In this video, retired lawyer and afterlife researcher Victor Zammit argues that closedminded skeptics (pseudo-skeptics) have not investigated and refuse to investigate the objective and repeatable evidence for the afterlife and psychic phenomena. He explains that 'closed minded-skepticsm' is a hindrace to progress. Yes, be skeptical by all means, but be an 'open minded skeptic' where you can perceive evidence with proper empirical equanimity. Victor makes six objections to extreme skepticism - he show specifically where these hard lined skeptics are wrong and refers to the website of Winston Wu http://www.debunkingskeptics.com.
My opinion is that certainly most pseudo-skeptics have not investigated the evidence (they think it's a waste of time investigating something that they know, in advance, that doesn't exist); but even if they investigate it, they won't be impressed by it, because they only accept evidence consistent with their anti-survival prejudices.
Contrary evidence is always rejected, relativized, altered, misread, misrepresented, subject to double standards, etc. to make it worthless, invalid or insufficient.
Marcello Truzzi, who was a co-founder and original member of CSICOP, soon realized the ideological, agenda-driven and biased mentality typical of professional pseudo-skeptics: "Originally I was invited to be a co-chairman of CSICOP by Paul Kurtz. I helped to write the bylaws and edited their journal. I found myself attacked by the Committee members and board, who considered me to be too soft on the paranormalists. My position was not to treat protoscientists as adversaries, but to look to the best of them and ask them for their best scientific evidence. I found that the Committee was much more interested in attacking the most publicly visible claimants such as the "National Enquirer". The major interest of the Committee was not inquiry but to serve as an advocacy body, a public relations group for scientific orthodoxy. The Committee has made many mistakes. My main objection to the Committee, and the reason I chose to leave it, was that it was taking the public position that it represented the scientific community, serving as gatekeepers on maverick claims, whereas I felt they were simply unqualified to act as judge and jury when they were simply lawyers" (Emphasis in blue added)
This essential irrationality and dishonesty which are well-known in true pseudo-skeptics is grounded on ideological reasons (belief in atheistic materialism, metaphysical naturalism and secular humanism) and in emotional reasons (hatred and resentment against the idea of God, religion, spirituality, and ultimate trascendence), making impossible that their reason functions properly.
So trying to convince a pseudo-skeptic with afterlife evidence (that is, evidence that destroys and demolishes the pseudo-skeptic's personal materialistic ideology or faith) is sterile. In advance, and regardless of the quality of your arguments or evidence, they'll consider your evidence false and fraudulent, and therefore, irrelevant. And specially, they'll interpret the evidence with the glasses of materialism (which is precisely the position destroyed by the evidence)
It's key to understand that, for several reasons (mentioned above and discussed in this blog), most pseudo-skeptics are not rational and, as consequence, are not sensible to rational argumentation (they're consistently unable to understand even the most simple, basic, elemental arguments for psi or afterlife).
Don't waste your time with ideologues and dogmatists. Rather, try to use your valuable time in searching the truth, consider both sides of the controversy, critically examine all the arguments, and draw the most rational conclusion, interpretation and explanation that accounts for all the relevant evidence.
And have fun while doing it.
Links of interest:
-Skeptic Richard Wiseman concedes that remote view is proven.
-Skeptic Michael Persinger gets evidence suggesting telepathy.
-My post on atheism, pseudo-skepticism and the Cosmic Authority Problem
My opinion is that certainly most pseudo-skeptics have not investigated the evidence (they think it's a waste of time investigating something that they know, in advance, that doesn't exist); but even if they investigate it, they won't be impressed by it, because they only accept evidence consistent with their anti-survival prejudices.
Contrary evidence is always rejected, relativized, altered, misread, misrepresented, subject to double standards, etc. to make it worthless, invalid or insufficient.
Marcello Truzzi, who was a co-founder and original member of CSICOP, soon realized the ideological, agenda-driven and biased mentality typical of professional pseudo-skeptics: "Originally I was invited to be a co-chairman of CSICOP by Paul Kurtz. I helped to write the bylaws and edited their journal. I found myself attacked by the Committee members and board, who considered me to be too soft on the paranormalists. My position was not to treat protoscientists as adversaries, but to look to the best of them and ask them for their best scientific evidence. I found that the Committee was much more interested in attacking the most publicly visible claimants such as the "National Enquirer". The major interest of the Committee was not inquiry but to serve as an advocacy body, a public relations group for scientific orthodoxy. The Committee has made many mistakes. My main objection to the Committee, and the reason I chose to leave it, was that it was taking the public position that it represented the scientific community, serving as gatekeepers on maverick claims, whereas I felt they were simply unqualified to act as judge and jury when they were simply lawyers" (Emphasis in blue added)
This essential irrationality and dishonesty which are well-known in true pseudo-skeptics is grounded on ideological reasons (belief in atheistic materialism, metaphysical naturalism and secular humanism) and in emotional reasons (hatred and resentment against the idea of God, religion, spirituality, and ultimate trascendence), making impossible that their reason functions properly.
So trying to convince a pseudo-skeptic with afterlife evidence (that is, evidence that destroys and demolishes the pseudo-skeptic's personal materialistic ideology or faith) is sterile. In advance, and regardless of the quality of your arguments or evidence, they'll consider your evidence false and fraudulent, and therefore, irrelevant. And specially, they'll interpret the evidence with the glasses of materialism (which is precisely the position destroyed by the evidence)
It's key to understand that, for several reasons (mentioned above and discussed in this blog), most pseudo-skeptics are not rational and, as consequence, are not sensible to rational argumentation (they're consistently unable to understand even the most simple, basic, elemental arguments for psi or afterlife).
Don't waste your time with ideologues and dogmatists. Rather, try to use your valuable time in searching the truth, consider both sides of the controversy, critically examine all the arguments, and draw the most rational conclusion, interpretation and explanation that accounts for all the relevant evidence.
And have fun while doing it.
Links of interest:
-Skeptic Richard Wiseman concedes that remote view is proven.
-Skeptic Michael Persinger gets evidence suggesting telepathy.
-My post on atheism, pseudo-skepticism and the Cosmic Authority Problem
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