The Skeptologists

[Sethomas]

My ex subscribed to Skeptic magazine and would compulsively email Shermer with random questions in fields where often neither of them had expertise, presumably because she had a way of knowing that his penis was substantially larger than mine.

I first encountered him watching the Bullshit! episode that talked about the bible. The annoying thing about that particular episode was that if they had adequate understanding of the bible, they would have understood the points they made were trivial and stupid and that they could have actually raised some interesting points about many other facets. By the act of trying to sell the "don't read the bible" message as if it were a Popeil infomercial, they precluded any possibility of serious biblical scrutiny.

When they'd talk to Shermer, he'd be very careful about offering skepticism while not avidly passing judgment on the credulity process underscoring what makes it problematic--something I find rather uncharacteristic of him, as I've seen him do so elsewhere. This subtlety was drowned out by the heftier of Penn and Teller--the one that talks, I forget who is who--taking Shermer's quotes and dragging them out to hyperbolic conclusions.

I read a report that actually criticised some skeptic groups because they would slap on improbable explanations to events that would fail by their own standards, but that they uphold because of ideological predisposition. This is painfully ironic, but whatever. They couldn't understand that sometimes it hurts their cause more to invent bullshit than to say "actually, we don't know yet, but we're looking into it."