We all know that
friend who talks all the time about the illuminati, the Aliens, the Government
conspiracy, the chemtrail controlling weather,
and the green lizards poisoning our food with evil portions they got from Satan
himself. Or maybe it’s your other friend, who tells you none of this is real
and we should meditate to wake up from the matrix. Those people refer to
themselves as “Sceptics”
But the story of
scepticism doesn’t begin here, you have to go back to the ancient Greece, where
we have the first documented attempts of philosophical critical thinking, way
back to Plato who said “About myself I knew that I know nothing” then
with Arcesilaus with the establishment of “Academic scepticism” , followed by
the famous school of pyrrhonism that preaches that truth cannot be obtained by
senses since they are fooled easily.
Scepticism lays in the core of philosophy and logical thought. So what
is scepticism ?
The word itself is
from the ancient Greek word “skeptomai”, which means think. The attributed
meaning of doubt, uncertainty appears later in history. So by definition, it
doesn’t mean denialism, as it’s been used that way and more than it should, as
an example, Climate change sceptics, the Holocaust sceptics or maybe 9/11
Sceptic claim to analyse the concept,
while they totally deny the idea. Critical thinking doesn’t work that way,
scepticism is actually seeking knowledge trough analyse and justification, a
sceptic wouldn’t accept a statement just because “it feels right” or “it gives
him comfort”, he would consider all the conditions and circumstances before
giving a conclusion, as Bertnard Russel once said :
“When you are
studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are
the facts, and what us the truth that facts bears out. Never let yourself be
diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have
beneficent social effects if it believed, but look only and solely at what are
the facts”
By
so, he traces the line between, Critical thinking and logical reasoning, what
some call good scepticism, and denying the facts and sticking to one and rigid
idea and not thinking outside of the box, bad scepticism.
Asking
questions is very fundamental to knowledge, science does it all the time, it’s
the mechanism of testing theoretical claim by the falsifiability of the
scientific method that moves along the development of thought, that’s what got
us to this scientifically advanced status, and counting. This position of
scientific scepticism works as the motor but also as the immune system of
science, preventing any form of pseudoscience to be considered truthful. It
also bring a sense of humility to science toward our perception of the world
surrounding us, along with philosophy, questions our own thinking, forging through
the limits of knowledge and discovering more about ourselves and the universe.
Credence is the death of critical and logical thinking. Reptilian minds tend
more to be sure about their beliefs, while a scientific mind always questions his
thoughts and put his principles into test, as physician and Nobel Prize winner,
Richard Feynman likes to put it
“Some people
say, how can you live without knowing? I do not know what they mean, I always
live without knowing. That’s easy. How you get to know is what I want to know”
People
usually accuse scientists to be arrogant toward the masses, that they believe in
science as a modern age dogma, and that’s totally wrong, because the more we
know, the more we realise how small and irrelevant in the totality of the
universe we are, it humbles us and trims our superiority and egocentrism.
That’s what got Kopernik killed, putting in question and ripping from humanity
its egoism, and many more with him that put aside fundamentalism and started
questioning reality.
And
now, Religion. ( Oh boy ) . Religion is by definition a faith and belief
system, it relies on accepting “truth” and not questioning it, at best cases,
thinking about it without refuting its principles and staying inside the faith
canvas. The banishment of Satan from heaven after questioning the will of god
is a great example. But in the other hand you have all this religious figures,
prophet, men of god, messengers, that questioned their society’s standers. At
this point we go back to the title, what can we learn from the story of Jesus
of Nazareth. Well, he’s a mid-eastern Jew who questioned the roman and the
rabbi’s authority, preaching that we shouldn’t live in a world of injustice and
greed, but a world of compassion and love. He wondered around teaching people
the virtue of Scepticism. This might sound to today’s conservatives a very
“Liberal” and maybe “destructive” message. So why don’t we follow their lead,
questioning is a healthy exercise, even in the daily basis, you don’t have to
be a philosophe, a scientist, or an atheist to question everything, early
humans questioned the unknown as a defence mechanism, and by then it helped us
to be as advanced as we are now. Doubt works and it’s good for you, embrace it
and love it as you love reasonable thinking and logical thought. By this I say
be sceptic and enjoy your journey through space and time.
