One subculture I discovered a few years ago and now heavily identify with is the skeptical movement.
It all started when I watched Enemies of Reason, a documentary on the nature of science hosted by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Before watching this movie, I tended to not really care too much about well, things. Although I loved having long conversations with friends about intellectual topics, I tended to not really care too much for science. It was something that I heard about every once in awhile whenever a new breakthrough "cure" would pop up on my radar.
If you haven't seen EOR yet, check it out. Dawkins does a wonderful job of boiling down the importance of critical thinking to a lay audience while still making the film interesting. The first part of the documentary covers superstition and the importance of the scientific method. The second half shows how these concepts relate to a popular skeptical topic, alternative medicine.
What caught my attention was the relation of science to tangible aspects of my life. We all know that science is using telescopes to look into black holes or amplify a certain region of a DNA strand. What we forget is that proper science can be used to test any falsifiable claims in our lives. Does the evidence for acupuncture testify to it's claims? Do psychic predictions do better than those predicted by chance? Have we been visited by grey super-intelligent aliens? These are the types of empirical questions I'm interested in discussing here on this blog.
Anyway, after viewing this film I went on the Richard Dawkins website and found out a little about the current definitions of atheism. I'll hold off discussing atheism until later posts and for now just understand that I use the working definition of merely "the lack of belief in a deity". I checked out the local atheist group and learned that I had many misconceptions about atheism. They weren't all angry god-haters. Interacting with fellow atheists led me to challenge my assumptions on topics from politics to ethics. My becoming vegan was directly the result of discussions with some members of that group. Through the help of (now) friends from this group, my university, and the all-knowing internet, I've learned more in these past few years than my entire young-adult existence.
And I'm still learning. One of the most crucial features of skepticism that drew me to it was the notion of "I might be wrong" or humility. I try and always leave room for the option that I could be mistaken. I've been wrong about so many things in the past and I'm sure I'm still wrong about even more. This doesn't mean I won't defend (sometimes vehemently) the ideas that I believe to be true, it just means that I try and be open-minded about all ideas and willing to change my position given proper evidence. I'll be discussing this idea later in relation to the principle of charity, an idea that I thought should represent part of the core of skepticism.
I want this blog to be interactive. Leave comments if you agree or disagree with me. As long as you do it respectfully and are willing to re-examine your own beliefs as well, I'll listen.
Here's a puppy:
-Bruce Smith
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