From PZ's Place: Nick Martin, Skeptic, on Why I Am An Atheist:

”Part of me wants to give a smart-assed answer to this question, because at my core, I am a smart-ass. Something like “because religion is evil” (which it is) or “because the Flying Spaghetti Monster told me to be one” (which may also be true). But, when I look at my core, the only answer I have to give is “because it’s the only position a skeptic can have”.

It’s something relatively recent in my life. I was raised in a conservative Christian household. I had to go to church every week, it was a requirement that I go to at least one service. But at the same time, my parents encouraged my love of astronomy specifically and science in general. And in retrospect, that is where it all started. That love taught me to question everything (which I most certainly did).

But getting out of the other side of my upbringing took time. I went off to college, Missouri State University (then Southwest Missouri State), and hooked up with Chi Alpha (XA) Campus Ministries. This was before they had Skepticon, a FSM church, or really any skeptical movement at all. Again, in hindsight, I feel a bit of shame, because I understand now that prosthelytizing my beliefs had to have done some real harm to people, something I can’t change. I only hope that by speaking out against religion now can undo some of that.

I was a skeptic with most everything else growing up. I didn’t believe in ghosts, ESP, aliens, or anything else in the pseudo-scientific range, but like so many other “skeptic believers,” I was not willing to turn that same scrutiny on my beliefs. Of course, like a college student, and to be fair, most human beings, it turns out I was also a fairly bad Christian, and a fairly normal college student, in liking loud music, drinking, sex, and skipping classes.
That all started to change after some a series of bad events pushed me more into that “good Christian” category again. I went to church, went to small groups, and, dangerously enough, started to read my bible. And for some reason, one I still cannot explain, I started to question why I believed what I did. I looked back at myself, and what I had been crediting god for getting me through, and realized that he hadn’t done shit.

It wasn’t a slow process. I wouldn’t even call myself an atheist until, reading Phil Plaitt’s blog, he mentioned, off-hand, someone named “PZ.” It was some inside joke I wasn’t part of, so I dug. I found out who this “PZ” was… and read enough to understand that, as a skeptic, there is only one position to be had. You cannot dismiss all fairies except the one you like any more than you can deny a color you don’t care for doesn’t exist (otherwise, the world would be rid of mauve by now). I didn’t like facing it at first, but I couldn’t dodge the questions. And when you look at belief the same way you look at ghosts, there is no way you can’t see it for what it is.

In the end, it was my own skepticism that forced me to realize the only thing I could be is an atheist.
Nick Martin
United States

This has at least a little reasoning rather than the unreasoned “reasons” we have been seeing. Nick claims “skepticism” as a worldview. And he rightly determined that skepticism is logically incompatible with Theism. So he decided that skepticism was correct.

Nick made an interesting comment, that skeptics are unwilling to turn that same scrutiny on their beliefs. What this meant to him, at his stage of intellectual development, was that his other core belief should be subject to this core belief, that his Theism should be subject to his skepicism.

What Nick has not done is to subject his skepticism to logic.

To be skeptical of skepticism never seemingly occurs to those who value skepticism over everything else, including logic. Skepticism is not a path to knowledge. Skepticism merely says, “you can’t prove that”. And it turns out that taken to its logical conclusion, skepticism can satisfactorily deny every premise that can be made. It devolves to denying all objective inputs as being sourced by teams of scientists who are placing those inputs into your brain which is in a vat.

The “brain in a vat” scenario” leaves no means for providing evidence that it is not the case. It destroys the premise that objective inputs via our senses and neural pathways have at least some reliability in reflecting the exterior world – if there is an exterior world. A true Skeptic can have no true beliefs at all, since they are all input by a team of deceivers (“evil demons” according to Descartes).

So skepticism and Skepticism (Capital S) are merely devices used to deny that which the skeptic chooses to deny. And it works since there is no way to disprove most skepticism.

Modern Skeptics (capital S) have chosen to limit their skepticism to all things that are not empirically determinable. They feel justified and even moral in this arbitrary limit, because it allows them to debunk certain frauds. This, of course, is not actually skepticism, it is due process of logical and empirical analysis. So the Skeptics take possession of empirical science too, although that is not their expertise. And the take possession of logic, even though they have no idea of how to use logic or what logic is based upon.

So the Modern Skeptics are a moral amalgam of denial, of science worship, and projection of logic – not – understood.

When it comes to those things not material or subject to science, Modern Skepticism reduces to denial. Skeptics demand proof for ghosts, pixies, God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the orbiting tea pot. This lumps the absurd in with the rationally possible.

Placing a rationally possible premise in with absurd premises – in order to cause an association of absurdity of the rationally possible premise – is an error of Fallacy by False Association. The failure to argue directly against a single premise is a rational error so basic that school children are warned against it. Yet it is a staple argument of Skeptics.

When Nick chose skepticism over all other premises, he failed to take the next basic step. It is one thing to say “you can’t prove that”, and stop there. It is still another step to take each subject individually and (first having understood logic, it’s grounding and its analytical techniques) to analyze the subject, its premises and subpremises for coherence and rational integrity. That sort of analysis is the mark of intellectual maturity and rationality, and Skepticism (“you can’t prove that) is the mark of immature obscurantism.

Exhibit one is that Skepticism provides no new knowledge.

Exhibit two is that Skepticism produces a proclivity for “freethought”, which is ungrounded, illogical, circular or infinite regression premise mongering pseudo-logic.

Exhibit three is that the Skeptics never examine skepticism.

Exhibit four is that Skeptics will publicly chastise and ridicule any Skeptic who steps outside of the boundaries of “acceptable” questioning. (e.g. Amazing Randi, Antony Flew).

Skep’tici-sm, n. 1. the philosophical doctrine that the truth of all knowledge must always be in question and that inquiry must be a process of doubting. (note 1)

Believing totally in disbelieving everything? Not exactly. Skeptics feel self-justified in choosing what to be skeptical of, and what to accept on authority (e.g. AGW). In so doing, they have formed an unjustifiable doctrine which they cling to as dogma. They now resemble a cult, one which worships certain tenets and rejects others arbitrarily (or scientistically).

Nick’s adherence to skepticism places him in either a cult status, or at a minimum, one who cannot prove his own disbeliefs, which puts him into a state of holding a non-coherent worldview.

Notes
(1) Webster’s Deluxe Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd Ed. Twentieth Century Edition, Simon and Schuster, NY, NY, 1979.