earilest skeptical memories

[gfunkusarelius]

hi all,
sorry if this had been done, but i thought it would be fun to hear people's formative memories...sort of "when did you become skeptical?"

for me, the first thing that sticks in my head is very innocuous, but i guess it often starts that way. it was a commercial for an otc drug- i think it was excedrin. anyway, the commercial compared two other otc drugs, and they said something like "drug one has only aspirin and drug two has only aspirin and acetaminophen, but excedrin has a third ingredient that makes it work better." and i thought to myself "what is that third ingredient and why didnt they name it?" i did a little research and found out it was caffeine...now granted, i understand why this can help, i even use it myself, but i knew even at that age that caffeine had a bum rap and it was obvious to me why they didnt name it.

hopefully some of you have better stories than mine, but hey, i had to share if i was asking for yours.

[GreyPilgrim]

It's his fault. I've always had the "Well, I think there's something real with all this psychic, telepathic, channeling, ouija board, ghosty, life after death, alternative health, religion" stuff. Also fell into the trap of "well if uri geller is on tv then there MUST be something in it" and if Derek Acorah knows all this stuff about a building he's never visited, then "there must be something in it". I also had a book as a nipper called "Secrets of the Unknown" which pretty much sold the Bermuda Triangle as the truth, and said that razor blades placed under pyramids mysteriously appear sharpened. I never really questioned it.

One day I typed "Is Uri Geller a fake" into google, and stumbled upon the jref site.

I like to think it was a changing point in my life. I look at things a lot differently now.

[gfunkusarelius]

i had the whole "time life mysteries of the unknown" series. and while i took most of that stuff skeptically, i guess it was a little different, i just took it as entertainment.

as for the "it's on tv, there must be something to it"- i think that is huge for a lot of people. another skeptical eye-opener for me was seeing these infomercials get busted...i was thinking "well there must be something to it because you cant just go on tv and lie" wow, was i wrong. when i saw the first infomercial companies getting busted for selling total flimflammery, it was a bit of a seachange. i realized you really can say whatever you want...for a while anyway

[Carnivore]

I was exposed to a lot of woo literature as a youngster - thinking back there must have been a lot of books on ghosts, ESP, UFOs etc laying around my primary school - all of which presented the subject matter as fact. I remember reading a book at age 10 called something like "Strange Energies, Hidden Powers". It was like Woo 101 for kids, pyramid power, Kirlian photos, curses, mind controlling computers, the lot! All presented as a factual "scientific" look at real phenomena. As a teen I found Charles Berlitz and Budd Hopkins. I wasnt stupid, I could see that these books werent well written and that they relied on assumptions that they didnt test, but I just thought that reflected on the authors rather than the subject. I had encountered some absolute drivel that I rejected at once (Erich Von Daniken and some Florida housewife who was in psychic contact with the aliens on the other side of the Bermuda Triangle for instance.)

However I didnt start really applying skeptical critical thinking in my life until after reading some of the work of Phillip Klass and Arthur C Clarke. Mr Klass rubbed my nose in all the wooly thinking I was having to do to take the UFO abduction phenomenon seriously.

I felt seriously stupid, because I had allowed myself to believe in something because I would have liked it to be true, and I realized with hindsight that I had not applied my judgement to my belief. I had fooled myself.

I dont think you can really be happy in life unless you can separate fantasy from reality. I'm very glad I learned how.

[Bikewer]

When I was a kid, I loved reading all those great Charles Fort sort of things; back in the 50s. At the same time, I had a great interest in science and natural history.
I recall taking one of my grade-school teachers to task for referring to the "Walleyed Pike" as the top predator in US fresh water lakes. I pointed out that perhaps he meant the Northern Pike, or even the Muskellunge....I didn't score any points.

Anothe grade-school teacher (a biblical literalist; dunno how she snuck into a Catholic school) went on about how dinosaurs could not have existed, as they were not mentioned in the Bible. Being a huge dinosaur fan, I immediately objected. "But Miss (insert name, I don't remember), what about all those skeletons!" "They must have been plant formations."

Even in 6th grade, I realized that was a lot of hooey.

[GreyPilgrim]

As I said earlier, most of my 'belief' (if you can call themg aus that) were the "ghost flying saucers sucking people down into the bermuda triangle via astral projection type".

On the opposite side of the coin, I was lucky enough never to have any creationist nonsense imposed me at all. The schools I attended were not church affiliated schools, and my family only ever went to church for funerals, weddings and christenings - and even then only under duress. I was only ever taught the evolutionist point of view and took it as read that everyone believed the same. The very first time I encountered a creationist point of view was in my early twenties. My girlfriends parents were practising Jehovas Witnesses and a bit of it seems to have rubbed off on her. I was sitting with her and a friend and just happened to hear a snippet of a conversation between the two which went something along the lines of "...and they say we are descended from monkeys, I mean how ridiculous is that?".

I was a student at the time and was bit under the influence of something naughty, hence I couldn't really articulate my amazement at her comment. But you still had to peel me off the wall. I really was amazed that anyone could hold that point of view in the 20th century. Talked to her a lot about it once I had straightened out but it was a solid, etched in stone belief in her. Sadly since then I now know it's a lot more prevalent than I even dared to imagine.

I learned a lot of important lessons from that period in my life. One of which was "if you buy a Honda Accord from a Jehovas Witness, always check the exhaust"

[Angus McPresley]

Being a huge dinosaur fan, I immediately objected. "But Miss (insert name, I don't remember), what about all those skeletons!" "They must have been plant formations."


Unbelievable!

I too had books as a kid about UFOs and mystic powers. And a Guiness Book of World Records that had entries about what's-his-name being unbelievably good at ESP. And of course I accepted it all. What kid doesn't? Not many, still. That's what we're up against.

I didn't start to doubt much at all (but I didn't really think about it much) until I was 18. "God" was actually the first thing I started doubting; then, I had a biology professor in college who was a skeptic, and discovered sci.skeptic on Usenet about the same time. Suddenly I was able to correct label as "hooey" a bunch of stuff that I had just filed away.

[TimmyBerry]

Hrm..

I can't recollect any particular skeptical experiences that turned my life around, but I do remember becoming more and more doubtful over the entire religion thing. People kept talking about this "god", yet I couldn't see what exactly that "god" was. So, no evidence... Over the years, I realized the religion makes people do a bunch of silly/violent/irresponcible things, and gradually expanded my skepticism from religion to paranormal, UFOs, ghosts, etc.,.

[Oolon Colluphid]

When I was 13~14 I read every UFO book in the library. Then I made them order more. I was totally hooked. I mean, they even had photographs. How could it not be real? Well, I had read George Adamski's first book a couple of times, and eagerly awaited his second. Once it did, I began to have that sinking feeling that I'd been duped. In the first book he meets the aliens. In the second, they take him for a ride in their flying saucer out to one of the moons of Jupiter, where he supposedly meets jesus....D'oh! I believe that was the last UFO book I ever read.

As far as 'god' is concerned, we all went to church when I was a (younger!) child, and seeing all the adults firmly believing it and telling me it was true, I naturally assumed that they knew what they were talking about. Then I ran into a kid who didn't believe. I was shocked. Why didn't he believe? I mean, why would all these grown-ups believe something that only might be true? And the seeds of doubt were sown. One day at Sunday school, the 'teacher' stated that jesus had to die for our sins. I asked her how his dying could have affected anyone else's sins. She explained that he took our sins with him when he died. I remember discussing it with my pal after 'class', and thinking the whole thing was more than a little fishy. Years later, I finally got around to reading the bible (actually, I think I was still heavily into the UFO mythology, and read the bible looking for evidence of alien encounters after reading "Chariots of the Gods"). I read the whole thing, and was absolutely stunned. How could anyone in their right mind believe word one of that crap? For a few years after that, although the biblical god was out of the question, I still had the nagging feeling that "there must be something out there. Some higher power". As the years went by, and the evidence of any 'higher power' continued to be conspicuous by it's absence, I finally settled on what I considered to be the only logical conclusion. There isn't one.

[I'll_buy_that]

I was in grade school. A Catholic elementary school. Nuns would talk about all the things Jesus did, this and that. I never really bought the stories, I thought of them as fables, etc. They would talk about how some people would have pieces of the actual cross, etc. they really believed this stuff and I thought it was improbable.

I remember being pretty surprised the first time I heard Pilot was an actual person in history.

This experience really didn't make me become a skeptic, as that actually was later on when I would watch those stupid shows on tv "That's incredible" and "In Search of..." I saw Radi debunk one of the guys claiming supernatural powers and then realized that there are a lot of scam artists out there.

last week my 4 year old looked at me and out of nowhere said, "Jesus isn't real, right daddy?" I had to smile.

[Bronze Dog]

My earliest skeptical memory was some PBS show (probably Nova) where I was introduced to Uri Geller and James Randi at the same time. "Bend, bend!"

[Pythra]

I turned from 100% unquestioning believer to critical-thinking skeptic literally overnight.

