The Death of Skepticism

[ButterflyWoman]

I came across this article quite by weird accident (I won't go into how/why it happened, but it was very, very strange that I landed there, I'll just put it that way). I was quite struck by it, and thought some people here might enjoy reading it:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/0 ... kepticism/ (http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/08/the-death-of-skepticism/)

[CFTraveler]

I enjoyed reading it, but didn't like the title. I would have preferred one of the subtitles
"An Alternative to Skepticism"

I'm going to quote part of it (I hope it's ok):

"Ultimately skepticism is rooted in fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of being gullible. Fear of living foolishly. From a subjective reality standpoint, skepticism is a mental adaptation that occurs after you’ve made the choice to live in a fear-based objective universe. Once you’ve objectified your universe, skepticism is the next step.

You can’t really escape skepticism if you believe in an objective universe. And you wouldn’t want to anyway. It makes sense to fear and doubt that which you cannot control.

Once objectivity has been chosen, a skeptic will regard a non-skeptic as reckless, foolhardy, gullible, or misguided. From the emails I’ve received, I can see it really bothers some skeptics that I don’t believe in an objective universe, yet I’m still able to function just fine in the world (probably better than most skeptics in fact). I would think that if I believed in a subjective universe, and the universe was really objective, then my ability to function should decrease. But from any measurable standpoint, the opposite occurred when I adopted a subjective mindset.

As previously noted though, if you take skepticism far enough, it eventually leads you to question the nature of reality, and that’s where it finally self-destructs. Most skeptics don’t go nearly this far, however."
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/0 ... kepticism/ (http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/08/the-death-of-skepticism/)

This rings very true for me, and it's something I struggle with.

[ButterflyWoman]

I'm going to quote part of it (I hope it's ok):
Indeed, Steve Pavlina recently release all of his web-based articles for public use. You can reprint them any way you want. Don't even have to credit him, in fact.