Open-minded Skepticism

[AgnosticBoy]

When I was a Christian, I encountered a lot of skeptics. Since I became an agnostic, I still continue to encounter skeptics but I also noticed that there are two types.

The first type of skeptic is what I will call the open-minded skeptic. It's the type of skeptic I've learned to become from watching others and from my own interactions with Christians. I consider the open-minded skeptic to be someone who is open to accepting any claim as being true provided that logic and evidence is offered for it. It does not matter if the claim goes against current scientific knowledge. It can still be true, provided that there is logic and evidence offered for it.

The second type of skepticism is what I call the a-priori skeptics. These skeptics tend to have a pre-conceived view of how the world works, and they will dismiss claims a-priori when it conflicts with their worldview. I believe that this is the type of skepticism that the religious and others tend to deal with and have a negative impression of.

Of course, I accept that the open-minded skepticism is the best type because it is more conducive to truth no matter what. I believe this is definitely a type of skepticism that agnostics are known for while some atheists, especially some of the popular ones, tend to be the a-priori skeptics.

Debate:
1. What are the advantages and/or disadvantages to being an open-minded skeptic?
2. What are the advantages and/or disadvantages to being an a-priori skeptic?
3. Which type of skepticism is better or more conducive to the truth?

 

[AgnosticBoy]

I will post some parts of a debate that I had on another site regarding open-minded skepticism. I hope that helps shed some light on what it involves and how it can be applied. Here the debate:

When you say that "people don't come back from the dead", that plays no role in my assessment of a claim. I simply seek out evidence for and against (and not just against like some skeptics do) as if that fact didn't exist. The process of seeking out logic and evidence matters more to me than trying to reinforce a narrative. That enables me to explore the supernatural route, which is something that an a-priori skeptic would never do.

I've no idea what you mean. It sounds to me like you think that there's some body of evidence that lies outside of and isn't affected by the rest of our evidence.

What I was explaining is that science is a process and not a worldview. With that said, a skeptic should be open to exploring any hypothesis, and not just ones that agree with their pre-existing worldview. The a-priori skeptic tends to engage in the latter when it comes to Jesus's resurrection story. To them, the explanation has to be naturalistic (i.e. it was hallucinations, someone stole the body, it's all fiction), none of which can be properly assessed given that the event occurred a long time ago.

As for your point about a scientific body of evidence, I only agree with you to a degree. At times, new evidence does go with pre-existing scientific knowledge or evidence, but at other times it does not. It's possible for there to be conflicting evidence or even rival scientific theories.

The story of Jesus didn't happen as presented in the Gospels because virgin births, the dead returning to life, water into wine, multiplication of loaves and fishes, and walking on water don't happen. Anyone squinting hard enough at the Bible's supernatural stories that they no longer see the wider context of natural reality is no longer acting as a scientist.

The facts that you bring up are science-based, but the way you dismissed anything happening contrary to those facts (e.g. the dead returning, walking on water, etc.) is NOT scientific. A real scientists or even an open-minded skeptic should not claim something to be false or dismiss it as such until they look at any evidence for and against, test it, etc. Science is a process and not a worldview.

Now I'm not saying that not knowing if something is false means that you consider it a fact or use it as part of a theory, but at the least you should be agnostic on it or be open to listening to any evidence until that evidence is proven true or false.

Skeptics don't discount the supernatural because the thought of it is uncomfortable, but because the only evidence we have is from pictures that are blurry enough to hide the zipper in the bigfoot suit or wires holding up the UFO.

Bad or low quality evidence does not mean that something is false. I know it can sometimes lead someone to think that it's false when the evidence doesn't meet their expectations.

Christians tacitly acknowledge this when they complain that the historical evidence for supernatural religion is held to a standard that's too high. On the one hand, apologists claim that the evidence for the resurrection is anywhere from merely convincing to "overwhelming" or even "irrefutable," but on the other, argue that the supernatural claims of the Bible shouldn't be held to a higher standard of evidence than the mundane claims of other historical sources. There's either enough evidence or there isn't. In the same way that the Odyssey isn't reliable evidence for giant cyclopses, so too, the Bible and other historical documents aren't reliable evidence for the supernatural claims that Christians make.

Well I agree with the Christians as far as being consistent in applying historical standards. If the story meets all or most of the usual standards for being deemed historical, but the only thing keeping it back is an anti-supernatural ideology, then that is unfair. But even if the story is deemed historical, my only caution would be in considering how we should look at a historically valid account. We certainly shouldn't accept a historical account on the same scale as we would a scientifically validated account, and that applies to accounts that don't involve a supernatural. All that the resurrection account means (or any history for that matter) is that based on the best records we have, some supernatural events were occurring. That's all history means to me.

