How we became skeptics

[Operaider]

Since I seem to find myself getting in constant debates with believers and trying to correct much of their illogical thinking, I began to wonder if there is any point to it at all. Is it possible for me to make them skeptical? Can some of them just not be saved? So I decided to see if we can figure out what caused us to become skeptics, so we can help induce a little skepticism in others.

I once was a believer myself, and became a skeptic do to a biology teacher who spent a week of class discussing evolution. He was in middle of the fight to prevent creationism from being taught in our schools. During the class he showed videos concerning the age of the earth and evidence for evolution. One of the videos included Randi. Along with his comments on evolution it showed him doing magic tricks under the guise of a holy man to a tribe in Africa. He then explained to them that he was just using tricks, just like the other traveling holy men who would come to their village and take their money. This along with Penn & Tellers show years later helped to get me to reevaluate my beliefs.

[DinosaurKnight]

I was just thinking about this earlier today. I don't think there was really a defining moment for me, it was a natural progression. I was raised in a liberal, mainline Protestant religion, and identified myself as such until my mid-to-late teens. Then I fell into the trap that so many woo-woos fall into: I wanted so badly to believe that I was different and special (read: "better") that I spent a year or two dabbling in the occult.

Somewhere along the line, in my early-to-mid 20s (most of these transitions were gradual enough that it's impossible to be any more specific than that), I started to lose interest in the Darker Arts and was drawn to things of a skeptical/atheistic/scientific nature. I really don't even know when I became a true skeptic, because it took me a long time to admit it even to myself. Skeptic? Atheist? Oh no, I'm not one of those closed-minded people!

But eventually I realized that's exactly what I was, exactly what I had been for quite a while before I acknowledged it, and that it was nothing to be ashamed of. True skeptics, after all, are the most open-minded people in the world: We alone will happily change our beliefs in the face of sufficient evidence, whereas non-skeptics, almost by definition, cling to their beliefs despite and regardless of evidence.

[AWPrime]

Born Skeptic, while others tried to raise me as a believer, they failed.

[TobiasTheViking]

Born and raised a skeptic :D

[Ducky]

Didn't have any strong paranormal beliefs before becoming a skeptic. It was the cancer that put the final nail in teh coffin of a supreme benevolent being (or supreme being of any kind.)

[hipparchia]

Let's recall...I used to be a wiccan, tarot and altar and all the props. Crystals, Castaneda, the whole lot.

At that time, 90's, any Bulgarian could have access to books on any of those subjects. See, books were highly regulated by the state during the socialism regime in my country. Suddenly democracy hits us in '89 and everyone can print whatever they wish, so they print all woo headlines available.

We Bulgarians have a huge respect for books. This respect to books translated into "whatever is in books must be true", and the door to all woo was open.

At that time I was a teenager. Since Bulgarian education emphasizes cramming to thinking, for me as well everything in books was honest truth.

Years later and a lot of good books at the university, I started to notice the annoyingly bad style, bad translations, logical flaws and generally wacky ideas in newage writings. I thought- could those people try to be spiritual without being stupid. The rest is history...

Now as for "saving" believers...As I said, I was a teenager when I believed woo. It's an age, some of you may remember, when it's easy to think with your emotions and to have little patience or attention span for a more logical analysis of a text. Yet around that time, it's good to get the basics of skepticism and critical thinking. Teenagers are also curious, so slip them "Science as a candle in the dark"- or at least the "Baloney detection kit"

As for older people...it's sad to hear "I have spent 20 years researching (insert woo), so I can't be wrong". People have invested too much. Or they think they are too smart and educated to be wrong. If anyone has a clue how to talk to those people, please share it.

Also- huge thanks to my journalism professors for teaching me the habit of questioning every claim.

[Stellafane]

1. Believed in UFO's when I was a kid. Then they closed Blue Book, and suddenly the UFO sightings seemed to drop way off. Convinced me people reported UFO's because it was trendy. Stopped believing in UFO's.
2. Later as a teen someone bought me an astrology book calendar. Seemed very accurate, followed it for a couple of weeks until I noticed it was the upcoming year! Realized how easy it was to delude myself. Stopped believing in astrology (and started viewing things skeptically in general). This was probably the closest thing to my "epiphany" moment.
3. The McMartin daycare sexual abuse case. Complete believer at first, came to realize defendants were innocent. Showed me the danger of woo beliefs and the damage they can cause. Hardened my skeptical outlook
4. Discovered Skeptical Inquirer. Realized there were lots of other people out there like me, a whole movement in fact.
5. Discovered this forum!

ETA: With kudos to Carl Sagan, Stephen J. Gould, Issac Asimov, Joe Nickell, and Mr. Randi Himself.

[steenkh]

I voted "Born and raised a skeptic" because that was the closest option. Actually, I was not really raised a skeptic, there was just a general unspoken skeptic attitude in my home. My mother was a believing catholic, and my father an agnostic. I was the most religious person in the family, but as long as I can remember, I rejected belief in any kind of superstition. This can only have happened because of the influence of my parents.

When I was about 10 years old, somebody gave me a Ouija board. I had never heard about it before, and I was excited that it could give me answers to all kinds of questions. After about an hour, I was deeply disappointed and had already figured out how it was supposed to work.

