received treatment. The doctors would ignore groups 1 and 2 and focus their efforts on group 3, the group where they could make a difference.

Skeptics can use the same system. Those who already use rational thought and those who refuse to listen to anyone with different ideas are not our most useful audience. It’s the third group, the ones that are willing to communicate that we need to focus on. Taking the time to explain skeptical thinking to these people may or may not change their beliefs (probably not), but it will at least make them consider that there are other alternatives.

This is my PR plan. Skeptics should be calm, rational, reasonable, non-aggressive. Our only goal is for beleivers to realize that we are not evil, not fools, not close-minded, not afraid of being wrong, and especially not trying to make others be like us.

We just want to point out that the emperor has no clothes. If others choose to ignore that fact, fine, just so long as they don’t mind us laughing as he passes.

- Fred Askew

Last updated 15 January 2001 by Russell