Numerous videos have come out of truebluehealer.com, on the unusual regimented behaviours of online pseudo-skeptics, exploring, mapping, describing, naming attributes, asking for feedback. Advising skeptics,
Here, One Skeptic responds, initially to the video question put, Why dont skeptics upload companion animal videos, like mainstream people? And then goes on to explain a whole lot about the skeptic experience, that fills in the puzzle quite dramatically, raising the question,---
Dear skeptics, could this be you?
From Emilio
Skeptics and pets
Greetings,
I enjoyed your videos, they are really informative and helpful. I acquired the term 'pseudo-skeptic' from watching your stuff. I knew that I was a skeptic, and that there was a difference between what I did and what other 'skeptics' did that was very different, but you helped me with my terminology. Now I call them 'pseudo-skeptics' because that is what they are. They don't believe anything, unless it comes on television first. I find that amusing. It has to be spoken on television from the lips of one of their prophets. I can imagine Randi coming down from the mountain with a stone tablet on which is written a bunch of 'thou-shalt-not's concerning everything from Ouija boards to chiropractors.
I am a recovering 'skeptical' atheist. As such I have a friend who is still among the 'skeptical' atheists and he has never been long without at least one pet. He is a dog man and is very good with them. He is one of these people that has dogs as substitute children, or at least that's the way I see it (his wife is incapable of bearing children). You would never know from his internet presence that he is a dog person unless you meet him in person or know him well enough to have access to his online photos. I think that many of these pseudo-skeptics are fine people, and make great friends and I am lucky to know him, however their world view is skewed and they take their religion and television way too seriously. They are also horrible PR men for science because they are always harping about 'science' this and 'science' that. Real science and real skepticism rarely emerge in these conversations. This friend is not really a James Randi fan, or at lest he has never mentioned him to me; he is a Penn and Teller type of 'skeptic'. I personally find Penn Jillette even more obnoxious than Randi. He is every bit as horrid, but louder and more vulgar. He is big and intimidating, not a cute little garden gnome like Randi. It's not that he insults people and their ideas that bothers me so much as the way he does it from the safety of a studio. You never see him call someone a derogatory name
in person. I bet all that hot air and bluffing would disappear if another big man stepped up to him face to face. You also never see Penn debate an idea, it is always personal attacks without allowing his opponents an opportunity to respond or even informing them that they are being 'debated' ('debated' meaning insulted). It is cowardice and I shouldn't let it upset me, but it does. I think Penn and Teller are homosexuals just like Randi. I don't personally care, but homosexual magicians seem to have something wrong with them that makes them a pain in the ass, so to speak, to everyone they meet. Nobody else cares if they are homosexual, why don't they just get over it? There is something deeper in this.
I was once one of these atheists. I also had a problem with Santa Clause, I have to admit. I was fortunate enough to be able to recover and become a real skeptic in my mid twenties.
It was a necessary phase for me because I had a lot of psychological damage from my time spent in Christian school.
It may sound like a walk in the park, but people don't realize how traumatic it is to believe that God is angry with you and wants you to suffer for eternity. These pseudo-Christians think that God created a bottomless pit full of fire, darkness, wailing, loneliness, demons, and immortal maggots just to throw his children into. He really went all-out on creating this torture hole; He just blows on a lump of mud to make man (which seems heretical seeing as how man is made in God's image, according to the same Bible).
To tell children this, is insane and it has been my long held theory that if this practice were to stop, atheism and pseudo-skepticism would deflate like a popped balloon. These things are, for the most part, a rebellion against childhood traumas.
Atheism helped me in life by providing a decompression from the insane angry God belief that ruined much of my childhood.
I was able to take a breath, and think things over, and decide what was real and what was not, without the pressures of guilt and fear influencing my thinking.
These pseudo-skeptics were taken in by something, and they felt like fools. That is why they are hung up about Santa Clause. They felt like idiots for believing. They haven't reached the point where they can be wrong and just let it go. No, it is personal. I am sure you have been wrong about something and just let it go. It just rolled off like water off a duck's back, right? These people don't have that luxury. They haven't got that knack. I know how that feels. It takes a lot of life experience for some people to get over themselves and enjoy life. It also take some maturity to be confronted with an idea, and not feel like you have to have an opinion about it. That is a dangerous combination, to be compelled to form an opinion, and also have to be correct in that opinion -OR ELSE. It is a huge weight that no one has to bear. That is the ironic part, that this maddening burden is purely optional - you can just skip away without forming any opinion at all. You can think about it later. It takes some maturity to see it in this context.
This 'too hard basket' can be a big as you want.
These people think that to have the correct opinion about everything makes them intelligent. Everything else is willful ignorance and that is 'what is wrong with the world'.
These people are going to fix the world by focusing the left hemisphere of their brains on only correct opinions because they are that important. They are magicians. They are sorcerers.
All the Best,
Emilio
Sent to:
kimbo99