My skepticism became more and more militant in the same period that I gradually lost my religious beliefs, and in high school I was fiercely outspoken against astrology. At this time I also heard of CSICOP and James Randi, but it would take another 20 years and the advent of the internet before I knew what a "skeptic" was.

[Sleepy]

As a kid I told my fundie xian dad that I don't believe in god. Got a fire and brimstone lecture. Hard to remember exactly why... I think he tried telling me that lightning and thunder were the wrath of god, but I'd read one of those kid's illustrated introduction to science books, and preferred the natural explanation :)

[HopperUK]

Raised half-heartedly Catholic, became religious in my early 20s, but hadn't believed in the 'occult' outside of the existence of God since my early teens. Then about four months ago suddenly realised I really didn't believe in God any more either. I looked around at the world and thought 'okay... now imagine there is no God, no afterlife, nothing but what's in front of you. How would the world look different?' Answer - it wouldn't. These forums had a lot to do with my change in attitude. I veer from feeling immensely liberated to finding the lack of an afterlife depressing.:)

[Miss Whiplash]

I was never much of a believer. My parents always said, "Think for yourself!" and "There is a logical explaination for everything." So, even as a child, I questioned everything. Also, religion was not a big thing in our household. Church was more or less an occasional backdrop for some social event.

[Mad Hom]

Well I've pretty much been skeptical of most things for a long time. Ghosts,Alien Abductions,Psychics etc etc all seemed like hooey. I was at one time though a bonafied,hook in mouth,Bigfoot Bleever.

I read all the school library books on the topic and watched the In Search of Bigfoot epsisode every time it came on. I would then regurgitate this info to all my family and friends till I'm sure they grew bored of me.

Yep I was certifiable, To me the PGF was concrete stone cold proof and no one could tell me different...than two things happened

A.) I read Grover Krantz' book on the subject "Big Footprints" (I think that's it)

and...

B.) I saw The A & E Ancient Mysteries Bigfoot special


Old Grover's book was filled with basically nothing but speculation and conjecture I mean the man was pulling numbers out of his arse. He had population numbers and mating seasons and family unit makeup and on and on.

As I read it I kept wondering.... "Where's he getting this crap?" No new proof just guesswork. The grown up,fresh out of the ARMY me began to not buy it anymore than the dagger in my Bigfoot Bleef came...

The A & E documentary was especially illuminating mostly based on the part of the show where those two schmoes claimed to have new footage.

Now I hadn't seen anything new on film since PGF so I was stoked for some brand spankin new footage to reinforce my already wavering Bleef. Well what I got turned out to be a lesson in Parieola (sp?) The aforementioned schmoes set the scene, the who,what ,where and how they than let rip with the film and my brother,my GF at the time and I looked on intently and.......we all saw Bigfoot in a different corner of the TV screen not one of which was where the Hairy Biped of Unusual Size happened to be located in spot shadow.

I was taping the show so afterwards we watched it again and again and again and we never with any confidence saw what we were supposed to see in spot shadow. To me other parts of the screen looked more compelling than what they pointed out... I was pissed.

The clincher to me was.... the stills.

This Bigfoot was lounging in the most awkward position I've ever seen (Allegedly) just kicking back or so they would have us believe. The stills were over scribbled with a stick figure outline of where BF was supposedly lying...

Anyway,ever since then my anti-Bigfoot stance has been growing and growing to the point that now I go out of my way to mentally kick Bigfeet Bleever in the groin any chance I get and this fiery skepticism of all things cryptid has fueled all other areas of skepticsim for me religion,politics,UFOs,conspiracy drivel...you know anything on C2C with Art Bell/George Noory which is a good show............... for a laugh!!

[Overman]

Born a Christian and bapitized one. Never like it. I was forced to attended CCD and hated that. One of my favorite memories is of faking being sick so i would not have to attend CCD after school, then my mom being somewhere so she could not pick me up, then finding out that the CCD that day was a party with pizza and cupcakes and pop. Church just never seemed right to me. I still sat out in the hall with my pretend stomach ache because i could not stand CCD.

When I moved to Texas after 3rd grade my family never really went to church down there. Xmas and easter type of thing. This was the time when I became very very intrigued by UFOs and anything "unexplained" (Nessie, Bigfoot, Bremuda Triangle) and would devour books on the subjects.

I was never fond of science classes (i dug math) but didn't dislike them, they were just like any other class to me, breeze thru with a B spend my time partying or playing games after school. I had considered myself agnostic since i was probably 12ish.

I saw a Penn and Teller show sometime shortly after high school and they mentioned Randi. Randi turned me on to Sagan, and My life has been changed since. The first good resource I got my hands on was The Demon Haunted World and I could not tell you how much it changed my life.

It was like **** had been wiped from my eyes and I could finally see. Everything became clear.

Since reading that book I have understood reality and been a skeptic, and atheist, and have been very hardcore about it.

[petre]

Another slow progression here. I have a number of memories of having some interesting woo ideas. Like "If you wish hard enough, you can make anything happen", or "there are ghosts in that bedroom".