Until I was 15 a was a complete sucker for anything related to ghosts and psychic powers. I loved reading 'factual' stories and hauntings, ouija board experiences, and 'majick'. It's shocking how much woo can be packed into teen magazines, some of my earliest exposure to ghost stories presented as fact was in copies of Mizz magazine.

One day in an RE lesson about ethics, the teacher showed us a video of Benny Hinn using 'spiritual healing' on members of a studio audience and periodically passing around collection buckets. The audience eagerly shoved handfuls of money into the buckets after seeing severely ill people being miraculously cured.

Cured? Some of the 'healings' looked convincing, but some were clearly not. Benny Hinn attempted to 'heal' a girl with breathing problems, who thanked him profusely for his help whilst clearly still suffering from the symptoms of her illness. A few minutes of online research showed not only that Benny Hinn was incapable of curing anyone of anything, but his attempts to do so were both financially and physically damaging to the patients.

It was a potent lesson learned - that the paranormal should be questioned, and unfounded belief in the paranormal should not be considered harmless fun.

[Bronze Dog]

Well said, Pythra, and welcome to the forum.

[Meffy]

<GrandpaSimpson> It was during my training as a scribe to the court of Pharaoh Seti I, Ramses II's dad, the king who began the planning for the pyramids as part of the first Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. BTW, you haven't seen the pyramids unless you've seen 'em topped with the paraboloidal radio dishes they were designed to support! Mighty pretty. Anyhow, I caught one of the high priests... </GrandpaSimpson>

What? Real-world facts you wanted? Okay, I relent. It might've been around age four, when a religious aunt informed me that "our kind aren't animals." Look, I've got paws, eyes, legs, same stuff as the other animals. But I'm not one? Right.

She was a very nice person but I can't imagine living with such a world view.

[gfunkusarelius]

interesting how most of the responses are about religion so far. i guess i was skeptical about it pretty early on even tho i was indoctrinated (for example, i remember not really being christian anymore but when someone said they didnt believe in sin i was totally baffled), but i guess i consider religion something that is so inherently faith based that i dont really even list it as very worthy of skepticism. either you choose to believe it or you dont. thats why i always find it ironic when CTists read something like the davinci code or the gnostic gospels and start talking about how jesus was really a hippie and never claimed to be the only son of God, etc, and i am thinking "wait, do you really believe any of the gospels?"

anyway, i became very skeptical of christianity when i started considering that they preached of a god who would punish someone for eternity just because they didnt believe in or worship "him"... i would never wish that on my worst enemy, so i guess the old adage applied "with friends like that, who needs enemies?"

[Dogdoctor]

I debunked Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and extrapolated from that to include the easter bunny and then debunked god (for the time being). I suppose one of my earliest skeptical moments was when I figured out that Joseph of the bible was the likely father of Jesus if you can call that skeptical. It was one of those eureka moments when I knew I was right and felt elated so I still remember it.

[Serenity]

My grandmother use to tell me when I was sick that she would call Tele-evangelists’s to make me better. When I improved, she would attribute the healing to them, and for me to thank the power of god for feeling better. I didn’t believe her and it made it difficult for me to trust adults as I came to realize adults didn’t have all the answers, but acted as if they did. This is the same grandmother that disciplined my brother for being left-handed.

[Gravy]

Age 5, trying in vain to convince the kids at the school bus stop that there was no Santa Claus "But I SAW my father bring the presents into the garage and hide them!"

The same year, I had a first play date at the home of a kid who insisted that his stuffed animals talked to him. After I insisted that he show me talkiing teddy bears, he cried and I left in disgust and walked a mile and a half home.

That was the year my parents stopped taking us kids to church each week. I think they knew they had a problem on their hands.

[Dragon]

Up to the age of 14 I was taken to church (chapel, really - United Reform Church) regularly by my mother - Sunday School etc.
Anyway one Sunday there was a guest preacher who based his sermon on the 10% myth. "We only use 10% of our brain therefore Darwin is wrong and godidit". Now, I didn't know enough to debunk the 10% myth but I did know enough about evolution and have enough critical thinking to recognise a bull***t argument.
I was already having doubts about the whole organised religion thing (atheism was to come much later) so shortly after that I told Mum that I didn't want to go go to church anymore - this met with no real objection (partly because I think Dad was at least agnostic) and that was that for me and church (excepting weddings and funerals).

[gfunkusarelius]

wow, that is AMAZING logic...we only use 10% of our brains, so anything that we percieve to conflict with the bible is due to our lack of capacity to utilize our brain. did god cauterize the enlightenment portion of our brains after adam's fall from grace?

[Stellafane]

Event #1: When I was a kid, project Blue Book closed, announcing they didn't find anything that indicated UFOs were real. Suddenly there were way fewer UFOs being reported. Even I could see a connection: the less attention paid to them, the less people saw UFOs. It started me to thinking that just because something was widely believed, didn't mean it was true. But the real turning point came with...

Event #2: I briefly flirted with mysticism in my late teens -- so much so, that someone thought it was appropriate to buy me an astrology book for my birthday, one that predicted day-by-day what would happen to me. I looked though it, and sure enough, eveything the book foretold more or less came true. I actually got to the point where I'd read the book first thing in the morning and if it said it would be a good day to exercise (what day isn't?) I'd go for a walk. This went on for a couple of weeks or so, until I noticed the book was for the upcoming year! In a stroke I could see how easy it was to delude myself, and it had a profound impact on my thinking. The final crowning event that shaped my skepticism occurred with...

Event #3: The McMartin Preschool trial. I started out utterly convinced that these people were the worst scum of the Earth, and deserve the worst possible torture devised by humans. I eventually came to see the whole thing was a stupendous farce, and that the accused were in fact victims of an obscene matrix of credulity, ignorance, and evil. I saw how much damage woo thinking could cause, how prevelent it was, and how it must be fought at ever possible level. And it eventually led me to realize that there were a lot of other people like me out there, similarly outraged.

[sesmo_k]

I started wondering about the existence of god etc, after seeing the IRA's Hyde Park bombings on the TV. I asked my dad (an atheist and sceptic) what had happened. He told me all about the IRA's campaign and about the struggles between catholics and protestants in Ireland. Wow, I thought, this is weird. Two groups of christians like me blowing each other up? Why would god let that happen. It started me thinking about the whole religion thing, I mean one gods people against another... fair enough, but two of lots of people who worship the same god... that just has to be wrong. So at 7 years old, I decided that it was pretty much a bunch of hooey. Think my dad was quite proud! (unlike my woo mother!)

[Dogdoctor]

wow, that is AMAZING logic...we only use 10% of our brains, so anything that we percieve to conflict with the bible is due to our lack of capacity to utilize our brain. did god cauterize the enlightenment portion of our brains after adam's fall from grace?
It is a common myth that we only use 10% of our brains. A myth that has persisted in spite of new knowledge about the brain.

[westphalia]

I wish I could say that I rebelled against my preacher father, but I didn't.

My first skeptical moment (that I can remember) came when I was a little boy, reading about - surprise! - dinosaurs. All my books had the dinos dragging their tails around, and I couldn't understand how - callouses or no - the dinos didn't tear their tails apart on the rocky ground, or get backaches dragging them behind themselves. Wouldn't the tail slow you down? Wouldn't the constant friction make it hot, and give you blisters?

Never made sense to me.

[Polaris]

I wish I had some "innocent child prevailing over stodgy Sunday-school teacher" reverse-glurge story (I was more concerned about not being yelled at for contradicting the authority figure - when I wasn't mad about having to waste 4 hours of my precious weekend being bored stupid).

No...my first skeptical memory was of those diaper commercials. Why was the p!ss always blue?! I thought they used some special fluid that would absorb better into the material (I think I just realized why I almost flunked chemistry). I know I was wrong now (it's blue because you can't show pee-pee and poopy on network TV), but that's my anti-climactic story all the same.

[hellaeon]

My earliest skeptical enquiry I remember was asking the local 'pastor' of the church how God could just 'be there' to create everything. It did not make sense that everything got created from something bar him. The answer at around age 7 did not seem adequate even then.

Add to that much skeptical analysis of world events 'if god is so nice, why is that allowed to happen' etc.

Hence im fairly bleak on religion.

I was a UFO nut when I was young too. LOVED it. Dabbled a bit with conspiracy theories (Stilchin, planet x etc, hollow earth theory etc) about 10 years back until I stumbled across David Icke circa 1999/2000 who being such a complete nutball made me re-evaluate everything I thought of when it came to CT's.

[hailslaanesh]

In Australia, even in public primary schools, children attend religious education once a week. At the age of seven, my class was forced to memorize a prayer. From an early age I had manners drummed into me by my family and I was quite shocked when "god" didn't answer my prayers. So I figured there was either no god or he was a rude SOB who would even reply to small children.

I wish that I had been as skeptical with some of the other BS I've been interested in. It was only since reading this site have I ruled out the possibilities of some of that crap.

