Skepticism: the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics.
People think that skepticism means to disbelieve something that has been generally determined to be crazy. Like when people are skeptical about UFO’s or the stories of purported abductees of aliens. They are skeptical because they DO NOT BELIEVE in things like this. But quite clearly, the idea of being truly skeptical is that your judgment is suspended. That directly implies that you can not believe or disbelieve in something that remains, as yet, proven or unproven.
People don’t like it when I point this out, because that means they likely are not skeptical at all, that in fact they are simply people who have come to a judgment on something and hold a belief about it. I think that, to be truly skeptical, one’s mind has to be open to absolutely every last thing that has not yet been proved or disproved. That’s a lot to hold in one mind!
It’s actually a huge problem in academia, in my humble opinion. People not only buy into a set of ideas so thoroughly that they cannot bring themselves to even start to question them, but they refuse, often, to look at evidence that contradicts long-held beliefs. This inhibits science’s forward progress, which is honestly the best thing we’ve got going for us as a species on this planet. If we continue to stifle our only means of collective progress thus far, where will we end up?
Rupert Sheldrake asks similar questions and, in asking them, is consistently shunned by mainstream scientists and institutions. Case in point, TEDx removed the talk below from its website because it was “unscientific”. Censored by TED because of his lack of science when, in fact, he is the type of scientist that would make Carl Sagan proud, using only data to inform his ideas, using imagination to wonder about possible directions unexplored. See for yourself. What do you think?
I had a teacher once who prompted us to question everything. Her joyful face was matched in beauty by her constant outflowing of wisdom:
Hold one hand open, cradling the truth you have found….leave your other hand open, empty, waiting for the truth that will replace it.”
— Morgan Livingston
Question everything and, when you feel you have found an answer, question that, too. Proceed like this indefinitely.
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