Then, I noted that no matter how strongly I wished for some things, they still didn't happen. I kept looking for ghosts, never found any. At some point, I started to realize that just because an idea sounded nifty didn't make it reality.

I suppose in the end it was probably my mom's general pessimism rubbing off and hopefully converted into something a little more constructive ;)

[strathmeyer]

Which choice is "just have always been this way"?

[MichelQC]

I really cannot pinpoint the exact moment I came to think of myself as a skeptic, it was a really slow and gradual process. Like many who posted I was born in a very religious family, Catholics in my case, I was an altar boy in my early teens. Later on I even left the Catholics and became a member of a Baptist church. I read the Bible (including the old testament) cover to cover twice! I believed in UFOs as well as in poltergeist at one time.

It is only as I grew older and started to compare what I believed, against what was verifiable that I started questioning my earlier beliefs. I read a lot about science, the scientific method and also about skeptical thinking and the more I considered everything the less my old beliefs actually made sense to me. I discovered the JREF a few years ago and the more I read the more sense the skeptical approach applied to "the paranormal" (and boy does that cover a large territory!) made sense to me. So to sum it up, there was no big epiphany of any kind, it was very much a personnal process.

[Hellbound]

I just sent in my $5 fee, and got my nifty membership card and secret decoder ring a couple weeks later.

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

As long as I can remember I always wanted to know "the truth". What was the world, why were we on it. Who we are. What is the universe. Is there a god, and those kind of things.

So, I researched everything that was close, any book, every belief.

I believed in lots of things, then, one day, I learned. Everything revolved around language. Concepts. Ideas. I understood then that even the best knowledge was not enough.

But thats another story.

[GreyPilgrim]

It was typing "Derek Acorah Proved To Be A Fraud" which got me to an archived commentary link on the Randi site (or it may have been Uri Geller - can't remember)

Was always of the naive opinion "well if it WAS all bull***t, they wouldn't be shown with such conviction on TV, would they?"...How wrong I was...

I hate to sound sycophantic, but the site has opened my eyes and made me question everything. Three cheers for the Randi Forum. Hip Hip...

[GreyPilgrim]

Always having this "I don't really believe, but there MIGHT be something in all of this paranormal stuff" did leave me jumping at shadows a little bit until I started to 'think things through' a bit. This is a big bit of self confrontation here, but even though I'm grown up, 280 pounds, six foot four inches tall with stubble and everything and telling my daughter that there are no such thing as ghosts, I would still get the willies slightly in certain situations - like walking through woods late at night, being in 'spooky' houses alone, pulling your feet into bed quickly in case something grabs you from under the bed...even sometimes walking through the house in the dark if I've gone downstairs for something. I know it's stupid, but i guess it's 30 years of brainwashing by horror movie directors.

I noticed after I became a skeptic and acknowledged the fact its all rubbish, that none of this bothers me anymore.

I can even ditch the comfort blanket and teddy bears.

[Jeremy]

I was born into a conservative, fundamentalist Baptist family, so I always the logical consistency, if not the accuracy, of my current militant atheist views. I have sort of wobbled between the two extremes for a long time, ever since I read an article in Discover magazine detailing evolutionary morality. I have hidden my true beliefs well, although I have been coming out more about it in my social life recently. It is all I can do to keep it hidden from my parents until I am out of their house.

[politas]

I've always been fascinated by a lot of woo stuff. I'd love for it to be true, but I just cannot move from wishing to belief without some kind of evidence.

This is what pisses me off about so many woos who claim that we skeptics are close-minded and "want to disprove them". That's not the case at all. I don't want to disprove paranormal events, I want to prove them.

[articulett]

The religion stuff never made sense...the fall of man because some woman ate an apple? Original sin? But as soon as I heard about evolution, I understood it.

Religion is a clever trick--shutting people up with threats and obtaining allegience with promises of eternal reward. The more I learned about the brain and consciousness and evolution-the more obvious it seemed that souls are an "illusion". I had veered from religion to New Age beliefs because I had been taught that truth can come from faith and feelings. But all those crazy cults that kill themselves or others show that there doesn't seem to be any consistent truths. Plus humans fool themselves so easily.

I just like truth. I like truth I can understand for myself. I love science because it doesn't require belief or going through some spiritual leader or book to find it. I think that "life is a test" crap is damaging to trusting people and it encourages the ignorant notion that truth can come from faith.

[Dunstan]

As a kid I pretty much ate up all forms of woo. I owned a rabbit's foot, read horoscopes, believed in UFOs and psychics and all that stuff. Mainly because:

(1) it seemed cool and interesting. It still does, in the sense that I can enjoy science fiction. By contrast, I don't think my science teachers (and/or the administrators who designed the curriculum) did a very good job of presenting science as a method for learning about the world. Instead we did a lot of memorization of periodic tables and taxonomy.

and (2) I had never really encountered skepticism. Sure, my parents might have scoffed at some of the superstitious stuff, but I don't think I really grasped the idea that millions of supposedly intelligent adults would believe in something without a good reason.

By the end of my teenage years I learned better and pretty much stopped believing in any of it, but I never really considered myself a skeptic and probably wasn't even aware of the term until I stumbled across the JREF site a couple of years ago.

