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:
Name Withheld said:
AgnosticBoy post_id=1024908 time=1605326616 user_id=13726 said:
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.
Username withheld said:
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.
Username withheld said:
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.
Username withheld said:
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.
Username withheld said:
AgnosticBoy post_id=1024908 time=1605326616 user_id=13726 said:
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.