Skepticism

Questioning yourself and others is generally useful. But some in the "skeptical movement" want to avoid discussion of religion and ethics, so people with a diversity of stupid beliefs can join hands under one big tent.
:Let’s not bother to apply rationality to the meaningful questions in our lives, such as what sorts of health systems serve the health and interests of the most people, because there’s nothing more healthy than having the same fucking fact-free political discussions every election. You can bet the LGBT community loves the diversity of opinions on their mental, sexual, and social health, and would welcome nothing more than sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with people who think they’re abominations, all for the sake of ganging up on Ghosthunter Gary and making fun of the PKE meter he made out of tinfoil and take-out boxes as a community.
:By all means, let’s shut our mouths about the important stuff; it’ll only get in the way of being able to feel smug over people who phone psychic hotlines together.
:Advocating we just ‘shut up’ about issues like religion or politics is against diversity—at least, against anything but tokenism. Because neither politics nor religion are silent on the status of minorities. Religions (most of them anyways) are distinctly anti-women and anti-LGBT. Political ideologies like conservatism and libertarianism are anti-minority in their effect. Telling skeptics we should just agree to disagree is telling POC and female and LGBT skeptics that they should shut up about the issues that actually matter to them for the privilege of sitting next to old, white men to laugh at bigfoot hunters.
Since those are arbitrary boundaries on the scope of skepticism, we who are pro-equality have the opportunity to knock down the barriers and position ourselves as the more skeptical skeptics. Incidentally skeptics can of course be Black or white.
==Pharyngula threads==
* Should skeptic organizations be atheist organizations?
* The Woman Problem
* I had no idea I was stepping into a controversy
* Atheism is an essential part of skepticism
* Skeptical dogmatism
* The strangely schizoid status of the skeptical community (Please note the author's error: this is nothing like the actual meaning of schizoid. Nor schizophrenic, despite a commenter's attempt at correction.)
* When Venn diagrams go bad
* Skeptics have the amazing superpower of being simultaneously fierce and timid
* These sensible people shouldn’t be so rare
* A common complaint I hear a lot nowadays
* A reply to Steven Novella
* Atheists are skeptics
* and there may be more Pharyngula threads of interest on Freethought Blogs and ScienceBlogs (Wayback Machine)
:This wiki article was originally adapted from comments by Brownian.
category:atheism
category:equality
category:humanism
category:science