[articulett]

It was typing "Derek Acorah Proved To Be A Fraud" which got me to an archived commentary link on the Randi site (or it may have been Uri Geller - can't remember)

Was always of the naive opinion "well if it WAS all bull***t, they wouldn't be shown with such conviction on TV, would they?"...How wrong I was...

I hate to sound sycophantic, but the site has opened my eyes and made me question everything. Three cheers for the Randi Forum. Hip Hip...

Yes, Randi has been instrumental in my "conversion"--I am very grateful. And he's so much more interesting than the invisible sky daddy and John Edwards. I think it's really great to know that people can stumble across this website by accident and have their whole thinking changed. If I was into hero worship--the amazing one would top my list. He shows us that information isn't the realm of mystics--we all can know the "secrets". I love that. He could exploit that knowledge...and he sure receives a lot of guff from those trying to "kill the messenger"--but he jauntily carries making a slow but steady difference that ripples out in far reaching ways.

[UndercoverElephant]

You don't give me the choice for me. I am an ex-skeptic. :)

[Dogdoctor]

I was born with a skeptical mind but not enough to keep me from being temporarily sort of duped by woo of various types due to being skeptical of authority and not skeptical of the counterculture. I see skepticism as a learning process. You learn how to be skeptical yet are never completely free of unskeptical thoughts. Perhaps it is only that you have to learn to weigh data better.
edited to add: You might be able to push or pull people in the right direction but the rest is up to them. People will respond to certain types of dialog and will resist change if other types of dialog are attempted.

[rjh01]

Religion was never a major part of my life. Yet I could see other people having strange religious beliefs. Read bits of the bible and saw how shallow it all was.

Believed in ESP as a teenager. But then a certain person got discredited and so I had to reject that.

Apart from that never got into much woo beliefs. Slowly taught myself how to think. Still learning.

[Operaider]

This has given me some hope when it comes to my debates with believers.

It seems like a common theme in many of these stories that allot of us were believers before we were skeptics. So I guess my attempts are not without merit. I can only hope to be a part of the reason someone else becomes a skeptic.

[BPSCG]

Well, I wasn't born a skeptic, but was certainly raised that way. My mom is pretty woo-ish, but my dad had a hairtrigger BS detector, and whenever I'd run to him with some amazing bit of woo, he'd promptly deflate it. I don't remember how long it took him to get me to give up on the most popular wooish belief - that people have free will - but that was the final nail. He made me understand that nothing happens without there having been a prior cause, and even if we do not always readily perceive or understand the cause, it is nevertheless still there.

My mom claims that a day or so after he died, the PC in their bedroom went off in the middle of the night and started playing music from Edvard Grieg's Pier Gynt Suite, a piece she says he always loved (though I don't remember him ever playing it on the stereo...). She had no explanation for it, so she of course attributed it to his somehow communicating with her.

"Mom, please. You know how he hated computers. He always thought you were up to no good whenever you were on it. He couldn't be persuaded to try to use it. And now that he's dead, you believe that his disembodied soul or whatever figured out how to play music on it, instead of through the stereo? If he could figure out how to make the computer play Pier Gynt, why couldn't he figure out how to make it say, 'Hi, honey, it's me, having a great time, wish you were here...'? What do you think he would say if he could hear you talking like this?"

[chillzero]

You don't have an option for 'skeptical believer'.

Even when I was a believer in spirit and all that, reading tarot and stuff, I was still skeptical in my approach. I think of skeptisim as an attitude - a frame of mind - a need to continually question what you read, see, hear, and most of all think.

This desire to learn more about how things were supposed to work, and whether they actually did work that way, made me quite unpopular with my peers for a long time. It took a long time to start making headway in gathering the information I needed, and while open to the idea that someday someone might win Mr Randi's million, or we may find proof of the existence of a soul separate from our bodies, I have rejected much of what I used to believe.

That's what I think skepticism is about. Some day I may find evidence that persuades me dramatically in another direction. I don't know. I'll live each day with what knowledge I do have, and continue to question everything that I think I know and understand.

[Trantor]

I was raised a Baptist mostly because my mother is very much involved in her church. She still plays the piano for her church and is considered an important member of the church.

In my teen years, I started attending the Assembly of God Church because several of my school friends were going there. I found it to be very similar to the Baptist Church in most ways; with the exception of speaking in tounges and healing by the laying of the hands. In my later teen years, I even briefly dated a Mormon and a Jehovah's Witness, and accasionally went to those churches as a guest. Of course, I never intended to actually become a member of those churches and my short relationship with those two ladies was over for that reason.

During high school and college, I was a member of a Judo school, and of course the intructor was very much into all sorts of metaphysical things. He even suggested many different kinds of books to read. Metaphysical books that he claimed would open up our minds. One of the first woo books I remember him suggesting was "The Third Eye" by Lobsang Rampa. I loved the book and later read many others by the same author as well as many other books by other metaphysical authors. In time, I had a library of several hundred woo books.

I stopped going to church, but developed my own blend of christian belief mixed with a good helping of metaphysical woo.

Oddly enough, during all this time, I had a great interest in science and read many science books as well. It's amazing how the mind can make it all seem logical at the time.

