For sheer insanity? Uber-Skeptics take the cake!

If a tree falls in the middle of Times Square, during rush hour, causing a head-on collision killing 5 people and injuring 20... and a skeptic happens to be in Vermont enjoying the autumn foliage at that moment...Does it make a sound?

I understand the importance of reserving judgement until my own experience backs up the hypothesis in question.
What I don't understand is the witch hunt!
If I have experienced something that fascinates me and I am sharing that experience to get feed back from others who find it fascinating WHAT is the point of jumping up and down and screaming LIAR! LIAR!?

I've never been to China before but that doesn't mean that it cannot possibly exist! I don't run around saying that if you think you have been to China then you are either a liar or you misunderstood something...maybe it was Japan and you just THOUGHT it was China?...were you drinking that day?!

I'm nobody's fool but every now and then, I'll take your word for it.

Government conspiracy theories I believe show us our similarities rather than our differences. Truthers and skeptics- 2 sides of the same coin.

I believe that seeded in the soul of every "normal" Human Being is an instinctive sense of Love and Justice. I believe this is what defines humanity!

When we are presented a view of reality wherein a select few can perpetrate speechless acts of violence against their fellow men and watch others suffer the agony of starvation, disease and all other plagues with a rather bored expression on their face and a white wine spritzer in hand?
It is simply incomprehensible.

There are those that are such good people that they hear the tales and they are outraged! So unnatural and foreign this concept of Sacrificing fellow humans at the altar of greed simply for a little power? WAR!

There are those that are such good people that they hear the tales and they are outraged! So unnatural and foreign this concept of Sacrificing fellow humans at the altar of greed simply for a little power? IMPOSSIBLE!

Thank God we're all such good people...but I'm still glad I'm not a skeptic.

Originally posted by Arbydol
WHAT is the point of jumping up and down and screaming LIAR! LIAR!?

You're confusing ad hominem attacks with skepticism. One attacks the messenger, the other questions, dialectically, the message.

Think of it this way: people come forth with these stories because they want to share them, establish communication, and feel understood. So, they express themselves, but they do so with some level of subjectivity.

That's where skepticism comes in. It shows, without personal attack, the weaknesses of the message, that the OP might not have realized weren't easily believable or understandable. The idea is, the OP responds, not taking it personally, and elaborates and/or provides more detail, and an understand is reached by an iterative process of question, answer.

I agree the process can be fraught with risk -- people are not emotionless creatures. But that's what we have moderators for. Alternate ATS motto: Deny close-mindedness.

I agree. I feel the point of a forum is to openly exchange thoughts and experiences so that we may understand and find the truth in the nature of our world- with all of our collective knowledge. Together we are greater than the sum of all of our parts!

What I don't understand is the compulsive need some people have to address things that they find to be utterly absurd.

I don't particularly care for sports. If people are discussing sports at the water cooler I will either
a) pretend to listen while mentally make out my grocery list or

b) find something else to do.

What confounds me is option:

c) become emotionally hysterical and scream that neither the Giants nor the Patriots should win because REAL football is what all you ignorant swine call soccer and I don't appreciate you trying to force your false ideas of what football ball is on me! This is AMERICA and I won't tolerate you persecuting me and telling ME that the earth is round!!!!!!

It really seems that weird to me sometimes.

[edit on 06/10/08 by Arbydol]

Some are skeptic to the point of doing violence on those who disagree, which brings up the quote from that english satirist...methinks thou dost protest too much.

Exactly! The fact that it can go to violence is completely foreign to me.

If I'm approached by someone who tells me that they just flew in a magical canoe to a planet just left of the moon so that they could eat breakfast at a unicorn convention and while they were there as the guest of honor Jesus awarded them a medal and crowned them king of the little people....

My first reaction is not to beat the crap out of the new Prince Regent so he won't even think about raising my taxes!

I would simply congratulate his Highness on having such a good day and keep walking with minimal eye contact.

If I'm comfortable in my own beliefs, then what others believe simply does not affect me. I could play board games with a fence post all day long but I'm not going to expect an acknowledgment that "You sank my battleship".

[edit on 06/10/08 by Arbydol]

Originally posted by Arbydol
Exactly! The fact that it can go to violence is completely foreign to me.

If I'm approached by someone who tells me that they just flew in a magical canoe to a planet just left of the moon so that they could eat breakfast at a unicorn convention and while they were there as the guest of honor Jesus awarded them a medal and crowned them king of the little people....

My first reaction is not to beat the crap out of the new Prince Regent so he won't even think about raising my taxes!

I would simply congratulate his Highness on having such a good day and keep walking with minimal eye contact.

If I'm comfortable in my own beliefs, then what others believe simply does not affect me. I could play board games with a fence post all day long but I'm not going to expect an acknowledgment that "You sank my battleship".

[edit on 06/10/08 by Arbydol]

Touche, touche, and thanks for the laugh.

Thanks! Glad to get a chuckle. I have been given some very good advice in my life that I would like to pass on:

1. Never argue with a fool- a passerby may not be able to tell the difference

2. Just because you're louder doesn't mean you're correct (That one hurt at the time ... )

and the most profound

3. Would you rather be happy or would you rather be right?

I go back and forth on that last one...

Well, more or less opposite to the OP, "uber" believers drive me nuts. They are as bad as the "uber" skeptics, I'm sure, but to me they are more grating. Unlike the "can't be so" of skeptics, they take the "can be so" to it's extreme.
Doesn't matter if you can walk them through every single step, they will sitll insist that you are wrong, and they are right.
Unlike "uber" skeptics, who keep their brain so closed that nothing gets in, they've opened their brains so wide that it sort of... fell out some where.

That isn't opposite of the OP. I totally agree with you. It really is just as erroneous and absurd to believe that everything is a conspiracy as it is to deny the possibility.

I titled this thread to draw attention so that I could open a discussion about the absurdity of being fanatically extreme. Any extreme.

BELIEVE me when I say that I roll my eyes every time I see a new thread about how a breeze blew through somebodies window and has this happened to anyone else on ATS? Was it black ops breeze laced with ebola that a shadow government ordered to blow through my window because I know too much about MSG?

I guess I believe that the wisest words ever uttered by man were "I don't know" and " You might be right".