Ok finishing off my series on... the kind of atheists that make me not want to be part of Atheism.

Uber-skeptics, the more I think about it, are an ill-defined concept I dreamt up, and yet... from time to time you'll meet people who fit the bill, online at least. How to put this...

Now there is nothing wrong with skepticism, I rather like the Skeptic Community (or at least, I used to). A normal skeptic is someone like the Mythbusters: yeah, they know your outrageous claim or story is probably full of shit, but they're gonna give you the benefit of the doubt as a person and show why it's wrong. Or maybe they have no idea, but they put it to the most scientific test they can, and watch it fail.

Let's say there's a story that someone (For whatever reason) spread gunpowder on a piece of bread an it exploded a toaster. (I'm making this Mythbusters-esque claim up off the top of my head, assuming this was never actually done on Mythbusters before) The mythbusters would try it, find it fails on so many levels (the gunpowder won't stay on the bread, it won't combust in the toaster, the amount there doesn't make a big bang when it does combust... and you'd need a pound of C4 to explode a toaster. BOOOM! (makes for good TV))

An Uber-Skeptic is the kind of guy who just says "No one puts gunpowder on their toast." or "That can't happen." They will not test the claim. They will not listen to you.

"X Does Not Exist"

My frustration with Uber-Skeptics peaked when I had my own unusual experiences and I was searching for an explanation. I got into researching religions, drug trips, astral projection, anything involving altered states of consciousness. My big breakthrough came from the Avatar forum. Shortly after the movie came out, the place was full of people talking about all sorts of mystical things, as if reality could be altered by the mind in certain ways and there was a blind spot in Western Culture to it, links to strange articles or books written from that POV were being swapped like crazy, people talking about mass psychoses induced by shamans, how watching Avatar while on shrooms caused reality to shift right there in the theater.

A few people, acting like crusaders trying to set these people on the path back to sanity, flatly declared "Altered states of consciousness do not exist"

I know why they said it in that context, but it's a common Skeptic's refrain. Talk about paranormal experiences, "Ghosts do not exist." Talk about a light you saw in the sky, "UFOs do not exist" and so on. Sometimes I wonder if what makes someone a "skeptic" is being one of the lucky/unlucky 10% of the population to never see anything really weird in their lifetime.

So, take away all "altered states of consciousness" and there went my only explanations for what I'd experienced besides talking to a deity. I could only find an atheist explanation by ignoring the atheists and reading up on a website by a hypnotist they'd dismissed as more crazy nonsense, concluding that since as they hypnotist says "We're always in a state of trance, driving, walking, talking, watching TV, playing a video game..." writing this is a kind of trance. So I might have found a way to reach a state of trance similar to dreamstate or drug trip by mental effort alone.

BUT - only if I believe the "crazy" people, and not the Skeptics, could I find this skeptic's alternative explanation to a religious experience of talking to a deity. When you're THAT skeptical that there's no room to allow others to reach skeptical explanations for their experiences, you're Doing It Wrong.

Indirect Ad-Homenim

(Ad Homenim is directing an argument at the person making it instead of the idea, it's an ancient form of debate gone wrong, but practically the official sport of the internet nowadays. The thing is, in everyday life, Ad Homenim serves a good purpose in intuitive reasoning. "Phil didn't show up last night." "But Phil told me he had to help out Sally" "Yeah, well, Phil's always full of shit." The problem is in debating ideas it doesn't matter how reliable the person promoting the idea is, what matters is if there's evidence to work out if the idea is true or not.

Skeptics are fond of their logical fallacies, and though Uber-Skeptics aren't technically guilty of personal attacks, they feel like they are. If you saw something unusual in the sky, they'll just say "UFOs do not exist." They're always reminding others "The burden of proof is on the person making the claim." and "Your senses lie"

There's supposed to be a point where, like the Mythbusters, you address the people searching for answers even if their story is probably not true. In the movie Ghostbusters, after running lie-detector tests on Dana, Egon declared "She's telling the truth, or at least she thinks she is." In Star Trek, Councillor Troy would argue "He's telling the truth as he remembers it." There is a certain understanding that a person can be dead wrong but still honest. These people do not have that.

Sometimes I get the impression they think you're just plain crazy, another one of the "nutjobs" who believes in UFOs (or the paranormal) just by asking about it. It's kind of a backwards Ad Homenim - UFOs do not exist, therefore anyone claiming to see one is full of shit. They'll speak as if having seen something unusual means you're part of the New Age hippies who threw logic out the window... therefore it's not worth stooping to explain why you're wrong, you obviously don't believe in logical explanations, so there's nothing they could say to convince you.

Skeptical Science Fanbois

It's the intersection of Uber-Skepticism and Science Fanboism that is the Worst Kind of Atheist.

If 1000 people had similar strange experiences, what they'll contribute to the discussion is "The plural of anecdote is not data" or "You can pile bullshit to the Moon and it's still a pile of shit." Your senses can trick you, eyewitnesses can be falliable, people are not to be trusted... especially you.

If you fear there may be side-effects to vaccines, or genetically-modified food, or don't understand the science of "global warming", well, then, the knives come out to combat you, the "Anti-vaxxer" the "GMO-phobe" the "climate change denier". They will rush to the defense of their beloved Science. You might be discussing the risks of BPA plastics for food containers and be met with "How dare you use the internet to criticize the science that gave you the internet in the first place!" or "You want to live without science, stop using the computer, go back to living in a dank cave!" I have seen atheists and skeptics actually say these things, I shit you not. (Actually, different skeptical atheists saying them more than once, even people who are otherwise likeable and entertaining... these phrases, and that kind of thinking, seem to be part of Atheist Subculture, period)

...the problem is, sometimes, like when it comes to health risks... the "hippies" are right. It's not the "Skeptics" who are the whistle-blowers, it's the other side, the enemy legion of "conspiracy theorists" and "health nuts" and "New Agers" who are skeptical of the safety of new products.

And so I find myself siding with the enemy. And that is why I can't be an atheist any more than I can be a christian.