Curious to know...

[Tompet]

What caused those of you who used to be "Believers" to become skeptics?? Was it a specific incident, or just the realization that paranormal claims are bogus?

[Psiload]

Originally posted by Tompet
What caused those of you who used to be "Believers" to become skeptics?? Was it a specific incident, or just the realization that paranormal claims are bogus? I grew up, and put away childish things.

[SquishyDave]

For me it was gradual, religion just started making less and less sense, I couldn't find a ghost to save my life, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't possess an animal, turn into an animal, or move objects with my mind.

[Yahweh]

Respitol and a closet full of tin foil...

[Boo]

I got to that point when I accepted that while 'I' couldn't explain an incident, that someone else could. the final step was after reading 'A Brief History of Time'. Nothing else could possibly be more magical than flavored quarks.:D



Boo

[Pyrrho]

Originally posted by Tompet
What caused those of you who used to be "Believers" to become skeptics?? Was it a specific incident, or just the realization that paranormal claims are bogus?
I realized that I was nuts, and I chose to be sane.

[epepke]

I grew up during the late 60's and early 70's, and that sort of thing was popular. Ouija boards were sold as children's toys, and the rich kids had Zener decks, and the electronics hobbyist magazines I read were full of schematics for electronic Zener simulators, biorhythm machines, and stuff like that. I can remember being made to watch innumerable "Propellor Beanies of the Gods" movies in school and also being carted to see some woman who was a "pet psychic."

It was the continued failure of tests of these things that dissuaded me and caused me to lose interest.

[peptoabysmal]

I've seen some of the damage inflicted on people by psychics. Their greatest talent seems to be extracting money from lonely, desperate people. Religion seems to me to be something that people crave and therefore create. I have decided that for me, there is no way to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of any supernatural being, so I choose to believe only what can be shown to exist. I have no desire to live my life according to what some primitive people dreamed up as their explanation for existence. For some people faith is a source of hope and strength in their life, and I have no desire to take that away from them. As for the new-wave beliefs of some all-encompassing god being, it is just silly, in my opinion. I confess to wanting to grab these folks by the shirt collar and say “Don’t you realize that you made up your own religion, and as such, it is just your own fantasy”?

I do cite the damage that certain religions such as Islam are doing to the world and some churches can be as greedy as the psychics in taking your money. Then there are churches like the Jehovah’s Witness / Kingdom Hall stuff that take over peoples lives and dictate their actions. Have you ever seen that old Twilight Zone episode where this family gets stuck in this town and refuses to leave because they are convinced that this little fortune-telling machine in a diner is giving them messages that they can’t leave the town? The moral of the story wasn’t whether or not the machine actually did predict the future; it was that this family was now living their lives according to the belief that the machine held the key to their future. It just doesn’t make sense to me to invest your whole life and base your decisions on something that may or may not exist.

I do have my own scientific beliefs that border on being woo-woo stuff, like inflationary theory and string theory, but I always keep in mind that these are just theories and could be proven wrong at any time. I don’t base my whole belief system on these ideas.

If you believe in a religion, can you tell me why your religion is the one, true religion and all of the others are not?

[Zaphod]

Again, a gradual thing, though I think for me the transition came between reading Chariot of the Gods (it seemed credible back then) and seeing the Horizon program that trashed that book.

Zaphod

[Stainless_Steel_Rat]

I read all the books. Knew all the theories. But no matter how hard I tried, I never experienced one "paranormal" thing. There were things that could be explained by luck ( I onced called 29 out of 30 coin flips), but nothing that would PROVE to me something paranormal was at work.

Eventually I just came to understand that people WANT to believe, and that when something happens that they can't immediatly explain, they place their belief onto the experience so it will support them.

And once this starts happening, it's very hard to break the person out of it with proof. The cognitive dissonace is just too much for a lot of people.

Oh, and watching J.E. cured me of ANY belief in talking to the dead.

SSR
Pardon any misspellings, not time to spell check today.

[Corey]

I used to believe in almost everything...maybe not all at once, but I gave it all a shot at one time or another. ESP, ghosts, magic...tried being a born again christian when I was in high school...all of that. I know now, and then too I think to a degree, that I was looking for something to justify my existence. For some reason I couldn't justify simply existing and formulating my own idea of what I thought I should be doing and why, I had to have some greater and more ellaborate purpose or motivation. As I got older I simply went through the process of elimination. I tried things and saw that they didn't accomplish what I thought they would. Of course for a while I convinced myself they did...but in the end I was taking the bits I wanted and ignoring the things that contradicted what I believed or seemed to show it wasn't real. It was my own self delusion and I eventually grew out of it and (very painfully and slowly, for me at least) came to be able to see when I was trying to make myself believe something instead of just evaluating it on its own merit.

I should add that I had a very healthy interest in science from early childhood and I would often balance myself out by refering back to the principles of the scientific method and other things I had learned through my own reading on the various sciences. Of course for a young person, the amount of psuedo-science added in to so much woo woo can be confusing and seem convincing with (as is the case with most of these things) they're very vague and complicated explanations.

I was raised in a household that wasn't particularly relgious or inclined towards any extreme paranormal belief. Though since I've grown and moved out on my own, married, etc. my parents have become increasingly more fixated on things like prayer to cure illness, dowsing, acupuncture and other things of that sort as they get older. At the same time my younger brother and I have both become non religious skeptics that lean more towards logic, clear reasoning and self awareness (of being fooled by our own emotions and need to believe something that isn't real). This obviously causes from friction now and gain when we try to talk to them about it, show them scientific studies disproving the basis for a lot of it and discussing with them WHY they believe in these things without any evidence beyond stories from people they don't know. We've both learned to pick our battles and not cause arguments over these things every time they come up.


