WWu777
1st March 2004, 04:17 AM
UNDERSTANDING THE PSEUDOSKEPTIC
Are deathbed visions nothing more than hallucinations of a dying brain? Carla Wills-Brandon addresses this in our lead article and in her excellent book on DBVs. But it is unlikely that many people calling themselves skeptics will be swayed to her view.
I understand skepticism. I am a skeptic in most things beyond immediate sensory verification and even in some things which are subject to sensory “proof.” At least I begin as a skeptic before investigating the subject in the pursuit of knowledge that might permit me to move off that skepticism. Rarely, however, do I move to a position of absolute certainty, and therefore I remain a skeptic to some degree. For example, I am 99 percent certain that consciousness survives bodily death, but I am only around 70-percent certain that reincarnation is a fact, at least in the manner generally accepted. If we move to the group soul concept, I am about 85-percent certain that reincarnation exists. I believe skepticism is a positive trait.
ARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> What I don’t understand is the attitude of the person who proudly, even arrogantly, calls himself a skeptic but refutes, rejects, or repudiates all evidence, no matter how strong that evidence, of a non-material world. This person is sometimes referred to as a pseudoskeptic. I prefer to call him or her a scoffer or a cynic. As I see it, this individual is at the other extreme of the credulous religious fundamentalist, the person who blindly accepts dogma and doctrine without any attempt to understand the underlying principles or get to their origin.
My dictionary defines “skeptic” as “a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual.” The word comes from the Latin <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">scepticus and the Greek <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">skeptikos, meaning “thoughtful” or “inquiring.” I think it is safe to say that all<I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"> thinking people are skeptics until they have been satisfied by ample evidence that something is true. Of course, whether the person accepts a particular “truth” based on a preponderance of evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, or with absolute certainty is something else. Truth does seem to be a relative thing.
It is only natural that we should question and then closely examine the various psychic phenomena which suggest there is a non-material world. For most of us, there is prejudice in the pursuit of such knowledge, as we faced with two possible conclusions: There is a non-material world, i.e., a spirit world, or all is material, i.e., there is no spirit world. Seemingly, most people would prefer to come to the former conclusion, as it lends itself to the survival of consciousness. The alternative is to accept that we are temporal beings who evaporate into nothingness at bodily death.
On the surface, the pseudoskeptic appears to be the more objective examiner as well as the most heroic, unfettered by emotion and courageously facing up to his mortality and eventual extinction or obliteration with valorous indifference. However, the fact that he finds it necessary to go on the attack with self-righteous indignation for the “believers” leads one to conclude that he is motivated by a need, most likely one of ego appeasement. Why else does he find it necessary to attack what others find comforting and consoling? Please don’t tell me he is simply interested in being a beacon of light that makes the “truth” available to everyone. I can’t buy that.
“We expect to prove our sanity by laughing where we are ignorant,” wrote Dr. James Hyslop, the esteemed psychical investigator of a century ago. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate for Hyslop, professor of ethics and logic at Columbia before entering the field of psychical research, to have substituted the word “intelligence” for sanity.
“The hypocrisy or ignorance of the (rationalistic) philosopher is manifest when he exhibits a consuming passion for the social and material pleasures of life and affects a righteous contempt for emotion when it concerns the ideals of religion and a future life,” Hyslop continued, referring to the scoffer or cynic who calls himself a philosopher. “Once he was supposed to help the race in guiding its emotions toward a right goal and so saw life in its true perspective. But lately, assuming the unbiased nature of doubt, he prides himself in laughing at inspiration and hope when they suffer at the loss of all that gave meaning to life and effort while he labors with all his might to secure the pleasures of a good table and social recognition without accepting any responsibility to share human struggle and suffering.”
> Much more recently, in his 1999 book, “<I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Passport to the Cosmos,” Dr. John Mack, a Pulitzer Prize winner and professor of psychiatry at Harvard, gives his thoughts on the “worldview” in which so many academicians are stuck. “A worldview functions at both individual and institutional levels,” Mack writes. “It is a source of security and a compass to guide us. For an individual it holds the psyche together. To destroy someone’s worldview is virtually to destroy that person. A complex network of institutions, an edifice of power and money, supports a worldview and gives it legitimacy.”
Mack goes on to say that “the findings of parapsychology challenge the idea of a mechanistic universe operating by established causal principles, suggesting a world in which unseen connections work mysteriously according to principles we do not yet understand and certainly do not control.” He admits that this was his own mindset – one devoid of consciousness and intelligence beyond the brain – until he began investigating the paranormal. He now looks back upon his former view of a secular universe as “quite absurd.”
For Mack, the evidence has been so convincing, he adds, that he has been slow to realize that those who have not traveled the same road are not ready to accept as true what sometimes appears to him as clear or even obvious.
