Skepticism is bullcrap

"I'd like to see sources for these claims that Pro is bringing up" I got it from wiki (1) and from this site (2). "Skepticism is extremely important. Can you imagine what would happen if everybody believed absolutely everything they heard? The world would be in utter chaos. " While you shouldn't believe everything you hear, you shouldn't go to great lengths to doubt everything either. "So what are we supposed to do, never have any opinions on anything ever? Just because there's not a 100% chance of us being right?" An opinion is different from scientific fact and a philosophical argument. I'm saying that you should never over-generalize your claims especially when you've never did your research. "One of the key principles of science is understanding that we cannot know everything" Wrong that's the claim of skepticism. In science, you are only concerned with what you do know. Science is the systematic approach to what is testable and observable in the universe (3). " This is why we use the term theory most of the time instead of law. A theory usually means that we can be 99.9999999999999999999999999% sure of something, but we can't know that we won't discover a better explanation in a few thousand years. We need to stay skeptical for this very reason. If Copernicus (and all other astronomers) had just decided that they were content with the notion that everything in the universe revolved around the earth, modern physics would not be where it is today. " I refute this by saying that skepticism goes further to say that everything (even those things beyond the reaches of science) is not certain, however this is uttering an absolute certainty. Now you can defend this claim and say "Well this is a linguistic construct.." the problem is that your introducing a claim on absolute truth and applying it to everything. Can we test to see if nothing is certain? We can't, we just have to accept it or deny it. I think it is also self-defeating since your supposed to question "everything", you would also have to question the validity of that statement, rendering skepticism useless. "I don't understand what Pro thinks is so bad about skepticism. Skepticism is the reason that we make sure we can duplicate scientific results multiple times before publishing them. It's why we now that evolution is true, and seven day creationism is not. It's how you make sure that you're ready for an English test. If you're not skeptical of your knowledge, you will ultimately fail at everything. " We know evolution is true not by doubt, but by actively making observations and testing our models of how the world works. Logically, you need to establish truth in order to also suspect falsehood in a claim, but you would do so much better in creating a scientific theory to progressively gain knowledge rather than questioning pseudoscience based on what is already known. You would not be able to use evolution in your arguments if scientists didn't assume and have some level of trust in their observations. "I expect Pro to clarify his argument because as of now I don't know why he is against skepticism. It seems like he is against science trying to disprove his religion, not skepticism itself." I'm not necessarily speaking about religion, i'm also talking about the method itself when concerning questioning phenomenon such as u.f.o sightings, superhuman feats, etc. Sources: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org...