[digithead]

I became a skeptic after being severely injured from being hit by a car while riding my bike. While I recovered quickly, I lost my hearing in my left ear. My parents are diehard Catholics and my mother, sensing my despondency over my accident, arranged to have me talk with the youth minister at our church. He asked me if it had felt like the hand of God was lifting me up, preventing me from being injured more than I was. Having just taken a physics class in high school, I told him no, it felt like gravity and Newton's Second Law. From that point on, I knew that supernatural explanations were worthless...

Since then, I've rejected religion, embraced skepticism and I try to approach each day with a sense of wonderment of all that nature holds...

As for my accident, they did have to tow the car that hit me. But that's not supernatural either, it was a piece of crap Mustang II. Just good ol' American engineering...

[shuize]

I'm sure it was a long process, but a few of the memories that stand out:

Being told in my first grade class at a religious school that we'd be skipping over the section on "cavemen" in our readers. -- "Why?" I thought, "those pictures look cool!"

Being told in a Bible class that Adam and Eve were giants and we, their descendents, had shrunk due to sin. -- Even at 8 years old I knew that had to be crap. I sinned all the time and was still growing.

Being told as a teenager that there were all sorts of satanic messages hidden on the reverse track of rock and roll records. -- I remember trying to play them backwards for myself and being irritated at not hearing anything.

Being told by religous relatives that people who worshiped on the wrong day of the week were going to hell. "Why in the world would 'God' care if otherwise believing Christians got together and prayed on a different day?"

Reading Inherit the Wind as a teenager and laughing at the courtroom dialogue.

Teachers in various Bible studies classes shutting down debates on biblical interpretation.

[Dunstan]

As a kid, I fell for pretty much every form of woo that existed. Astrology, lucky numbers... I even owned a rabbit's foot. I think my problem was that I had too much trust in adults -- I figured there was no way that adults would buy all this stuff if it wasn't real.

However, I do have two memories that sort of fit this thread:

1) Reading a "science facts" book in my school library that had a factoid to the effect that, in order to visit every home on Earth in one night, Santa would need to fly at many times the speed of light and spend something like a nanosecond at each house. That pretty much put the nail in that coffin for me. (Kudos to whoever wrote that thing, by the way -- it didn't explicitly say Santa wasn't real, it just presented the facts and let the reader draw his own conclusion.)

2) The end of a week-long Bible class during the summer. (My parents never really tried very hard to instill religion in us, so it's entirely possible the thing was my idea at the time.) It was like regular school in that all you really had to do was regurgitate what the teachers were telling you, so I was pretty "good" at it. I think the instructors decided that this must mean I was a very pious kid rather than just the dutiful student I was, because they were telling my parents and I on the last day all about their Sunday School program or some such thing that they were sure I'd love. I said something like "Well, I'd like to, but I have a very busy schedule," and my parents were both amused and embarassed at my blatant but surprisingly adult lie.

[Polaris]

Come to think of it, the whole concept of original sin struck me as a goat-**** at an early age.

[Bronze Dog]

About the sin=shrinkage thing: Aren't people on average taller nowadays than they were a few centuries ago, and still getting taller, despite the televangelist cries that society's going down the tubes?

[bluess]

I was fairly skeptical at an early age, fueled by the lack of religious training by my parents (both Hindu, but keep/kept their beliefs private) and by voracious reading of fantasy novels. All the magic was obviously pretend.

For a while in middle adulthood, I believed a variety of unsubstantiated things. The activities of a very woo and controlling acquaintance allowed me to start jettisoning those beliefs. This board has been a wonderful resource.

[briquce]

When I was a pre-teen I loved comic books, and wanted to be a superhero. Unfortunately I didn't appear to have any super-powers. I wasn't a gifted athlete. I couldn't build technological marvels that defied physics. And I routinely got my butt kicked in every time I was involved in a fight. So I read most of the occult books in the public library. Things with titles like "Guide to Astral Projection" or "Telekinesis for Dummies". However, nothing in any of those books every seemed to work for me. I couldn't understand why someone was allowed to publish instruction manuals that obviously didn't work.

I ordered X-ray glasses, and hypnotic coins. They didn't work either. (Imagine my disappointment when I took the glasses apart and discovered the secret ingredient was a feather.)

Then I stumbled across the autobiography of Robert-Houdin. The part that impressed me the most was his trip to Algeria. He performed some of his standard tricks and convinced the audiences that French "magic" was more powerful than the "magic" of the Algerian fakirs. It jump-started my brain. If the Algerians had been deceived by magic tricks, then maybe I had been too. I became more and more skeptical from that point on.

I still read and enjoy comic-books.

