“You must be hallucinating. I feel warmth, nothing more. There is no reason for me to believe that there is anything more than this wonderful warmth. In fact why would anyone want more than that?”
You discuss the daily earthly ritual of night darkness followed by day and light. You explain that you can detect things at a distance with this innate faculty of detection of light, and even binocular estimation of distance to a remote object.
By now the blind man is becoming restive. He replies,
“ The sunset as you call it is in your imagination. There is no reason for me to believe it, just because you say you see it. I don’t know what you mean by “seeing”; it is a made up concept and has no meaning. In fact, the absurdity of such a fabrication is proven by not believing in flying spaghetti monsters, orbiting teapots, and other made-up nonsense. See? Your “sunset” is refuted.”
He continues,
“My senses tell me everything that exists. There is no evidence for anything else, except your absurd testimony. You want me to believe your hallucination? Where is the proof? You cannot prove it, can you? You are talking superstitious nonsense, and obviously have some sort of impairment.”
The blind man is now aroused.
“These ideas cannot be allowed to be part of our culture. If someone believes this absurdity, then any absurdity will also be believed. Even if the vast majority of the population claims this hallucination to be true, the vast majority is wrong and is under false, superstitious beliefs. How can we find truth under such a system? It goes beyond my sensory apprehension, cannot be proved, and is therefore patently false!”
“Do you want me also to believe in clouds? Faeries? Red? Goblins? Mirages? Santa Clause? Photons? Unicorns? Hippopotami? Your belief is worthy only of ridicule, and my job here is to ridicule, taunt, mock, scorn and to defile your instruments of such a wacko belief. This will prove to you that you are wrong. This is a moral obligation that I have. Get used to it.”
Having no potential for further productive communication, the conversation ends. The blind man wanders away. You remain and enjoy the glorious sight. As the sky darkens, you turn and shout, "And STARS!" But the blind man is gone.
…..
Denialism is a potent force for those who choose Philosophical Materialism as a basis for their world view. Taken to its logical limit, it is seen to become Pyrrhonian, whereby even the senses are seen to be faulty and not to be believed. So nothing whatsoever can be believed, and skepticism reigns supreme as rejection of pretty much everything.
Skepticism in its modern form is not truly skeptical; it is another moniker for Atheism, just as is “free thought”. Today Skepticism is only skeptical of certain things; it is very certain of other things which are on its agenda. It is intellectually dishonest in the same fashion that all agenda-driven thought is intellectually dishonest: it is rationalized, not rational.
Denialism suffers from the myopia of personal limitations, not necessarily those of comprehension, but those of apprehension and unlimited rational investigation. Denialism is based upon rejection of thought outside personal agenda. So it immediately rejects eyewitness testimony from anyone who experiences anything outside that personal container.
Denialism is not rational; it is anti-rational. Because it is agenda-driven, it often becomes overly dogmatic and intolerant of other experiences. This is the point where it goes beyond just denial, it starts into the enforcement of its limitations on every one. It is a hazard.
6 comments:
Current "skepticism" is a rhetorical word to justify organised debunking, uncritical belief in materialism and mainstream science, and atheist propaganda.
When Marcello Truzzi left the "skeptical"-atheist organization CSICOP, he said "My main objection to the Committee, and the reason I chose to leave it, was that it was taking the public position that it represented the scientific community, serving as gatekeepers on maverick claims, whereas I felt they were simply unqualified to act as judge and jury when they were simply lawyers"
http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/truzzi.html
Truzzi felt that the word "skeptic" was being misused and intentionally abused by CSICOP members, and he proposed the word "zetetic" to describe the real truth seeker, who doesn't have an ideological agenda.
In contrast with the zetetic, the debunker-"skeptic" has a preconceived belief that a certain idea is wrong or false (because it's contrary or inconsistent with his materialist ideology).
Truzzi wrote: "The second common approach is what critics usually call the debunkers' approach. This is the main attitude of the orthodox scientific community towards anomaly claims. It is characterized by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). "Whatever is claimed is nothing but ... something else." Seemingly anomalous phenomena are denied first and sometimes investigated only second. Like the Fortean the debunker is not concerned with the full explanation. Whereas the Fortean types don't want explanations, the debunkers don't need them as they believe they have already them"
I think current "scientific" pseudo-skepticism has a discernible set of basic beliefs:
-Belief in the non-existence of God (it's not only a doubt about if God exist or not, but a solid conviction about God's non-existence)
-Uncritical belief that official and mainstream scientific theories are true, and any unorthodox scientific theories are false or peudoscientific and deserves systematic debunking.
