I think the word "skepticism" itself has developed a stigma. I prefer critical thinking. The point is, to a critical thinker, there is no absolute knowledge. Which is to say nothing can be known with certainty. What we are left with is probablity and "reasonable certainty". The probability that the sun will rise tomorrow is high enough as to be considered a reasonable certainty. As such it bears no serious consideration that it might not, unless we discover some compelling evidence that such is the case. A critical thinker apportions belief according to the evidence. There is tons of evidence that germs cause disease. Conversely there is no evidence that evil spirits cause disease (despite the fact that not that long ago this is what human beings thought). In addition to this the amount of evidence required to support a claim for a critical thinker increases with the outlandishness of the claim or how dramatically it contradicts current knowledge. If you say to me that you ate oatmeal for breakfast this morning I wouldn't require much evidence to tentatively accept that. It's possible you are lying, but a)it is equally possible that you ate oatmeal because other people have eaten oatmeal and I'm hard pressed to think why you would lie about it. On the other hand if you told me that Walter Brennan appeared to you in a vision and told you that God said I should become a professional bowler, I would require a lot more evidence before I went off to join the PBA.

I think the biggest problem for people raised in a culture of belief in becoming critical thinkers is in letting go of the idea of absolute knowledge. If nothing is certain the world becomes a much more uncomfortable place. If there is no great deity calling the shots who will right all wrongs in a utopian afterlife, suddenly tragedies like an earthquake swallowing up a busload of children become senseless and incomprehensible. We need a way to understand. For the critical thinker though once the bell of truth has been rung it can't be unrung. Once you see the man behind the curtain you cannot will yourself to believe the Wizard is still real. My worldview isn't terribly comforting in the face of senseless tragedy, but at least it makes sense. Bad things happen because bad things happen in a world ungoverned by a benevolent deity. The alternative becomes a twisted and confusing apologetic or fanciful and wishful thinking with no more evidence to support it than the idea that the world rests on the back of an elephant and that it's turtles all the way down after that.

CX

Well in my view it comes down to the most effective way to disciver the truth about the world. It is pretty much solely through science and the scientific method that we know what we do about the world. But accept for the sake of argument that there is no benefit whatsoever to critical thinking, that doesn't make it untrue. Furthermore once one begins to use critical thinking and discover certain truths one cannot then say, "these truths are uncomfortable so I'm going to reject them in favor of something unsupported by the evidence." I would love to believe in a benevolent creator, alas I cannot.

Not at all. That's why I have no contempt or hostility toward people of faith. There are even those among critical thinkers who say, "I believe because it is comforting not because I know it's true." This position is called credo consolans The problem comes when magical thinking DOES become dangerous. Consider the Xian Scientist who refuses medical treatment for her child because she believes god will cure her child and that medical science is contrary to faith. Consider the grieving elderly widow who believes that a medium that charges $1000 for a half hour can talk to her deceased husband and squanders all she has which could be use to allow her to live in comfort and health until her time comes or used to benefit some worthwhile charity and perhaps save someone else from the fate of her husband. It is for this reason that even people of faith need to think critically. If they cannot think critically about their own religious or spiritual convictions how can they apply critical thinking to other issues?

At the same time that some religious thought is making the world better, lots of it is making the world worse. It was religious belief that created the tragedy of 9/11. Noone is more likely to wreak havoc and end his own life more than someone with the deep religious conviction that he is doing the will of god and will be rewarded in a utopian afterlife. I would venture to say that every war, every evil, committed against humanity by humans is the result of uncritical thinking, either religiously motivated or by some other equally dogmatic secular philosophy like National Socialism or Stalinism.

Well then you haven't been paying attention to human history. Nearly every advance, the fruits of which we enjoy today, is the result of critical thinking. Medicine, engineering, transportation and the benefits and conveniences those things provide are all the result of someone questioning existing knowledge, applying critical thinking to an existing problem or searching for the truth of the way the world works. In most cases religious belief has been an obstacle to that progress not an advantage. It is when people reject what they think they know and look for the real answer that true human advancement occurs. In the middle ages people believed that mental illness was the result of demons. The only cure was to exorcise those demons very often costing the suffering person his or her life (as in the case of drilling a hole in the skull to release the evil). It was only when someone said, "Hey maybe there's a more mundane physical cause for this," that mentally ill people began to get help. More likely than not if Dawn's son had lived in the middle ages he would have been considered possessed and either locked up in deplorable dungeon or killed. Fortunately for him and for Dawn, someone discovered autism and is continually studying and researching it's causes and cures so that he can have a somewhat normal and fulfilling life. It wasn't religionists that did and are doing that. It was and is scientists.

CX