It was the science that made me a Skeptic. People like Sagan, Randi, Assimov, and Clarke helped me see the truth. When I really started to use critical thinking, my world of woo just fell apart. The fairy tales have been gone now for over eighteen years. They have been replaced by clarity.

[Psiload]

I was bitten by a radioactive skeptical spider.

[steenkh]

I was bitten by a radioactive skeptical spider.
And got super powers?

[Psiload]

And got super powers? Yes... it left me with the amazing power of transformation. Every time I walk down the street I turn into a saloon.

Badda Bing!

Thank you, ladies and germs. I'll be here all week.

[gfunkusarelius]

well, i voted "turned" because i started out "open" to all the supernatural wonders, but then i grew up. it might sound arrogant and disrespectful, but i think it comes down largely to maturing. some people's thoughts (to varying degrees on varying topics) never mature. my parents and friends who are intelligent, rational adults in most topics become strangely childlike when they are confronted about some sort of supernatural belief they hold- they turn into kids who want to stay up an hour longer and play with their toys.

so for me, it just seems logical that when i didnt know better and i was less experienced in the world, i was able to cling to unfounded beliefs and when i got older, i saw lack of evidence many of the claims i had taken as fact when younger.

[CapoKent]

Religion was never a big part of my immediate family's life, even though we were living in cities and towns where church is prevalent and people were "exepected" to go. Mom tried to get us (my brothers and I) to go to church a few times, but we were pretty rowdy and always left with alot of questions. "Why this" and "I don't understand that". Basically doing whatever we could to show that we were bored and didn't want to go back.

So I remember being in my teens getting more and more sick of religion, because I was expected to take it seriously, yet not understanding how belief in a Christian god was somehow better than belief in Odin or Zeus.

Then, I found the JREF and spent alot of time browsing through the forums, reading the arguments people would present and, really looking at my own critical thinking skills and personal feelings. And I guess that was when my skepticism became permanent and I became more vocal.

[Desktop Icon]

I actually did have a defining moment in my life, though it did not result in an instantaneous transformation into being a skeptic.

I was raised in a quasi-catholic family and attended a parochial school from grades 2 through 6. At the time I believed pretty much all the silly stuff that they threw at me, because hey, they were adults and they obviously knew what they were talking about. I also had a fledgling interest in things such as ESP and UFOs, because as another poster said, it just seemed so cool.

My defining moment happened during a 5th grade science class where we were learning about the solar system. The teacher, Mrs. Rousi (interestingly, my brain is still devoting a portion of its efforts to storing her name over 30 years later) drew the standard picture of the sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc. on the blackboard and told how the planets all circled around the sun. Yes, this was a progressive Catholic school that actually accepted that Earth was not at the center.

Anyway, I raised my hand and asked a rather simple question: What keeps the planets in their orbits? Why don't they just fly off?

I really don't think a quick explanation of gravitational attraction would have been too much of a reach for a room full of 5th graders, but Mrs. Rousi either didn't want to go that route or maybe she didn't know the answer. But without missing a beat, she replied that it was because, "that's just the way God made it."

I immediately thought, "Hey, wait a minute... she doesn't know the answer. She's making this up!" As I said, I did not instantly become a full-blooded skeptic at the moment, but that little exchange got me thinking that maybe, just maybe, some of what the adults were saying wasn't true.

By my early teens I had become very uncomfortable with religion, but was still holding on to some of the other woos, primarily ESP. Again, this was primarily because I thought it would be so freakin' cool if it worked. I really can't pinpoint the moment when I realized that ESP and the likes were baseless, but I'd say that by the time I got to college I was pretty well entrenched in my skeptical ways, though I didn't know there was a name for it.

[supercorgi]

I was a big believer before I became a skeptic. I was fascinated by UFOs, magic, astral projection, ancient advanced civilizations, you name it. Of course I was also a geeky adolescent who was heavily into Science Fiction. I didn't become a skeptic overnight, but gradually grew out of the need for all these "crutch" beliefs. I mean what geeky, outcast, adolescent doesn't want super powers or special knowledge?

Studying real science definately helped the process but I think it was more of a matter of just growing up.

[Diamond]

I grew out of religious belief by reading about real science. That's what strikes me about woo-woo believers, they're physically adults yet they want to live in a child's fantasy world.

By real science, I don't mean inventions or theorems, I mean the scientific approach, the assumptions of naturalism, the problems of observation and bias, why things that we commonly think are so really aren't.

Hopper:
I veer from feeling immensely liberated to finding the lack of an afterlife depressing

So do I. If there's more to it than three score years and ten, then I want to find it, but I'm not going to switch off my brain first.

[Euromutt]

For most of my life, I've been sort of "passively skeptical," if you will. After seeing a television program back in the 1970s in which Randi debunked Geller, I was aware there was phony stuff out there, but I never gave it much thought, and when friends or acquaintances subscribed to paranormal beliefs, I generally had a "well, who knows, maybe there's something to it" attitude. Not always, mind you; one friend who was heavily into astrology told me in '96 or '97 that I was really atypical for a Scorpio, and it was all I could do to refrain from pointing out that, since I was not only a Scorpio, but also had Scorpio in the ascendant, I should logically be more typically Scorpio, not less, and that maybe the problem was that, well, astrology is bunk.