So anyway, my journey to where I am now, mentally and philosophically has been a fairly natural evolution from curious ignorance to continuing education, with an open but skeptical mind. I would consider myself an atheist, leaning somewhat to the agnostic side. I don't discount everything I can't explain outright, but I don't believe it either. I'm not trying to disprove anything, but looking to find the truth as best I can understand it from the things I'm able to observe and experience. Still very full of wonder and love for the amazing things that actually do exist in this world. Some things come down to belief, pure and simple. I've seen no evidence that I can believe to prove there is life after death (see my post on mediums), I try to concern myself with how I live my life and not consider it a preparation for something later. If I should die and cease to exist, I know I will have tried to live my life in a way I felt was constructive and positive to the world around me, if I continue to exist...well, I'll find out. I'm not holding my breath.

For the most part, the strongest desire I have for myself and other people isn't to believe in nothing (I believe a lot of things that I know to be real and feel to be important, personally, morally and ethically), but to be aware of self delusion, overcome it and find the "enlightenment"/security/love/importance/fill in the blank that so many people seek in all this woo woo, in the things that exist here in reality and can actually be experienced and learned from.




Only my third post here...and I bet some of you are figuring out that I type A LOT, so forgive me, I'm sure I won't be so long winded on every subject.

[Fake Rudy]

My entire life I've been fascinated by all things paranormal. Becoming a skeptic was a gradual process. I believed that my proof of God was evident in ghosts, NDE's, and psychics like George Anderson (or John Edward). I had given up on Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFO's, and most psychics altogether (thanks to television programs featuring James Randi.) by my 20's.

With the Information Age upon us, I used the internet to further my evidence. What I found were pictures of dust and water spots passed off as ghosts, and I couldn't believe what utter crap I was seeing. It hit me that ghost, psychics, and other paranormal activities follow trends. The current trend seeming to be "orbs" and "talking to the dead."

I shifted my focus to NDE's, thinking that the internet would be teeming with people willing to share their experiences, not writing books to make money. I was wrong, what little bit I found all read more like lucid dreams and most had a strong Christian focus. I tried to find NDE's from other cultures, and there were very few. The ones I found all read more like lucid dreams than a "shared experience" (light, tunnel, etc.)

This caused me to look more into the actual "science" of dying, and what was going on with the body while dying. It took me several years to fully embrace skeptic/atheist views, but it was definitely an awakening.

[patnray]

From my earliest days I had doubts about "God". It just seemed like a convenient fiction whenever people didn't know the real answer. And from my earliest days I have had a deep interest in technology and how things work. I saw science as a reliable process for understanding our world and read every book and magazine about science that I could get my hands on.

Mysticism was popular in the 60s, and I wanted to believe. I abandoned my chemistry major and shifted to liberal arts. But the more I studied mystic philosophies, the more I realized that it was all wishful thinking incapable of producing real, substantive, results. So I went back to studying physics and calculus, and eventually found my calling programming computers.

[Bentspoon]

I used to read all the stranger than true, stranger than fiction, stranger than you, stranger than me, books. I was also a Han Holzer fan. I loved to think that these things were true (I was a kid). Then I read Von Daniken's Chariot's of the Gods. I really thought he had something there. I had an avid interest in archeaology and this really appealed to me. He seemed to have overwhelming evidence.

Then NOVA ripped him a new a*hole. I mean they tore everything apart - his interpretations were idiotic and prompted questions like "why didn't you just ask an archaeologist". He even created evidence and distorted what little facts he had. NOVA even found a native that had made "ancient" stones for him. When confronted by the evidence he squirmed and said something to the effect that when one is writing science books that are entertainment, one is allowed some discretion.

I then determined to make sure I looked into things. I have always been proud to know a few things. I have always been in a position to explain things to friends and family and this made me feel real stupid. As I looked into these kinds of things, the fact that it was woo woo ism became more and more apparent. I came to realize how much of this trash was out there.

In short, I opened my mind to the sceptical side and was overwhelmed by their evidence.

A slight aside: I have a woo woo sister-in-law who accused me of being closed minded. I reminded her that the reason I am so up on here woo-woos is that I read as much of that stuff as she did but I also read the opposing side and formed my own conclusion. I offered her Flim Flam to read. She gave it right back to me saying she didn't want to end up like me.

Who has the closed mind? To this day, as far as she is concerned, I have a closed mind while she is open minded. To this day she has refused to open that book.

Bentspoon

edited for spnelllinnggg

[Johnny Pneumatic]

I stopped believing in religion after seeing the obvious absurdities in the bible and I became a skeptic sometime between then and now.

[athon]

As a child I wanted ESP, ghosts, aliens and bigfoot to be real.

As an adult I want them to be real, too.

I still want them to be real, and I always will.

I want it to be real so bad that I want to be able to understand how ESP works on a biological level, what ghosts are made of (and can I synthesis it?), what cellular mechanisms aliens have, and whether bigfoot is more cloesly related to man or ape. I want these questions to be answered as all science is answered - not resting on statistics, or anecdotes...but with real, replicatable answers.

Science starts with statistics and stories. It then proceeds with understanding, until most questions have been answered.

I don't just believe. I desire these things to be real, possibly more than most believers.

Athon