[UrsulaV]

Being a huge dinosaur fan, I immediately objected. "But Miss (insert name, I don't remember), what about all those skeletons!" "They must have been plant formations."

Even in 6th grade, I realized that was a lot of hooey.

Bible camp, 5th grade or so, and they were teaching us some kind of young earth creation thing, and I said "What about dinosaurs?" and the answer was deeply unsatisfying. After everybody else had gone off to make lanyards, two counselors decided I was obviously in need of extra attention and attempted to explain that dinosaurs were were in the ground to test the faith of paleontologists, except for Leviathan, who got to make a cameo in Job.

I realized at that moment that I was being forced to choose between God and Stegasaurus. This is not a choice any child should have to make. I slunk out. God was, y'know, fine and all, but dinosaurs! I had books about them! With illustrations! The coolness factor of God compared to the coolness of dinosaurs...no, He just didn't compare. Possibly if I had had a stuffed plush God I slept with at night, He'd have been in the running, but Steggy was my stalwart ally against monsters under the bed, and made a good pillow, too. God was just not gonna be able to compete with that.

My mother discovered this later and was furious, and informed me that it was an absolute load of crap and there was no reason that dinosaurs were incompatible with Christianity. So I didn't quite lose my faith there--it took a few years--but that was the first time I can pin down an adult telling me something seriously silly like that and me thinking "...no, I'm not going to believe this."

[steve s]

I've been a skeptic from an early age. I can't remember ever believing in Santa Claus. I'm sure I did at one time but I must have figured out pretty early that it was just mom & dad putting the presents under the tree.

When I was 5 my parents gave me a book about dinosaurs (which I still have 36 years later.:) ) I think that had a big influence on me. It warded off any belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis (though neither of my parents were creationists.) Astronomy was another favorite subject as a child. Knowing how big and old the universe was made it difficult to believe in a god that was only concerned with one planet around an ordinary star.

[OT] Does anyone here remember those plastic kits from the early '70s called 'Prehistoric Scenes?' I had nearly every one of those. I recently stumbled onto some on eBay. If you're not familiar with them, here are a few...
Saber-tooth tiger (http://cgi.ebay.com/1972-AURORA-PREHISTORIC-SCENES-733-SABER-TOOTH-TIGER_W0QQitemZ6052042405QQcategoryZ774QQrdZ1QQcmd ZViewItem)
Triceratops (http://cgi.ebay.com/1972-Aurora-Prehistoric-Scenes-3-Horned-Dinosaur-Model_W0QQitemZ6051384005QQcategoryZ774QQrdZ1QQcmd ZViewItem)
Cro-Magnon Woman (http://cgi.ebay.com/1971-AURORA-PREHISTORIC-SCENES-731-CRO-MAGNON-WOMAN_W0QQitemZ6052042391QQcategoryZ774QQrdZ1QQcmd ZViewItem)

Steve S

[westphalia]

About the sin=shrinkage thing: Aren't people on average taller nowadays than they were a few centuries ago...?

Nope. We're shrinking. I heard it on Coast to Coast. Stephen Quayle has a book we can all buy on giants, and he knows about giants - whole tribes of them - between 8-10 feet tall, living in Micronesia and the jungles of the Yucatan.

Come on, do some "real" research. Don't let physical evidence planted by the Illuminati fool you!:D

[Gargoyle]

My first sceptical memory:
I was about five-six years old and had done something bad (I do not remember what it was unfortunately) and I new that there should be trouble with Boss Mother. So what could a desperate, crying little child do?
:idea: Pray to God seemed like a good idea at the moment, so I did that...
Mom found out what I had done and sent me to bed early as a punishment.
Needless to say, I was really dissapointed at God and his poor assistance :mad:

[BryanLower]

As a youngster, before I was homeschooled, I attended private Christian schools. One school was attached to a church called Grace Fellowship. It's one of those "mega-churches" here in Tulsa (we have several). It falls into that catagory we call "Charismatic".

During one sermon, Pastor Yandian told the audience that the worst question we can ask God is "why". To ask God "why" would demonstrate a lack of faith. It is lack of faith that prevents Christians from experiencing miracles. *Everything* depends on faith. God, in his great benevolence, has already granted all of our prayer requests... in the spirit world. It is our faith that brings the miracles to pass in the physical world. But asking "why" is expressing doubt. And doubt is the opposite of faith.

This frustrated me. I can't ask "why"? I was always instinctively curious about the how the world works. I wanted to understand why things happen, and why people make the decisions that they do. And if God wanted to me do something, I wanted to know WHY!

