How Skeptical Are You?

Both EVOs and CREOs tend to claim the highground when it comes to skepticism. This caused me to wonder to how skeptical the people on this board are in areas outside of the Evolution/Creation arena.Let's count a "yes" answer to the following questions as a belief that is outside the accepted or official theory.Do you believe Earth is now, or ever has been visited by life from other planets?Do you believe that there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, RFK, or MLK? If yes, please specify which one(s).Do you believe that Franklin Roosevelt knew that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked, but kept the information secret in order to get the U.S. into WWII?Are there supernatural forces working in the Bermuda Tiangle?If you have any other out- of -the- mainstream theories, that I haven't mentioned, feel free to bring them up.For the record, I'm an Evo and my answer to all of these is "no".
While there's probably no need for the regulars on this board to state if they're Evo or Creo, it would be helpful if those that don't post much, to specify.This message has been edited by barfly, 03-25-2005 02:55 AMThis message has been edited by barfly, 03-25-2005 02:56 AM

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Do you believe Earth is now, or ever has been visited by life from other planets?Not with the evidence I have seen.Do you believe that there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, RFK, or MLK? If yes, please specify which one(s).Not with the evidence I have seen.Do you believe that Franklin Roosevelt knew that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked, but kept the information secret in order to get the U.S. into WWII?I don't know enough about this to make a judgement.Are there supernatural forces working in the Bermuda Tiangle?No.

Depends on what you mean by visited. If you mean "life that originated somewhere other than the earth", then I'd have to say it is very likely.For the rest, absolutely not!

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Looks like I'll be the most skeptical so far...The answer to every single one of those questions is: I don't know, and almost everyone else doesn't either.A few have evidence leaning a bit one way or a bit the other, but none are definitive, or suggestive of definition. Probably the closest to being "understood" is the Bermuda Triangle, in that there seems to be considerable weight for rejecting it as a specified area where anything goes on which is more mysterious than any other place on earth. Perhaps supernatural things have happened there, but not enough to single it out as something special.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Intentionally, e.g. LGMs in UFOs - it seems unlikely on current evidence. Though evidence of past visitation would be quite hard to find.Unintentionally, in the sense of transfer of microbes from Mars in the Early Solar System or panspermia (seeding from comets and galactic dust a la Fred Hoyle) - an intriguing but possibly unprovable hypothesis - we'd need to find life elsewhere to test it. I don't know enough about them to say, but I'm always suspicious of conspiracy theories where the conspirators are never properly identified (hey - that rings a vague bell...) No. Although it seems quite likely he may have been told, or at least been in a position to know, that Japan was planning some sort of military action, I doubt the intelligence was that specific. No.PS I'm an evo.

Actually this one has been totally debunked. I forget what show I saw or what expert they had but he made the following points.1. Flying over water and traveling on the oceans are riskier than travel on/over land and if something does happen, there is less easily found evidence left to determine what happened, especially 50 years ago.
2. Give the amount of air and sea travel in the Bermuda Triangle (BT), the casualty rate is actually lower than it should be for the volume of traffic. It's actually safer to travel in the BT!!!

Well not completely debunked, but rather redefined. The question is if something supernatural ever happened within the Bermuda Triangle. While I think there is sufficient evidence to reject the idea anything more happens there than anywhere else, in the end there is no evidence to say what happened within that region.If a supernatural event happened there, I am unaware of it. Whether no supernatural event ever took place there, I am also ignorant due to a dirth of evidence.I'm a hardcore skeptic man. Hume is my hero.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This is sort of like the atheist/agnostic thing. Those of us who have so far posted on this thread (except for you! ) don't really believe, given the evidence, that any of these things are true, but if should new evidence appear then we may reconsider our stance. I do feel that lack of evidence for something that you have been actively looking for is evidence that the thing you are looking for may not exist. And the longer and harder you've been looking the better the odds are of being right. It sounds like you need 100% certainty before you'll take a stand and in my experience that's just not pratical nor necessary.

It seems to me that anybody who admits the possibility of the "super"natural is not really a skeptic at all. Isn't the "super"natural just the not-yet-explained natural?

One could admit the possibility of the supernatural, but hold the stance that there hasn't been any evidence of it... yet, and still be a skeptic. But if one was to openly embrace the supernatural then I would be leary of them truly being a skeptic. There was a whole thread on just this topic some months ago actually.

My thinking is something like this:
1. Skeptics require evidence.
2. Evidence is natural.
3. There can not be natural evidence of the "super"natural.
4. Therefore, skeptics can not accept the supernatural.I guess it's all predicated on whether or not #3 is true.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Actually #2 and 3 are debatable. In fact I am hard put to understand how logically evidence must be natural, or that natural evidence cannot point to the supernatural.If one wants to define the supernatural as everything that has yet to be defined by natural phenomenon, then one has built the conclusion into the definition. I do not define supernatural that way, though in practice that is usually how it works.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

For hardcases like Hume, there is no such thing as 100% certainty. But you are right that that is not a practical stance. I do believe in using criteria for stating that we know, which falls short of "knowing that we know" (the 100% certainty).However, I don't think any of the examples (with Bermuda being the possible exception) have enough evidence to actually let anyone come to a conclusion which counts as "knowledge". I can't even say "no", though I may say it looks doubtful, or it looks possible.I am not sure what concrete evidence people (outside of a very small group) have the inside info necessary for concluding the JFK or FDR issues.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

i believe that if it is or has been, we don't know about it. i believe that intelligent life probably exists elsewhere in the universe but that if they know about us they are smart enough to stay away. define "conspiracy." (in short: no, i doubt it) ditto on bush and 911? i think there might have been prior reports, but they were ignored. not familiar with the facts here. (in otherwords, yes but snafu'ed into a no) no, i happen to live just inside or near the line. exactly the same percentage of flights and ships are lost there as in any other patch of ocean the same area.