But I think getting an internet connection and an e-mail account, followed by the discovery of Snopes, is what really got the ball rolling, because it helped me realize the full extent to which a lot of people will accept without question, repeat, and even cling to, beliefs which are demonstrably false. That got me questioning certain beliefs held by friends which I hadn't bothered to question before, and though I was less than surprised to find those beliefs were wrong, it came as a bit of a shock to find how easy it was to find the evidence that proved them wrong.

That, I think, is what made me what you would call a skeptic.

[articulett]

I was a big believer before I became a skeptic. I was fascinated by UFOs, magic, astral projection, ancient advanced civilizations, you name it. Of course I was also a geeky adolescent who was heavily into Science Fiction. I didn't become a skeptic overnight, but gradually grew out of the need for all these "crutch" beliefs. I mean what geeky, outcast, adolescent doesn't want super powers or special knowledge?

Studying real science definately helped the process but I think it was more of a matter of just growing up.


I started asking questions about Santa...and then wondered if he and God might be the same thing... I couldn't figure out how you were supposed to find out the truth when so many people said they had it and they didn't agree with eachother. I was so happy when I didn't have to go to church anymore, that I feel aghast when the people I knew it my teens--become "true believing adults". How could that be? I suspect they weren't tangled up with all the conundrums and just got temporarily distracted by the opposite sex in their youth. I examined these teaching up and down and sought tidbits of meaning in reems of "teachings"--and then finally kicked this crap out of my brain and life for good. I think one of the best things about being an adult is not having to go to church or prayer meetings or channelers with mysterious truths (as if!).

[FreakBoy]

Was brought up in a not quite so observant Jewish household. Both parents were big in science and had this amazing tendency to say to me, "I don't know" if they didn't know a natrual answer for some phenomena I was inquiring about. At the same time the parents were still believers (and are to this day). I went through the same inquisitive stage regarding the occult that many others have.

There was one event that stuck out in my mind... Randi. Randi showing a class of teenagers the "if it proves everything it doesn't prove anything" aspect of astrology. Though I think it wasn't until later that I became the true Skeptic that I like to call myself, that piece always stuck with me. Combine that with finding Skeptic magazine, passing interest in Houdini's anticharlatan crusade, mix with some eggs, bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until golden brown...

SKEPTIC!

[Nihilanth]

Well, even though this thread has gotten unwieldy to the point where I doubt anyone else is reading it, I think I'll toss in my two cents, mostly because this is a big deal with me. I take skepticism very seriously, but I haven't really told anyone the story of my "conversion", as it were, because it's embarassing how naive I use to be.

I grew up in a highly religious Baptist household. We weren't allowed to celebrate Halloween. I wasn't even allowed to watch He-man or the Smurfs because the church was convinced they were evil. Sometime around there, I was exorcised by my Sunday School teacher. It was in retaliation for my mother and the church elders exorcising her a few weeks earlier, but I was a kid and the politics of the situation were a bit beyond me.

At some point, my parents must've decided the church was ******** and left. The problem was, they still had all this faith and nowhere to ground it. We drifted from church to church, but none of them really gave us what we wanted, so after a while we stopped trying, but we never really stopped believing.

This was all ancient history when I got into high school. Being a teenager, I had all these emotions and frustrations, and all this bound up with a lot of faith and a fear of dying (for some reason), and I fell into the old trap a lot of people here talk about. I had to prove to myself that the supernatural existed, and I started trying my hand at "magic with a K", as my sister calls it.

I got pretty deep into it, and I think a lot of it was my fault alone. I was stupid, and I honestly think laziness had a hand in it, too. No matter how many times I did a ritual and came up with nothing, no matter how many times I believed and found myself thwarted, I still clung onto the old occult trappings simply because it was too much work to change the way I thought.

And it was easier the further I got into it. Most everyone I met believed wacky or wackier things. The internet was rife with the kind of anecdotal evidence that substitutes for real proof, and I ate it all up. If it hadn't been for two people, I think I'd be a close-minded chaos sorceror and full-time woo to this day.

The first was my biology teacher, who started off one of his classes with "I know there's a lot of controversy out there, and I know a lot of people don't want me to teach this, but hell with them" and launched into a long lesson on the theory of evolution. Of course, this highly offended my delicate Christian sensibilities, and I tossed out all the old defenses at him. "What about the second theory of thermodynamics? What about the tendency of things to fall towards disorder? What about the chances of a human being evolving being astronomical?" all of which he swatted away like mayflies, ending it with a kind suggestion that I should read "Dragons of Eden" if I wanted to understand the subject.

The other was my dad, who became a skeptic sometime after leaving the church but kept it mostly to himself. He gave me a copy of "Demon-Haunted World" to read, but I only got through the introduction before deciding that I had devised enough one-liners to end any argument that might come up over it.

None of that really changed me, though, until one night. I had a friend over who was as into woo as I was, and we stayed up all night scaring ourselves silly, faking possessions, that kind of thing. Finally, in a fury of belief and the NEED to validate that belief, I ran out into the night screaming some damned thing.