I had another problem with our pastor's sermon. If you get right down to brass tacks, God wasn't telling us anything. Our preachers were telling us what to do, based on their interpretations of the Bible. So he wasn't telling us not to question God. He was telling us not to question HIM.

This event still bothers me. I have the same feeling any time someone gets upset with me for looking deeply into a subject. I know I have to make some assumptions in order to function in this world, but I would feel rather silly believing in assumptions that are wrong. The only way I know is to ask "why", and to examine the evidence thoroughly and fairly.

[uruk]

When I was a kid I used to be a big UFO nut and believed just about everything I read. (including Von Daniken) Whenever my mother took me on a grocery shoping expedition, I would hound my mother into buying me the latest issue of whatever UFO magazine was around. In one particular issue I saw "ALIEN DISSECTION TABLE UNCOVERED" and I quick turned to the page and was dissapointed in discovering that the "alien diessection table" was in fact the Russian Lunokhod lunar rover. That event pretty much sent me on the path of skepticisim. I thought that if the author of that article was making up the the whole shmear, well then, what about everything else I read about?

[Corplos]

Looks to me that dinosaurs are a big assistance in early skepticism, I know it was for me, I LOVED dinosaurs. That and a psycho-religious aunt that effectively turned me off of religion. Never force a child to choose between dinosaurs & God, dinosaurs always win.

[Polaris]

Looks to me that dinosaurs are a big assistance in early skepticism, I know it was for me, I LOVED dinosaurs. That and a psycho-religious aunt that effectively turned me off of religion. Never force a child to choose between dinosaurs & God, dinosaurs always win.

If your story is typical, we should encourage radically-religious relatives to force kids to choose between God and dinosaurs. And they should really ratchet up God's tendency to be cruel, vindictive, cranky and supremely evil.

[UrsulaV]

If your story is typical, we should encourage radically-religious relatives to force kids to choose between God and dinosaurs. And they should really ratchet up God's tendency to be cruel, vindictive, cranky and supremely evil.

Hmm, actually I don't think making God cruel, vindictive, etc would help.

The reason dinosaurs won so handily over God for me was because God was so bland and vague, and dinosaurs were so COOL! It had nothing to do with God being evil or cranky, he just couldn't compete with the collected tribe of Saurus. If God had had giant pointy teeth, bird hips, and a brain the size of a walnut, he might've been in the running, but he was just kinda...generic God.

So I actually think making God evil and cruel and smitey would work t'other way. Then he might be cool enough to compete with dinosaurs.

[damfino]

I think it all began when I asked my mom "what you mean 'once upon a time'? Isn't there an exact date or something?" :eye-poppi

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

As I was preparing for my first communion (~10 yrs old, United Methodist church) we had to go through a little schooling with the pastor to understand what it was about and such. She was a great lady and was willing to answer questions and such. Being the naturally inquisitive and cynical person I am I asked how god could send people that lived good lives to hell just because they had never heard of jesus or god. She, as I recall, did a fairly good job trying to answer a 10 yr old who had asked such a question. Other than that specific memory, I can not recall exact incidents; though I have always been inquisitive and questioning of most things.

[LordoftheLeftHand]

...

Event #3: The McMartin Preschool trial. I started out utterly convinced that these people were the worst scum of the Earth, and deserve the worst possible torture devised by humans. I eventually came to see the whole thing was a stupendous farce, and that the accused were in fact victims of an obscene matrix of credulity, ignorance, and evil. I saw how much damage woo thinking could cause, how prevelent it was, and how it must be fought at ever possible level. And it eventually led me to realize that there were a lot of other people like me out there, similarly outraged.

While I think I had already become a skeptic, this was a very powerful event in my life as well. Even to this day, I am still interested in the event and still read about it.

LLH

[LordoftheLeftHand]

...I felt seriously stupid, because I had allowed myself to believe in something because I would have liked it to be true, and I realized with hindsight that I had not applied my judgement to my belief. I had fooled myself....
Even though I’ve been a skeptic since before I even knew what the word was, I have experienced this. After reading www.snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/) I discovered that even I had been suckered by some of these urban legends. It is an odd experience indeed. When I discover that something I believe is false it almost “hurts” and I feel embarrassed (even though there are no witnesses). Back when I first started reading Snopes, I would have to stop from time to time because I didn’t want to read anymore.

LLH

[blutoski]

It is a common myth that we only use 10% of our brains. A myth that has persisted in spite of new knowledge about the brain.

Everybody knows we use 12%.

[Jon.]

I think I've answered this here before, but here goes anyway...

