At the age of 32 I deconverted from my faith of Christianity, the label skeptic was applied to me by my brother and I embraced this. I would say the first year I was angry and bitter, I had spent so much of my time in my life praying to something that was not there, looking for signs, believing in this thing above us, because you look up when you talk to God - you just do - God is up there after all, in the "heavens". I also spent that first year learning more logic and sharping my debate skills, mostly in text format on forums. I found the lack of critical thinking of believers to be shocking, when I had encountered a believer back when I still believed that had denied evolution, I had said to a different believer that I had lost respect for them because of that, but it wasn't something you debated. Now, as a skeptic, I debated such things and saw just how crazy people could be about beliefs, going on tangents that had little to nothing to do with the topic at hand. I saw first hand how BAD it really was - that some people - just were lost, they could not, would not accept the facts of science. This occupied my time for two years in full.
On Mar 2, 2013 I joined youtube as "Deconverted Man" and began to post videos, pointing out logical fallacies in arguments and counting them up to show just how many these arguments had. Every darn argument I found was full of fallacies. Every. Single. One. I can not say what the most common is as fact since I have no data on that, but I will guess at it - I think that its the God of the Gaps. It really does seem to come to that - explain "x" oh you can't! Ah HA! Must be God! See the complex things? God! Anytime and every time there is mystery: God dun it. The other thing I would say about my many years on the tubes is that everyone can be effected by bad beliefs, atheists are not immune. Oh boy the stories I could tell.
Being a skeptic is not denial of reality itself, it used to be that ages ago, that you couldn't know anything or something - but no, that is not what I think of when I use the label. For better or worse the label does not really apply at times, its just a way to identify myself to others to some degree. Yet you will find, as I did, that there are people who are not skeptical of a thing, and the defense they will give of it, is so similar to the arguments you hear creationists give, that its shocking. Here are otherwise thoughtful people, leaving reason & science behind because "not everything can be proven by science" ugh. No, but science is the BEST thing we have. If we say something is a fact - then we better show its a fact somehow, and how the bleep are we going to do that? What is our epistemology?
And so, for almost ten years I've had a very simple epistemology that is thus:
In order to beleve anything I require one of the following:
1 Empirical evidence. 2 Repeatable tests, a 3 valid & sound argument.
1: This is visible evidence either with the naked eye or with the aid of devices to visualize the given phenomena.
2: These are tests that can be done under controlled conditions, observed & retestable by others.
3: This is an argument that has the right format & is free from logical fallacies.
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To date, for many beliefs and ideas out there, I've not been given any of the above for them, and as such I submit that not only should I be skeptical of them, but that we should all be skeptical of the conclusions.