It woke up my parents. They both came out to see what the holy hell was going on, and the sheer disappointment in my dad's eyes was enough to seal it right there. At that very second, I was converted to a skeptic. It happened just that suddenly.

Of course, it took me a long time to get myself THINKING as a skeptic, and even now at the age of twenty-five, I think there's still more to learn. But I maintain that what keeps most people from living skeptically is LAZINESS, pure and simple. It's a hard thing to train your mind to consider things as they come up. Someone talks about seeing a ghost, or reading minds, or bending spoons...it's easy to just sit back and agree. You don't have to think, and if anyone wants to argue, they're a bunch of close-minded fools. It's much harder to train yourself to ask questions, to probe everything people tell you, to tap away at the story until you uncover whatever truth, if any, it might have. And that kind of transformation happens inside a person. You can show them all the books on skepticism you want, all the proof that what they believe is a misunderstanding at best and a lie at worst, but THEY have to WANT to see it.

[Kiwiwriter]

My family was very science-minded. As I got older, I found the most annoying things about pseudoscience were

1. How they make an often random and complex world into a neat little package, topped with a moral lesson ribbon.

2. The sheer idiocy of the ideas, as opposed to the logical flow of ordinary explanations.

3. Occam's Razor.

4. A visceral dislike of con men...all these conspiracy theories and psychics seem to have greed at the core of their operation.

[articulett]

The first was my biology teacher, who started off one of his classes with "I know there's a lot of controversy out there, and I know a lot of people don't want me to teach this, but hell with them" and launched into a long lesson on the theory of evolution.. . .

The other was my dad, who became a skeptic sometime after leaving the church but kept it mostly to himself. He gave me a copy of "Demon-Haunted World" to read, but I only got through the introduction before deciding that I had devised enough one-liners to end any argument that might come up over it.



Amen (ha!) and a great story. Praise god...er I mean...your biology teacher...and Carl Sagan...and your very wise dad.

[supercorgi]

The first was my biology teacher, who started off one of his classes with "I know there's a lot of controversy out there, and I know a lot of people don't want me to teach this, but hell with them" and launched into a long lesson on the theory of evolution. Of course, this highly offended my delicate Christian sensibilities, and I tossed out all the old defenses at him. "What about the second theory of thermodynamics? What about the tendency of things to fall towards disorder? What about the chances of a human being evolving being astronomical?" all of which he swatted away like mayflies, ending it with a kind suggestion that I should read "Dragons of Eden" if I wanted to understand the subject.

Sounds like you had a great biology teacher who started you on your way to questioning things. Some times one really good teacher can make a world of difference! Thank invisible sky fairies for good, dedicated teachers!

[pounce]

i was raised in the church, i just came to disbelieve what they were telling me. i can't put it down to a single time or event that did it.

as a kid i was obsessed with ghosts, ufo's, aliens, etc. anything unexplained. i think it turned into a proper quest for the truth. i remember that exposure to multiple religious ideas made me think that no single one was likely to be "the one" to the exclusion of the others, despite being presented that way.

also, i have a background in magic that got me to develop a bit of a disdain for those charlatans performing tricks and calling them miracles while duping the less informed woo crowd. it just seems cruel.

so between my loss of respect for religious mythology, my thoughts about charlatans who pass themselves off as having super powers, and the unsatisfying results of looking for the truth surrounding ufo's, ghosts, monsters, etc. it has led to a skeptical approach to life. no other approach has seemed reasonable, logical, or appropriate for my design for living.

[Jeremy]

Is it just me, or are Ex-baptists over-represented among the skeptical community, as compared to apostates from other denominations and religions? Or is it just that ex-baptists are the only ones who bother to differentiate themselves from the rest of Christianity?

[tracer]

What converted me from being a gullible I'll-believe-anything-that-sounds-great-if-it's-true Believer into a jaundice-eyed Skeptic?

National Trust Services (http://www.rogermwilcox.name/nts.html).

Sometimes you need to get scammed before you'll really start to question your beliefs.

[Dunstan]

Is it just me, or are Ex-baptists over-represented among the skeptical community, as compared to apostates from other denominations and religions? Or is it just that ex-baptists are the only ones who bother to differentiate themselves from the rest of Christianity?

I don't know much about Baptists, but I get the impression that it tends to be a pretty dogmatic church (see Nihilanth's post above). I think that the more dogmatic a church is, and the more restrictions it puts on daily life, the more it leads at least some people to question it. A kid who's told he can't dress up for Hallowe'en or watch the Smurfs or play cards is more likely to question why God cares about such minutiae and how anyone knows that He cares about them. Kids who are raised in more "liberal" faiths, where the message is essentially "be nice to people and chat with your pal Jesus every now and then" don't really have as much cause to think about religion.

Of course, if my theory is right there ought to be a lot of Jewish skeptics and atheists -- it doesn't get much more arbitrary than "you can eat cheese and you can eat meat, but you can't have them on the same plate."

[Hellbound]

Is it just me, or are Ex-baptists over-represented among the skeptical community, as compared to apostates from other denominations and religions? Or is it just that ex-baptists are the only ones who bother to differentiate themselves from the rest of Christianity?

I'd guess the latter. I'm ex-Church of Christ (a supposed non-denominational denomination. Some fundie leanings, but not extreme. You get used to double-speak).

