Purchasing One's Atheism Cheaply

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

How many atheists here have discussed a skepticism of their own skepticism? How many of them have discussed the question of whether skepticism needs a qualifier?

I keep trying to unpack the phrase "skepticism of skepticism" and the only thing I can come up with is the idea that one should question whether skepticism should be applied? To which the answer is, of course it should, because otherwise you're in the boat of accepting all claims uncritically, which would put you in the position of simply being wrong much more than you are right.

And the truth is, you're a skeptic too, in most places. For some reason you just think that methodology should be questioned and undermined when it comes to atheism, and not when it comes to, say, claims of space whales and whatnot.

"Those a-spacewhaleists have purchased their a-spacewhaleism cheaply! Where is their intellectual rigor over whether they should be skeptical over their disbelief in space whales?!"- No one, ever.

Your reasoning is just as valid in defense of skepticism as it is against skepticism.

Being too credulous leads to accepting too many wrong claims. But being too skeptical leads to rejecting too many right claims. The pendulum swings both ways.

Just as even "non-skeptics can be skeptics, skeptics can be non-skeptical about many claims:
-That the external world is real.
-That people are people as opposed to p-zombies.
-That they are not brains in a vat.
-That skepticism is a good way to go about life.
-That their atheistic position is justified.

None of the reasons you provide actually end up supporting skepticism, at the end of the day. In fact, skepticism is not even a tenable epistemic criteria. It's just a meaningless buzzword appropriated by internet atheists that sounds plausible on the surface but as I've shown above, doesn't make skepticism a view worth holding.

PS- I'm not an advocate of the opposite of skepticism, ie blind acceptance of all beliefs. I think the whole dichotomy is typical atheist bullshit.

If you want to save the idea of skepticism, you must give it a criteria. Thus you should be skeptical of things that meet a certain criteria, and accept things that don't.

For example, if you have no criteria, you would have to be skeptical of everything. But if you have a criteria, say, that "I won't be skeptical of claims that are scientifically supported", then you won't have to be skeptical of the fact that the earth is a sphere.

This is pretty much how I figure out whether someone's atheism is logical or bullshit. And by the way, most of the atheism on this forum is based on bullshit.