The bottom line, as I see it, is that the pseudoskeptic, the scoffer, the cynic, whatever name we give to him or her, would rather appear intelligent now than be right in the long run. Am I missing something? -- <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Michael E. Tymn
Are deathbed visions nothing more than hallucinations of a dying brain? Carla Wills-Brandon addresses this in our lead article and in her excellent book on DBVs. But it is unlikely that many people calling themselves skeptics will be swayed to her view.
I understand skepticism. I am a skeptic in most things beyond immediate sensory verification and even in some things which are subject to sensory “proof.” At least I begin as a skeptic before investigating the subject in the pursuit of knowledge that might permit me to move off that skepticism. Rarely, however, do I move to a position of absolute certainty, and therefore I remain a skeptic to some degree. For example, I am 99 percent certain that consciousness survives bodily death, but I am only around 70-percent certain that reincarnation is a fact, at least in the manner generally accepted. If we move to the group soul concept, I am about 85-percent certain that reincarnation exists. I believe skepticism is a positive trait.
ARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> What I don’t understand is the attitude of the person who proudly, even arrogantly, calls himself a skeptic but refutes, rejects, or repudiates all evidence, no matter how strong that evidence, of a non-material world. This person is sometimes referred to as a pseudoskeptic. I prefer to call him or her a scoffer or a cynic. As I see it, this individual is at the other extreme of the credulous religious fundamentalist, the person who blindly accepts dogma and doctrine without any attempt to understand the underlying principles or get to their origin.
My dictionary defines “skeptic” as “a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual.” The word comes from the Latin <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">scepticus and the Greek <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">skeptikos, meaning “thoughtful” or “inquiring.” I think it is safe to say that all<I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"> thinking people are skeptics until they have been satisfied by ample evidence that something is true. Of course, whether the person accepts a particular “truth” based on a preponderance of evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, or with absolute certainty is something else. Truth does seem to be a relative thing.
It is only natural that we should question and then closely examine the various psychic phenomena which suggest there is a non-material world. For most of us, there is prejudice in the pursuit of such knowledge, as we faced with two possible conclusions: There is a non-material world, i.e., a spirit world, or all is material, i.e., there is no spirit world. Seemingly, most people would prefer to come to the former conclusion, as it lends itself to the survival of consciousness. The alternative is to accept that we are temporal beings who evaporate into nothingness at bodily death.
On the surface, the pseudoskeptic appears to be the more objective examiner as well as the most heroic, unfettered by emotion and courageously facing up to his mortality and eventual extinction or obliteration with valorous indifference. However, the fact that he finds it necessary to go on the attack with self-righteous indignation for the “believers” leads one to conclude that he is motivated by a need, most likely one of ego appeasement. Why else does he find it necessary to attack what others find comforting and consoling? Please don’t tell me he is simply interested in being a beacon of light that makes the “truth” available to everyone. I can’t buy that.
“We expect to prove our sanity by laughing where we are ignorant,” wrote Dr. James Hyslop, the esteemed psychical investigator of a century ago. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate for Hyslop, professor of ethics and logic at Columbia before entering the field of psychical research, to have substituted the word “intelligence” for sanity.
“The hypocrisy or ignorance of the (rationalistic) philosopher is manifest when he exhibits a consuming passion for the social and material pleasures of life and affects a righteous contempt for emotion when it concerns the ideals of religion and a future life,” Hyslop continued, referring to the scoffer or cynic who calls himself a philosopher. “Once he was supposed to help the race in guiding its emotions toward a right goal and so saw life in its true perspective. But lately, assuming the unbiased nature of doubt, he prides himself in laughing at inspiration and hope when they suffer at the loss of all that gave meaning to life and effort while he labors with all his might to secure the pleasures of a good table and social recognition without accepting any responsibility to share human struggle and suffering.”
> Much more recently, in his 1999 book, “<I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Passport to the Cosmos,” Dr. John Mack, a Pulitzer Prize winner and professor of psychiatry at Harvard, gives his thoughts on the “worldview” in which so many academicians are stuck. “A worldview functions at both individual and institutional levels,” Mack writes. “It is a source of security and a compass to guide us. For an individual it holds the psyche together. To destroy someone’s worldview is virtually to destroy that person. A complex network of institutions, an edifice of power and money, supports a worldview and gives it legitimacy.”
Mack goes on to say that “the findings of parapsychology challenge the idea of a mechanistic universe operating by established causal principles, suggesting a world in which unseen connections work mysteriously according to principles we do not yet understand and certainly do not control.” He admits that this was his own mindset – one devoid of consciousness and intelligence beyond the brain – until he began investigating the paranormal. He now looks back upon his former view of a secular universe as “quite absurd.”
For Mack, the evidence has been so convincing, he adds, that he has been slow to realize that those who have not traveled the same road are not ready to accept as true what sometimes appears to him as clear or even obvious.
The bottom line, as I see it, is that the pseudoskeptic, the scoffer, the cynic, whatever name we give to him or her, would rather appear intelligent now than be right in the long run. Am I missing something? -- <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Michael E. Tymn