The problem is that skeptics are no less eager to believe that there is some rational explanation than religious people are to believe in their particular religious explanation, and detailed investigation with genuine lack of bias just doesn't happen on either side of the story.
skeptics do not belive by defintion
Yes, this is a common
belief . . . er, conviction, but I'm afraid this involves a bit of a self-delusion or at least an insistence on such a limited definition of the term that the sense in which I mean it is swept under the rug.
Let me be more specific about how I am using the term. The skeptic is generally A PRIORI dedicated to the principles of rationalism, and rejects all forms of supernaturalism. I certainly found this to be the case before I was a Christian and subscribed to
The Skeptical Inquirer.
Carl Sagan is rather famous for his dogmatic pronouncements of his rationalistic
beliefs . . . convictions, principles, etc. "All there is and all there ever will be" is a pretty dogmatic
belief conviction I'd say. In what meaningful sense is this not a belief? I think anglagard just quoted another of Sagan's similar statements, maybe on this very thread. I'll check later.
When approaching a claim of the paranormal or supernatural, there is simply no doubt that what I said is true, that "skeptics are . . . eager to believe that there is some rational explanation" and that this could easily predispose them to premature conclusions based on what are really no more than merely plausible rational explanations for any given phenomenon. When I used to read
SI I was often more befuddled by the end of an article than I was enlightened by it, because their conclusions, though pronounced with the equivalent of a resounding "QED," were rarely truly conclusive, often little more than imaginative plausibilities rather than good proofs. That being the case I'd say their rationalistic bias was doing the talking rather than the evidence.
You may want to object that this isn't a RELIGIOUS belief, perhaps, but I wasn't talking about religious belief as such, merely unfounded belief that can predispose to biased observations.