I was 4 years old and attending a Lutheran nursery school. Not because my parents were believers or anything, but because it was local and convenient. We had bible stories from time to time. I remember one day while driving home from nursery school, thinking "That David and Goliath thing, yeah, I can see how that might have happened. But walking on water? Multiplying bread and fish? Coming back from the dead? Nah, just stories."

[Beleth]

I don't know if I can point to one specific thing. I do remember praying when I was little, and being really disappointed that I wouldn't hear anything back.

Why was I praying, if nothing happened because of it? If it was to make me feel better about something, well, talking to Mom or Dad always made me feel a lot better about whatever was bothering me than praying did, and I could almost always see a change happening after I talked to them.

When I was little I was interested in woo-woo stuff. I remember dragging my mom to see the "Chariots of the Gods?" movie. But that was mainly because I was on my way to becoming an astronomy knowledge sink -- I couldn't get enough -- so anything that had the slightest thing to do with outer space, I was there. I came out of that movie realizing that there was something distinctly off about the presentation. Instead of making definite declarations ("Mars has two moons"), it just asked leading questions ("Did ancient astronauts visit the Incas?") and never really answered them.

That's when I realized that science both asks and answers interesting questions, while woo-wooism asks interesting questions but never really answers them.

[blutoski]

hi all,
sorry if this had been done, but i thought it would be fun to hear people's formative memories...sort of "when did you become skeptical?"

for me, the first thing that sticks in my head is very innocuous, but i guess it often starts that way. it was a commercial for an otc drug- i think it was excedrin. anyway, the commercial compared two other otc drugs, and they said something like "drug one has only aspirin and drug two has only aspirin and acetaminophen, but excedrin has a third ingredient that makes it work better." and i thought to myself "what is that third ingredient and why didnt they name it?" i did a little research and found out it was caffeine...now granted, i understand why this can help, i even use it myself, but i knew even at that age that caffeine had a bum rap and it was obvious to me why they didnt name it.

hopefully some of you have better stories than mine, but hey, i had to share if i was asking for yours.


My first skeptical experience, in retrospect, was when I was two, and my dad came into my room with a stuffed toy that he said was my favourite. Swear to God, I had never seen that toy before. My conclusion was that my memory could be faulty. I still have the toy (coincidentally, it's an elephant!)

Later, I did lend too much credulity to pyramid power, although I'm proud to say that I tested it and reported negative results, rather than making excuses. I think belief in the paranomral is actully normal, or even healthy, for kids.

I had several families growing up, but the last one were pretty committed Catholics, and I went through Confirmation even though I didn't believe any of it. I ended up teaching Cathecism until the priest asked me directly whether I believed and I had to 'confess' that I didn't. There was no recovering from that conversation!

I have had constant changes in my philosophical, economic, and political views, as well.

My feeling is that I went from being uninterested to scientismic (sp?) to skeptical, in that order, although gradually, not with sudden changes.

[Piggy]

Later, I did lend too much credulity to pyramid power, although I'm proud to say that I tested it and reported negative results, rather than making excuses.
I remember doing science fair experiments in 6th grade on pyramid power (it being the 70s and all) and the previous year on psychic card reading. Both turned out to be bunk.

Maybe my first skeptical experience involved Sunday school when I was perhaps 5 or 6 years old.

The Sunday school teacher drew a wavy line on the chalk board and a straight line above it and asked if the top line could make the bottom line straight. No one answered. I think that, like me, they all were confused by such a silly question. Adults weren't supposed to ask silly questions, so we furrowed our brows trying to figure out what we were missing.

The answer was that the top line can't make the bottom line straight. So God can't make us do right. We have to choose to do right.

But more generally, I couldn't see any difference between the Bible stories and my bedtime stories. My mother told me that the bedtime stories were make-believe. And they didn't seem anything like the world around me. So the difference was plain enough. Then the grown-ups turned around and tried to tell me that these particular bed-time stories were true. That's when I seriously started to distrust grown-ups.

I already distrusted other kids. And I reckon that was really my first skeptical moment.

I was the youngest-but-one of all the kids on my block, and the youngest of 3 boys in my family. I learned pretty quick that anyone older than me was more likely to lie than to tell the truth, even if it was just so they could have some fun.

Telling lies to little kids was always great fun. Whether it was older kids wanting a joke, or adults with their stories of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Bible, or big brothers trying to make you feel small.

I then decided that the best way to approach the world was to go first on the theory that everything I heard was false -- either deliberately or by mistake -- and to change my mind only if convinced. My experience in school didn't change that attitude any.