(June 23, 2011 at 8:50 pm)theVOID Wrote: Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realise Sceptic meant "Agrees with loosely affiliated group of people x".
Not to be Humpty Dumpty said about this (words mean what I choose them to mean, neither more nor less), but sceptic also doesn't mean "agrees with all the benefits of science but denies its usefulness as a tool or scientific consensuses as a form of truth only where convenient". Particularly when these specific media darlings have a whole range of beliefs in common, which seem incongruous with scepticism:
~Christianity
~Right wing politics
~"Family values"
~That filtering the 'net is both feasible and desirable
~Any minority opinion is valid if you can claim it the work of a nameless consultant
~Any part of science which allows you to turn the environment into the economy
~We still won't tell you who our consultant is, but they're an expert and you're not allowed to disagree with them
~A national plebiscite on carbon tax, which if it happens to deliver an outcome they don't like, will be ignored
~Stop asking about our consultant, they certainly do exist
And odd beliefs such as:
~Divorce contributes to global warming
~Young Earth Creationism
~Intelligent Design
~Evolution should be taught on the syllabus in context of a range of theories, primarily Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design
~Any video game rating higher than "M" will lead inevitably and exclusively to prevalence of "rape games" (and if anyone attempts to bring up this or any other IT topic, scream "rape games" with increasing volume and hysteria until they stop)
And best of all, they have the polar opposite view; if they'd been referred to as "sceptics" at any other point in history or in any other context, they'd complain. It's only now that "sceptic" has become a code for a range of far less palatable names they accept the title.
If you are diagnosed with a terminal disease and suddenly doubt this one specific part of medical science and no other they don't say you're "in scepticism". There's a whole other term for that.
