From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 23:19:57 +0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 21:18:34 -0400
Subject: Re: Skeptic Doesn't Mean Cynic - Hall


>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates@sympatico.ca>
>To: <- UFO UpDates List ->
>Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 18:54:45 -0400
>Subject: UFO UpDate: Skeptic Doesn't Mean Cynic

>Source: Metro Pulse - Knoxville, Tennessee

>http://www.metropulse.com/dir_zine/dir_2003/1331/t_rationally.html

>07-31-03

>Think Definitively

>Skeptic Doesn't Mean Cynic

>By Massimo Pigliucci
>    pigliucci@utk.edu

>I am proud to consider myself a skeptic. I run a skeptic book
>club in town, and subscribe to magazines such as Skeptic and
>Skeptical Inquirer. I fantasize of being an intellectual
>descendant, in my small ways, of Scottish philosopher David
>Hume, who made reasonable skepticism his method of approaching
>problems ranging from the political to the religious.


<snip>

Speaking as someone who has formally studied scientific method
and philosophy, the trouble with CSICOP-type "skeptics" is that
they give a bad name to a long and honorable tradition.

True skepticism about UFO claims is entirely justified; knee-
jerk rejection of UFOs as a potentially very important
scientific mystery is not. True skeptics, unfortunately, are a
rarity. What we get instead is highly opinionated, ill-informed,
data-deniers.


 - Richard Hall