skeptical community vs metaphysical/new age community

[PygmyPlaidGiraffe]

I read the following article in the Skeptical Enquirer. The perspective of Karla McLaren, an individual that has been exposed to both cultures, are interesting.


Here is the article:

Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures (http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/new-age.html)


...I couldn't identify myself with the uncaring hucksters, the wildly miseducated snake-oil peddlers, the self-righteous psychics, the big-haired evangelists, or the megalomaniacal eastern fakirs. I couldn't identify my work or myself with the scam-based work or the unstable personalities so roundly trashed by the skeptical culture, because I was never in the field to scam anyone...

[farmermike]

great article! And there ls that wall or chasm when the objective meets the subjective.Information being processed by two differently wired brains

[PygmyPlaidGiraffe]

I have been reading two great authors lately, who have some interesting ideas on doubt and faith and the difficulties that arise when people in two different "cultural camps" try communicating with each other, but usually end up talking at or past each other.


Jennifer Michael Hecht (http://www.jennifermichaelhecht.com/)writes Doubt: A History


and Karla McLaren writes on Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures (http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/new-age.html)


I notice when people discuss religion face to face and on various forums on the internet both sides end up talking at each other, past each other, and don't understand where the other side is coming from. As McLaren so precisely points out:
It is not merely, as many surmise, a conflict between fact-based viewpoints and faith-based viewpoints. Nor is it simply a conflict between rationality and credulity. No, it's a full-on clash of cultures that makes real communication improbable at best.



and Jennifer Michael Hecht touches on: Some people may be tone-deaf to the idea of evidence, some may be tone-deaf to the feeling that there is a higher power – we must forgive them each their failing. But there is also a tradition by which both sides refuse to engage the interesting questions: believers refuse to consider the reasonableness of doubt, and nonbelievers refuse to consider the feeling of faith. Believers value the sense of mystery human beings can feel when they look inward or beyond; nonbelievers value the ability to map out the world by rational proofs. Yet there is a kind of mutual blindness, as if personal affiliation with one camp or another means more than does interest in the truth.


The unique backgrounds of these two women serve to present perspective, compassion, understanding, and possibly a way to develop meaningful debate, and less demonisation of the opposite cultures, and serve to show that the goals and/or intents of the two "camps" are not so diametrically opposed.