SOUL FOOD -- MICHELE MARR

o7 “Jesus said to him, ‘Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have

believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”’f7

John 20:29

Tomorrow is National Skeptics Day.

Or, at least that’s what some calendars would have you believe.

Others say the date is Aug. 13. Some, Oct. 13.

I was determined to get to the truth of the matter, so I did what any

good skeptic would do. I went looking for some compelling evidence.

I started with the Internet. I typed the word “skeptics” into my

favorite search engine, and there, heading up the top of the list, I

found The Skeptics Society. Their Web site is full of offers and

promotions for all kinds of goodies for skeptics. There is a “Baloney

Detection Kit” that will arm you with Carl Sagan’s “Ten Tools for Baloney

Detection,” Michael Shermer’s (Shermer is director of the society) “Ten

Questions For Baloney Detection” and “How Thinking Goes Wrong: The 25

Fallacies of Thought,” along with other instructive resources.

There are books with alluring titles like “Why People Believe Weird

Things” and “A Quick and Dirty Guide to Chaos and Complexity Theory,” and

periodicals, “Skeptic Magazine” and, new, “Jr. Skeptic” for budding

naysayers.

But nowhere on the Web site is there any mention of National Skeptics

Day.

I am beginning to suspect it’s a sham. After all, if there were such a

day, wouldn’t the skeptics be the first to know?

Maybe. Then, again, maybe not. Skeptics, say the frequently asked

questions on the site, are from Missouri, the “show me” state. Tell them

something and they say, “prove it.” So, maybe the jury’s simply still

out.

And that’s fine with me. Even if it turns out there really isn’t a

National Skeptics Day, it got me thinking.

What exactly is a skeptic anyway?

Some people, warns Shermer, confuse skeptics with cynics. They think

skeptics are “a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons.” But this just isn’t true.

These folks are scholars, scientists, historians, magicians (yes,

magicians), professors, teachers and all manner of folks curious about

controversial ideas. They support the practice of skepticism by such

things as maintaining a speaker’s bureau to provide speakers for schools

and other organizations, providing the media with information on

controversial claims and holding social events to promote good will among

like-minded people.

They don’t have much to say about what they promote among

not-so-like-minded people. But in the society’s “A Skeptical Manifesto,”

Sagan is quoted saying, “You can get into a habit of thought in which you

enjoy making fun of all those other people who don’t see things as

clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.”

I know he didn’t mean it quite the way it sounds. In any case, I’m

giving him the benefit of the doubt. I can be skeptical too to a point.

Which I guess may be enough, because even with skepticism, I

understand, you can have too much of a good thing.

“If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you,”

Sagan explains, “On the other hand, if you are open to the point of

gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you

cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones. If all ideas

have equal validity then you are lost, because then, it seems to me, no

ideas have any validity at all.”

You don’t doubt it, do you?* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and

graphic designer from Huntington Beach. She has been interested in

religion and ethics for as long as she can remember. She can be reached

at o7 michele@soulfoodfiles.com.f7