-Belief that materialism/naturalism is absolutly true.
-Belief that religious people are fool, ignorant, delusional, irrational and potentially dangerous; but atheists are brights, rational, innocent, logic and "good" human beings
-Belief that science can explain everything (scientism).
Pseudo-skeptics are true believers, but they try to fool the public dishonestly labeling themselves as "skeptics".
zetetic_chick,
You are right on the money. The most annoying part (to me) is their heart-felt claim of rationality and intellectual superiority, when they don't even understand the basics of logic, or the limits of science. Or if they do, they are dishonest about factoring it into their worldview.
"they try to fool the public dishonestly labeling themselves as "skeptics".
This goes back at least as far as David Hume, who was a constantly livid atheist, but claimed to be merely a "skeptic" so as not to interfere with his job search for a professorship.
Thanks for a great comment,
Stan
Hi Stan,
Nice analogy, but not really reflective of reality.
Picture this instead:
A blind man is standing on the beach, enjoying the warmth on his face. Soon a crowd gathers around him. Not one person, but ten or more people all talking at once.
One says "There's a fire in the sky."
Another says "It's not a fire. Just a silly light. Anyway, the clouds are what's important."
Yet another says "Yes, look. There's a hippopotamus."
And a fourth says "It's not a hippopotamus. It's clearly a sleeping bear."
And another "The shape is not important. All that matters is the colour. It's a beautiful pink."
And another "No, it isn't. It's clearly maroon."
etc. etc.
The blind man is thoroughly confused by all these people. Whatever can they be talking about? If this "seeing" is so useful, why can these people not agree on what they see?
Before long some of the people surrounding the blind man start getting belligerent. They start demanding that the blind man accept what they are telling him, threatening him with fiery damnation if he refuses.
But how is the poor blind man to tell the difference? Each person contradicts all the others. Much of what they say makes no sense at all. In the absence of any evidence, how is he to choose between them? They all seem the same to him.
So, the blind man walks away.
He walks away from the shouting crowd to a quiet part of the beach, where he can simply enjoy the warmth on his face.
Matt,
I'm with you up to the belligerent part. At that juncture you veer off into Victimhood lore. Even so, the blind man remains unable to discern that which the sighted discern, and that was the point.
Perhaps your point is that the blind man should be left alone, or else he is a victim of some sort.
So perhaps the extended version of the analogy should include the blind man insisting on everyone else being blinded just like him. Or at least blindfolded when they are out of their sighted compounds and into public arenas, where blind people are offended by sighted people being there using their sight. And never discuss sight when out in public. Nor try to obtain a sight restoration operation for a blind person. Nor mention sight in schools. And eliminate all mention of sight in history books. And try to convert more young people to blindness. etc, etc.
That is a more accurate view of the secularization argument.
All analogies fail at some point because they aren't the real deal. Some analogies simplify the truth issues for easier visualization; some analogies are just Red Herrings. You are not obliged to believe any analogy. And arguing an analogy descends immediately into absurdity.
I certainly wasn't suggesting that the blind man insist on others being blind. This is possibly your own piece of "victimhood lore"?
What I'm saying is that it's perfectly acceptable and perfectly rational for the blind man (if that's how you wish to characterise him) to reject what he is being told by those who can "see".
Matt said,
"What I'm saying is that it's perfectly acceptable and perfectly rational for the blind man (if that's how you wish to characterise him) to reject what he is being told by those who can "see"."
We agree here, but only to the extent that rationality is being artificially restricted to personal primary sensate experience, which in this case is incomplete (although not acknowledged to be so). Under that caveat one must also reject large portions of reality, because it cannot be accessed (except through secondary witness sources, which are rejected) and is therefore outside the artificial restriction on reality.
If this is one's personal restriction on reality, and one insists on that limitation, fine. But when one imposes that artificial restriction on everyone, it is no longer fine.
Departing from the analog: this is exactly what is occuring in the Atheist's drive to totally secularize American society. The difference can be seen when one spends time in Singapore, where Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are all accepted and their holy days celebrated and acknowledged by everyone. Here in the USA, the drive for total "secularity" (Atheism)of American society tolerates none of those things, except in the privacy of one's own compound or basement. Secularity does, however, tolerate open sexual perversion and sex acts in the streets as in the homosexual festivals such as "Up Your Alley" in San Francisco. Perhaps you see the difference, perhaps you don't. Hence the analog narrative.
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