The evidence that would convince me of a modern-day resurrection would be scientific evidence. But again, I question if an a-priori skeptic would even consider that there could be evidence of a supernatural if it goes against their pre-existing views.

It's possible that such a skeptic exists, but we have no way of knowing at the moment because there isn't enough evidence of the supernatural in the first place. To be sure, there are skeptics that, for example, fail to consider scientific evidence for things like evolution, the safety and efficacy of vaccination, or anthropogenic climate change. These folks, though, also tend to also have positive beliefs about things for which scientific evidence is wanting, or even downright contradicted like homeopathy, astrology, dowsing, or magic (especially if they spell it "majicke"). So if you want a sort of shibboleth to determine whether a particular skeptic disbelieves in a resurrected Jesus because of a proper consideration for the lack of evidence or if they wouldn't believe even if there were evidence, maybe ask them how they feel about something like ghosts, Atlantis, or ear candles.

I don't believe we need actual evidence of a supernatural to see if or how badly some skeptics would deal with it. Just going by their ideology that only current scientific fact, or something consistent with it, can only occur is a problem. I've tangled with these types of skeptics when I was a Christian, and I've done so as an agnostic, and I can tell you it is bad skepticism. It probably drives some people away from atheism since a lot of these types of skeptics are atheists.

Again, the open-minded skeptic is open to any claim being true. These types of skeptics are not bent on disproving or dismissing, but rather they are open to evidence for and against.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

After reading one of Huxley's essays entitled, Possibilities and Impossibilities, I realized that my skepticism is more open than his. Huxley would not engage in a priori judgements or the dismissing of claims just because the claim violated scientific knowledge. However, it seems that he would dismiss a claim a priori if it violated logic and that's where he and I differ. I would not dismiss any claim a priori and I see no problem with that just as long as it doesn't allow something false to be taken as true. In other words, while I'm open to accepting or considering that anything can be true, even if it violates logic (seemingly) and current scientific knowledge, but I will not make the move from consideration to accepting something as truth unless there is good logic and evidence to support it. Here is a relevant excerpt from Huxley's essay where he states that he wouldn't accept any claim if it were a logical impossibility:

Strictly speaking, I am unaware of any thing that has a right to the title of an "impossibility" except a contradiction in terms. There are impossibilities logical, but none natural. A "round square," a "present past," "two parallel lines that intersect," are impossibilities, because the ideas denoted by the predicates, round, present, intersect, are contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects, squared, past, parallel. But walking on water, or turning water into wine, or procreation without male intervention, or raising the dead, are plainly not "impossibilities" in this sense....

It may be urged, however, that there is, at any rate, one miracle certified by all three of the Synoptic Gospels which really does "imply a contradiction," and is, therefore, "impossible" in the strictest sense of the word. This is the well-known story of the feeding of several thousand men, to the complete satisfaction of their hunger, by the distribution of a few loaves and fishes among them; the wondrousness of this already somewhat surprising performance being intensified by the assertion that the quantity of the fragments of the meal, left over, amounted to much more than the original store.

Undoubtedly, if the operation is stated in its most general form; if it is to be supposed that a certain quantity, or magnitude, was divided into many more parts than the whole contained; and that, after the subtraction of several thousands of such parts, the magnitude of the remainder amounted to more than the original magnitude, there does seem to be an a priori difficulty about accepting the proposition, seeing that it appears to be contradictory of the senses which we attach to the words "whole" and "parts" respectively.

So Huxley would only dismiss claims a priori if they was some logical contradiction in the claim. But he would not dismiss a claim that contradicted with our knowledge of the natural world, such as claims involving the supernatural.

I would not dismiss any claims a priori.

A strong atheist or skeptic would probably dismiss any claim that not only violates logic, but even claims that conflict with our knowledge of the natural world (or with materialism, even).

 

[MarkD]

the open-minded skeptic is open to any claim being true. These types of skeptics are not bent on disproving or dismissing, but rather they are open to evidence for and against.

interesting. I very much agree. It is for this reason that I have so little interest in debate as a way to investigate a subject. Two people focused on what is true in their experience with appropriate epistemically humility is better than two people representing opposing views willing to go to any length to play up the strengths of their side while diminishing those on the other side isn’t worth doing.