I've noticed, to my surprise, that a number of skeptics actually started out as 'believers' (ie. believing in stuff for which there seems little good evidence). Can I ask who here started as a 'believer', what sort of stuff they believed in and why they stopped believing?
Yes. But only when I was quite young.
Was reading SF and fantasy novels before I was 10. Inevitably managed to read a few UFO books, etc, in my hunger to absorb words. I was briefly, aged about 13 - 14, a big fan of Von Daniken and read all his English language books. From the age of 10 upwards I read books on conspiracies, alternative history and archeaology, ghosts, psychic powers, etc, etc, and initially believed it all.
As I read more and more I became more and more "skeptical". This was without exposure to skeptics directly, I worked it out on my own. The evidence didn't stack up and contradicted other "evidence"; the theories were silly and contradicted each other. By the time I was 20 I was pretty-much a skeptic but didn't use the word to describe myself. At the first UnConvention (in 1990?) I was interviewed briefly by a TV crew and described myself as a Fortean. But it wasn't really true, I was interested in forteana, and laughing at the loonies, but I was sceptical.
I was 30+ when I first met Skott Campbell, an Oz skeptic who had moved to the UK, I agreed with him on everything relating to forteana and skepticism. He founded Skeptics in the Pub and I was there at the very first ever meeting.
Several early SitP meetings had discussions about "how you became a skeptic". I was surprised by the people who claim to have been born skeptics. Apparently some skeptics' earliest memories are of not believing in Santa at the age of 4 even though their older sister still did, of going to Sunday School aged 5 and realising that God obviously didn't exist, of debunking urban legends told by their classmates aged 7, etc.
I can imagine a Mitchell & Webb sketch where a father is dressed as Santa and his young daughter is telling him to stop feeding her stereotypical myths that might adversely affect her psychological development! Being a 'born skeptic' seems wrong somehow.Originally Posted by Croydon Bob
I guess I was just sort of thrown into skepticism, my parents are physicists and I've always loved science. I had assumed the world was logically apart from the odd loonie. Then a friend introduced me to homeopathy... That shot my trust that the really dumb things in life are illegal.
Similar here. I was always surrounded by rationality and questioning, though I believed in Father Christmas. It shot my trust in everything when I found out he didn't exist!
I can honestly say that I never believed in anything 'weird' even when I was quite young.
The only woo I was exposed to was Catholicism (I come from a part Irish background). When I was around 6 or so I was introduced to the idea of having a guardian angel (this was at school - my parents weren't actually religious) and I remember walking down the road from school towards the main road where parents met the kids by the zebra crossing.
What I was thinking was - why do we need things like zebra crossings when we have a guardian angel? I sort of knew that if I stepped out on to the road that I'd get knocked over and there was no guardian angel really there.
I guess I disbelieved as a kid for the same (wrong) reasons people believe weird stuff - personal experience! If *I* couldn't see it then I wouldn't believe it.
And even as I got older and was exposed to more woo claims I never thought any of them were likely to be real. I didn't even go through a phase.
So I think you can be born a 'natural skeptic' (as opposed to a fully fledged critical thinker) - it simply means that you don't succumb to beliefs easily.
Either that or I'm just very odd.
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I did. I was well into the occult as a teenager and very superstitious. I almost had a nervous breakdown and have been working since to bring some rationality into my life. I’m still working to record over those old psyche tapes.
I vote for "very odd".Either that or I'm just very odd.
This is a democracy isn't it?
Some of the best people in the world are considered rather odd.
Never believed anything woo-like when very young. Born a cynic, skeptical of any and everything, not sure why. I remember rejecting religious teaching in junior school because I preferred the stories of the Norse and Greek Gods. More fun and better monsters! I remember asking my mum "why should the Christian God be any more true?"
As a teenager I flirted with some dumb stuff. My urge to question everything made anything alternative seem worth a look. Black magic or Alt Med would have suited my rebel outlook! I just couldn't stand the BS. I had no clue about science or the scientific approach to things though.
Tried Tai Chi for a while.Tai Chi classes vary hugely in Woo levels. In my first class the Woo level was low, once I tried another class and could not stop myself laughing it rather burst that bubble!
Got into science and Skepticism much later. I think the basic idea was always there though.
Does wanting to believe count? I wanted to believe very badly but, after reading extensively, (you all know the drill, everything from Ouspensky and Gurdjieff, Crowley and Eliphas Levi to supposedly more credible stuff like Colin Wilson and G. L. Playfair), quickly decided that it was all a load of bollocks. I seem to recall that Wilson's weighty tome The Occult was the final straw. 800 pages of anecdotes, proving precisely nothing.
Some beliefs we just have and some we choose. But just because we choose them doesn't mean we believe them - at least not yet. I'm working on being more positive. I have a string of positive things I would like to believe but it isn't that easy. Why can't we believe the things we want to believe?
Don't we choose all our beliefs? It seems to me that the beliefs we "just have" are those that are taught to us at a very early age, long before we're capable of questioning them. Should you continue in such beliefs when you are capable of questioning them, you've made a choice.
That sounds like a title for a social psychology essay!
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I believe that John Jackson is a smartarse. Provable, undeniable fact.
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