Eff It.
For such a new forum, there is already a trend within the Supernatural subforum of "believers" telling "skeptics" that they need to be more open-minded. As explained in this excellent video by Youtube user QualiaSoup, this view that skeptics should be more open-mindedness is actually a misunderstanding of what the word really means.
According to dictionary.com, open-mindedness is simply "having or showing a mind receptive to new ideas or arguments." This definition is not incompatible with skepticism, which it defines as "A doubting or questioning attitude or state of mind; dubiety." One can simultaneously be open to the possibility of many supernatural entities or claims which have not yet been proven, while questioning the claims and searching for further, more definitive evidence before considering the claims true, or even plausible.
Some have claimed, in their defense of the "anything goes" open-mindedness commonly seen in the Supernatural subforum, that anything is possible. This is simply not true. If you are reading this on a computer right now, as I suspect you probably are, then you know that technology (usually) works. Science has brought us greater and more powerful communication, medicine, entertainment, transportation, and so on ad nauseum. Optics, acoustics, thermodynamics, anatomy, astronomy, meteorology and all of the ways in which we understand and predict the world around us are products of science. Sometimes the world doesn't behave exactly as science predicts. Sometimes there are exceptions. I have seen some of you claim that, because science isn't always correct or "can't explain everything", that science doesn't know anything in regards to the paranormal and supernatural. But science isn't some nebulous group of people out trying to suck all the beauty and mystery from the world. It's simply a process for helping us come closer and closer to understanding our universe. As Carl Sagan put it, "The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key."
I have also seen some argue that they believe, not because it is the most reasonable worldview to them, but simply because without the supernatural the world is somehow less exciting, less beautiful, less mysterious. This is not in the least true. To quote Carl Sagan* once again, "It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it."
Consider for a moment bioluminescence; the ability of a spider to spin silk webs; the nuclear fusion fueling the stars, and making life possible for us. In fact, if you consider almost anything you've ever learned from science, whether it be physics, chemistry, biology, or any other field, you'll realize that what we consider mundane can in fact become more impressive and awe inspiring with more understanding. Douglas Adams put it quite well: "The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
So, is there any chance we could all put aside the labels of "believer" and "skeptic" and just be curious?
"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."**
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*If you haven't figured out by now, I'm quite a fan of Sagan.
**Douglas Adams fan, too.
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All counter-arguments, comments, criticisms, and what-have-you are most welcome.
