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About fifteen years ago I got involved with the Skepticism movement. It was great to meet so many seemingly rational people and there was excitement that the mo

About fifteen years ago I got involved with the Skepticism movement. It was great to meet so many seemingly rational people and there was excitement that the movement seemed on the verge of growing large enough to make a paradigm shift in how society acts. But after about a year, I started to really sour on it as I could see more and more things becoming rational by decree and thus beyond question. These were supposed to be skeptics, but they were getting more and more into group think, especially on adopting woo-woo views on medical matters. I had never been a core figure in the local group, so it was easy enough for me to melt away unnoticed but one of my friends was an organizer and regular lecturer. When she finally decided to leave over exhaustion from increasingly abrasive and hostile tone of the group to any dissent, she was harassed for months. The group was seemingly offended that she rejected their brilliance and become an apostate. I think they eventually got subsumed by the Atheism+ movement, which then imploded.

klenwell 4y ago
I have a lot of sympathy for skeptics but this is the first thing that comes to mind the idea of Skepticism as a movement comes up: A few years ago, he told me, he went to a skeptics’ conference in La Coruña, Spain. He was walking down some stairs one afternoon, not long after investigating the statue of a local saint, which was said to protect those who embrace it, when his left leg suddenly crumpled beneath him. “It wasn’t like I fell and broke my leg,” he said. “It was more like I broke my leg and fell.” The other skeptics gathered around as he writhed in agony. When he told them, between gasps, that he thought he had broken his leg, they were dubious. “You know, that might just be a sprain,” one of them suggested. Another told him to try wiggling his toes. It wasn’t until Nickell lifted his leg, revealing that it was bent at a grotesque angle to his foot, that they believed him. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/12/23/waiting-for-ghosts https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/12/23/waiting-for-gh...
pyuser583 4y ago
There was an article a while back that the atheism+ movement vanished because it was integrated into the social justice movement. What do you think of that? Is the atheism+ still around? What happened to its people?
epistemer 4y ago
I was pretty into that level of skepticism but all it really showed me is that people are natural "believers". We are ultimately story telling apes. To believe we are going to stop telling each other and ourselves fictional stories is the height of delusion. There is this highly negative aspect too when you start believing the fictional story is actually non-fiction. That opens up all kinds of additional problems that is actually solved at the society level by believing in fiction like religion. I am a total atheist but it seems really stupid to me to not see the role fiction plays in coordinating society. That level of skepticism was overly focused on the individual with near disregard for collections of individuals at the level of society.
int_19h 4y ago
"Rational by decree" reminds me of Ayn Rand's "the Collective", which very quickly turned into a similar kind of cult where people would be berated for liking "objectively bad" art etc.

klenwell 4y ago

I have a lot of sympathy for skeptics but this is the first thing that comes to mind the idea of Skepticism as a movement comes up: A few years ago, he told me, he went to a skeptics’ conference in La Coruña, Spain. He was walking down some stairs one afternoon, not long after investigating the statue of a local saint, which was said to protect those who embrace it, when his left leg suddenly crumpled beneath him. “It wasn’t like I fell and broke my leg,” he said. “It was more like I broke my leg and fell.” The other skeptics gathered around as he writhed in agony. When he told them, between gasps, that he thought he had broken his leg, they were dubious. “You know, that might just be a sprain,” one of them suggested. Another told him to try wiggling his toes. It wasn’t until Nickell lifted his leg, revealing that it was bent at a grotesque angle to his foot, that they believed him. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/12/23/waiting-for-ghosts https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/12/23/waiting-for-gh...

pyuser583 4y ago

There was an article a while back that the atheism+ movement vanished because it was integrated into the social justice movement. What do you think of that? Is the atheism+ still around? What happened to its people?

epistemer 4y ago

I was pretty into that level of skepticism but all it really showed me is that people are natural "believers". We are ultimately story telling apes. To believe we are going to stop telling each other and ourselves fictional stories is the height of delusion. There is this highly negative aspect too when you start believing the fictional story is actually non-fiction. That opens up all kinds of additional problems that is actually solved at the society level by believing in fiction like religion. I am a total atheist but it seems really stupid to me to not see the role fiction plays in coordinating society. That level of skepticism was overly focused on the individual with near disregard for collections of individuals at the level of society.

int_19h 4y ago

"Rational by decree" reminds me of Ayn Rand's "the Collective", which very quickly turned into a similar kind of cult where people would be berated for liking "objectively bad" art etc.