altheim wrote:

"Widdershins" <sinistre@liripipe.com> wrote:

"altheim" altheim@freeuk.coml, and wrote:

"Widdershins" <sinistre@liripipe.com> wrote:

"altheim" <altheim@freeuk.com> wrote:

"Michael Davis" <mdavis19@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

researcher wrote:

A Definition of "UFO Skeptic"

Someone that is fundamentally in denial and has a mind closed like a

steel

trap.

Alternate definition:
Someone that is being used by the Government or other special

interest

group

to deliberately lie about UFOs or make up fake UFO stories to help

cover

up

the truth.

Any Comments on this?

Yes, my comment is that you are delusional.

Whatever you may think of researcher on a personal level,
his definition of a Skeptic is sound.

No. It is the biased whine of a saucerhead whose favorite
theory du jour isn'r wildly aqpplauded by one and all.

The true definition of a UFO skeptic is merly someone who listens to

all

the baseless ravings flowing out of the UFO cult and then asks "what
evidence do you have to back up any of that?" Then when no real

evidence

is presented, the skeptic quite correctly writes off the ravings as

the

utter BS they are. HTH.

No. That is the definition of a disbeliever.

Pull your head out of your ass! The skeptic asks for evidence,
evaluates it, and then makes up his mind. A disbeleiver looks
at whatever has been vetted, and flatly refuses to give it any
currency.

Look around you Widdershins. This is precisely what is
happening in these groups; that is what I've been trying to
tell you. No questions, no debate - just flat, often insulting,
denials.

Reading comprehension problems noted. Look 4 paragraphs
above. There is a working defintion of a skeptic. You
disagreed with it without offering any alternative. "No questions,
no debate-just flat...denials."

It's a bit off-topic but OK, let's discuss your (the above) definition:
it describes, up to a point, what a sceptic might say when presented
with (to him) dubious arguments and rightly asks for evidence.
However when evidence is not forthcoming, a true sceptic should
remain on the fence (as it were), *not* draw a conclusion.

Where is it written that a skeptic must "stay on the fence" regarding every nutty, baseless, claim that comes his way? Suppose I were to tell you that a bunch of one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eaters just landed in my back yard and tried to abduct me but my dog scared them off. Naturally I have no evidence to back up this claim. At best I might have some blurry, out of focus photos or jittery, poorly framed video that really doesn't really show anything that conclusively backs up my claims. Naturally also, nobody else can seem to produce any hard evidence of any ne-eyed one-horned flying purple people eaters either, though there are lots of *stories* about them, and a long and rich history of hoaxing "sightings" of them. So, are you going to sit on the fence until the crack of doom, giving me the benefit of the doubt in the hope that someone, somewhere, sometime might somehow prove one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eaters exist? Well of course *you* would, but then you aren't a skeptic.

To a skeptic, if a claim can't be proven, then there is no rational reason to believe it is even a little bit true. All claims are false until proven true.

Especially not a disdainful one.

Well your problem is that we (TINW) are all debunkers here, as well as being skeptics. You can think of a debunker as a skeptic with attitude and no fear of calling a fraud a fraud or a nut a nut. We don't suffer from the misguided sense of political correctness and outright credulity that allows people like you to give the benefit of the doubt to every babbling loony who wanders in here. You may not like our attitudes and how we express them, but whining about how we say what we say doesn't make what we are saying any less valid. HTH.

--
The Evil Michael Davis(tm)
http://www.mdpub.com/scopeworks/
http://skepticult.org Member #264-70198-536
Member #33 1/3 of The "I Have Been Killfiled By Tommy" Club

"There's a sucker born every minute" - David Hannum (often erroneously attributed to P. T. Barnum)