Hey, Wolfgang....I think we're being picked on! (Bill)

Perhaps that was the intention, Bill, perhaps not, I don't know. But why put on a shoe that doesn't fit at all? Some years ago I have posted what I consider a true sceptic after I had read some posts that displayed a profound ignorance of scepticism. I hardly have anything to add to that post.

Freda beautifully analyses a frame of mind I find contemptible to the extreme: Not to be bothered by facts or evidence in what one considers to be true or at least the best available explanation for something.

I have met a few fellow sceptics with that frame of mind, a person for instance who long time ago had made up his mind that corn circles were made by whirlwind activity and that's it. Which at the very beginning would have been a possible explanation wasn't one later. But he never bothered whether his theory was still applicable to more recent evidence.

However, much more often I have met this frame of mind in the 'true believers'. While paying lip service to the open mind they had made up their minds and scanned all the available information whether it could be used for their pet theory (good information) or not (to-be-dismissed information): People believing in Velikowsky's ideas, pyramid power, astrology etc. who never had even bothered to read anything even remotely critical of their beliefs.

The only thing that really bothers me in Freda's post is the use of the word 'sceptic' for a frame of mind which I would rather have termed 'dogmatic' and which I find comparably rare among sceptics.

Just for the fun of it, I took one of Freda's signs, namely using the word '(il)logic***' and looked who had used it most often in the recent UFO thread. I admit I did grin when I saw the result.

Wolfgang