My guess would be that it ties in to Baptists being a pretty popular choice (there are several Baptist denominations), as well as some of thier views on salvation and baptism being a bit different.

[articulett]

Is it just me, or are Ex-baptists over-represented among the skeptical community, as compared to apostates from other denominations and religions? Or is it just that ex-baptists are the only ones who bother to differentiate themselves from the rest of Christianity?

It's you. I'm a former Catholic--and I see all the atheist Catholics. My best friend was Mormon growing up--so I am really interested in the ex-Mormons too.
(My friend is still Mormon). I've met a great former Jehovah Witness atheist as well. I suspect that there is no greater percentage of baptist atheists then there are baptists--but it would be interesting to find out the answer. The most vocal atheists are often people who feel that religion abused their trust and caused them considerable angst (that whole "life-is-a-test-for-determining-how- you'll-spend-your-eternity" thing) Religion manipulates by promising things it cannot deliver and threatening punishment it cannot mete out.

[Cyphermage]

I became a skeptic at the age of 9. I was in Catholic school, being totally indoctrinated by a bunch of self-righteous nuns, many of whom were functionally illiterate, and was being instructed that during consecration, the communion wafer was physically transformed into the Body of Christ.

I inquired if one put the host under a microscope after consecration, if one would see flesh or bread, and was assured that it actually had changed to flesh. After my first communion was completed, I decided that the Roman Catholic religion was the biggest load of horse hockey I had ever encountered in my life, and a huge money-sucking confidence game, and never looked back.

It's a decision I've never regretted.

[Antiquehunter]

When I was very young, church was something we attended with my Grandparents on Xmas and Easter - nothing more. I was raised until the age of 8 or 9 in a very skeptical environment - I remember spending Saturday afternoons with my dad watching Nova, followed by Dr. Who (Well - ok - not much skeptical about Dr. Who I s'pose, but daleks were cool in the late 70's - early 80's.)

Then, my parents went through a bankruptcy over a lost business, and they sought refuge in the church. They became over-the-top Anglicans - with major Pentecostal twists - like into faith healing, speaking in tongues, slain in the spirit etc... They indoctrinated me into the church, and I used to play the piano for services when the organist was out, assisted during communion, did confirmation classes etc...

I recall my mother receiving a faith healing and then some weird exorcism ceremony (no kidding!) because of her suffering with manic depression. All this only served to spur her illness forward, because she used these religious 'interventions' as an excuse to go off her medications.

Then, at about 15 I was assigned the book 'Dragons of Eden' by my English teacher for an essay - this following on from an assignment I did on explaining how wacky Mormons were, based on literature provided by my parents. Sagan completely snapped me out of my indoctrination, and reminded me how important it is to examine the world in a critical light. I thank my insightful teacher to this day - I'm sure I would've figured this out later in life, but she saved me years of languishing in the church...

Shortly thereafter, I left the church (I recall I wrote '666' on a small sign celebrating a saint in the church - and somehow got busted for it) and essentially moved out of my parent's house to live with a school friend. My relationship with my parents remained very distant until about the age of 24 when we sort of stitched things up - although I've never been able to have a completely civil conversation with my father - his ultra conservative / religion infused beliefs get my hackles up.

I was vehemently anti-religion and identified as atheist from about the age of 18, and quickly read anything I could get my hands on by Sagan, Dawkins etc...

I actively got involved in the skeptical 'movement' I'd say some 6 years ago when I bought a copy of 'Skeptic' off the newsstand. The rest, as they say, is history...

Losing my mother 6 weeks ago was a rather difficult experience - as I had to temper my beliefs as she spent her last weeks being visited continually by ministers and priests. It was a delicate balance of me keeping her as comfortable as possible, maintaining my distance from the woos and trying to support my father, while avoiding any topics that are liable to set both of us off. As it was, we did square off on the gay marriage chestnut and had a bit of a scene at a family restaurant in small town British Columbia which I'm sure amused the locals no end...

-AH.

[articulett]

I became a skeptic at the age of 9. I was in Catholic school, being totally indoctrinated by a bunch of self-righteous nuns, many of whom were functionally illiterate, and was being instructed that during consecration, the communion wafer was physically transformed into the Body of Christ.

I inquired if one put the host under a microscope after consecration, if one would see flesh or bread, and was assured that it actually had changed to flesh. After my first communion was completed, I decided that the Roman Catholic religion was the biggest load of horse hockey I had ever encountered in my life, and a huge money-sucking confidence game, and never looked back.

It's a decision I've never regretted.

I have a similar story--I asked if you could spit out the host and get Jesus' DNA. (It's a sin to spit it out--but it sounds like cannibalism to swallow. In the past it was a mortal sin if you vomited out the host--probably because you could see that it was just a plain old communion wafer afterall. tsk. "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain".)

[Stellafane]

I have a similar story--I asked if you could spit out the host and get Jesus' DNA. (It's a sin to spit it out--but it sounds like cannibalism to swallow. In the past it was a mortal sin if you vomited out the host--probably because you could see that it was just a plain old communion wafer afterall. tsk. "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain".)

Catholic Church...kids spitting out DNA...

Nah, too easy.