Why do sceptics never see stuff

[Donald McGlinn]

Why does a sceptic never see spiritual phenomena and yet a spiritual person may see it daily?

[Sinera]

believing is seeing <--> seeing is believing

there are at least two windows to be opened for spiritual experience / to the larger reality: the "inner" and the "outer", skeptics never even opened the "inner", so how can they even start to open the "outer"?

they won't even know it exists.

[CFTraveler]

First of all, I don't like the use of the word 'sceptic'- I think that a real sceptic (skeptic for Americans) doesn't believe everything, but is open to investigate new infomation/claims. I think the word here should be 'materialist', which is a belief system. A materialist is someone who has decided a priori that certain types of information is acceptable as evidence, and other types are not. A materialist will simply ignore spiritual phenomena, or dismiss it as 'fake' or 'hallucinatory'.

[DarkChylde]

A materialist is someone who has decided a priori that certain types of information is acceptable as evidence, and other types are not. A materialist will simply ignore spiritual phenomena, or dismiss it as 'fake' or 'hallucinatory'.

exactly , i'm just going to add further that once these people decided on something (usually early on in life as a part of upbringing) they decide "thats that" and close the chapter.

I think a large part of that has to do with comfort zones as in believing in pre-set ideals VS. the effort and challenge of understanding and replacing erstwhile ideas - the latter as you see is very disconcerting at times , even for the best of us .

[greytraveller]

Greetings all
Hard core skeptics are blinded by the light of science, or religion, or both. And the phenomena that they do see they manage to explain away with convenient reasoning.

Regards
Grey

[Beekeeper]

There is also a state called "cognitive dissonance." In the case of the materialist, this means they resolve what is uncomfortably challenging to their existing world view by filtering it out or dismissing its validity.

[Beekeeper]

http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/skeptic9swhystubborn.htm

Victor Zammit on the topic in his latest newsletter.

[IronGega]

Greetings all
Hard core skeptics are blinded by the light of science, or religion, or both. And the phenomena that they do see they manage to explain away with convenient reasoning.

Regards
Grey

many 'skeptics' are acually non religious/ or non spiritual. CFT's definition was good in this matter since many people only believe in the matieral world.

"skeptic's" will dismiss something for a multitude of reasons, I've found that mainly it is because their entire namesake/education. inner world, is based on what their ego thinks is true.

Science and or religion doesn't mean that the person will not be open to a new concept or that being a skeptic is bad either. I have a healthy skepticism. The problem is when we become too skeptical, which can be as bad as too believing.

and the concepts don't have to be different either. I watch a documentary about this man who was "raised by a type of monkey" there was a animal psychologist who specialized in this breed of monkey. The Psychologist asked two questions. the first being "did the monkey's groom you?" the man said no. So the psychologist responded "This means they didn't interact with him socially, because grooming is a socializing habit of monkeys.

The Second question was "did the monkeys use any form of tools" the man said yes and that the monkey's wrapped up a leaf to form a type of cone cup to drink water from and handed it to the man. The psychologist then went to dismiss this as some misunderstood memory, because monkey's don't use their environment as a form of tool.

This is an example of 'science' going against science, or mundane vs mundane.

it all boils down to the ego, the ego wants to put everything in a nice little box that 'makes sense' and anything outside that box upsets our ego and their by upsets us is we are ruled by our ego.

[LPCF]

It would seem that the door to realisation is never closed to anyone, however sceptic and/or materialst s/he might be. For example, see Dr. Eben Alexander: http://www.skeptiko.com/154-neurosurgeon-dr-eben-alexander-near-death-experience/

and Dr. Mary Neal: http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/messages/chrono/37890479