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From: christian@topaz.UUCP
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Subject: The Doubting Game (Revisited and Exemplified)
Message-ID: <10740@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sun, 5-Apr-87 02:12:00 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.10740
Posted: Sun Apr  5 02:12:00 1987
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[I apologize to Mike for allowing the original posting.  It violated
 the rule against ad hominem argument, though because it didn't
 attack any particular person I didn't notice it.  The following
 is the obvious reply.  I promise not to allow articles of either
 sort in the future.  --clh]

Once again, Paul Dubuc has posted his exerpt from "The Myth Of Certainty."
The last time was in talk.religion.misc at the beginning of this month,
and I posted a response.  I don't recall seeing an answer (perhaps due to
net vagaries), so I think I should expand and repeat my response in this
forum as well.

The author of this work (Daniel Taylor), with superbly sly rhetorical skill
labels skepticism "the doubting game": as if the goal of skepticism is to
doubt the most or the hardest for the emotional gratification of just playing
the game.  Evidently this is something that appealed a great deal to Paul,
since now he can dismiss me as just an addict who gets "high" on naysaying.

I'm not surprised that some believers portray skeptics as mirror images of
themselves playing their "believing game".  They want to be able to use the
fallacious argument "my belief is true because it feels good to me and that's
the same standard for truth that you use."  But unfortunately for their
argument, it doesn't work that way.

Unlike the "believing game", there is very little reward or support for
skepticism.  Most skeptics I've met were only dimly aware that there were
others out there with similar beliefs (as I was, until age 23.)  Nobody
promises us rewards in Heaven.  We choose to be skeptics because we cannot
abide the thought of trying to make ourselves believe things when we know
good reasons why they may not be true (as I did for about two years before
I left the Catholic Church.)

But back to Paul's exerpt.  I'm going to mutillate it a bit to focus on the
particularly stupid points (and to shorten things by more than half.)

> Among the many problems of [skepticism] is that the obsession with error,
> like the obsession of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Puritans with evil, encourages
> one to see it everywhere, making truth just as susceptible to destruction
> as error itself.

Here we have the weary old "skepticism becomes nihilism" argument.  Which
essentially assumes that skeptics are so obsessed that they throw out the
baby with the bathwater because the baby can't be perfectly cleaned.
Now, we all know which bathwater the Christians want us to retain, right?

Obviously, skeptics must somehow make do, despite the fact that there is
error in everything.  The simple solution is to attempt to minimize the error.

> [Skepticism] also tends to exaggerate the importance of the error-finding
> faculties--reason, analysis--at the expense of other faculties such as
> imagination, empathy, synthesis.  It underestimates the extent to which reason
> (and the whole doubting methodology) can *produce* error as well as detect it.

Ah, yes, the "Mr. Spock" caricature.  Sorry, but I think skepticism can help
assign the correct importances to our faculties.  This bozo doesn't provide
one word of justification for "exaggeration" and "underestimates": he just
tries to slip it in past us.

Now we all know which faculties the Christians want us to consider important:
things like Pavlovian conditioned reflexes that make us send money, say "Amen",
hate homosexuals, etc. whenever a church bell rings.

> It can, even at its best, retard progress toward many important
> kinds of truth which are not compatible with the doubting game
> (for example, aesthetic, interpersonal, and spiritual).

So can any diversion of attention or energy.  I'll bet thousands of people
have had their progress tremendously retarded by inopportune sneezes or
Christian beliefs (for example.)

> Perhaps most damaging of all, thorough skepticism discourages risk-taking. 
> The person playing the doubting game is very afraid of looking foolish, of
> not appearing logical, rigorous, and disciplined.  The obsession with error
> makes one fear commitment to anything that is not self-evident, or at least
> embraced by a large percentage of others who play the same game.

Yow!  Big lie in operation, stand back!  Christians accusing skeptics of their
own sins!

Skepticism is one of the greatest forces opposing conformity of belief.
If you don't think that's risk-taking, you've never doubted anything.
Skepticism of "error" specified by religions allows experimentation undreamed
of or shunned by believers.

> And what could be more risky than to make assertions about value, about right
> and wrong, about God, especially if one acts on those assertions?

Perhaps Christians think it risky to repeat the canned, predigested beliefs
prepackaged in the Bible.  But it seems much more adventurous to me to formulate
one's one opinions, especially on matters that (Christians presume) are as
important as these.

> I am not advocating irrationalism, obscurantism, sloppy thinking, or
> sappy emotionalism...

No, but he's providing a wonderful example.

> ... I am merely suggesting that among the things one should be skeptical
> about in our skeptical age is the unchallenged primacy of this way of
> ascertaining truth.  It must be balanced by other ways of knowing which
> encourage risk and adventure.

Such as FAITH?  Go ahead, don't be shy.  Gosh, it's so risky and adventurous
believing the same thing as the rest of the herd!  (I'm reminded of the Python
sketch where the accountant wants to become a lion tamer-- until John Cleese
roars at him. :-)

> One benefit of release from the monopoly of the doubting game is the
> awareness that a belief, feeling, intuition, or conviction does not have to
> be "defendable" to be worthwhile...  Again, this is not an apology for
> anti-intellectualism or irrationalism, but a recognition that the search for
> truth is too important to limit us to one faculty or one methodology.

Yes, let's hear it for thinking with your gonads!  Truth through testosterone!
(Excuse me please, female readers.)

When one embraces skepticism, the rest of the brain is not turned off.
Personally, I use skepticism as a filter, for eliminating unreliable products
of the rest of the brain.  Such as the conditioned reflexes drilled into
me as a young Catholic.
--

"To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage
to proclaim what reason shows to be true."
	Bertrand Russell in "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization".
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh