The important part of skepticism is to be skeptical of your self as well as everyone else. You aren't applying enough of that sort of analysis in your evaluation.
For example, when I go down an elevator 40 floors to the parking garage to get into my car, I get out of the elevator and walk in mostly empty space. The entire 40+ floors of concrete are supported by teeeeeny tiny fucking steel beams encased in some man made concrete. I sometimes look up at the parking garage conrete and try to image an xray vision of all 40+ floors, all of the furniture, the people, the pipes, the water, the natural gas, the people taking showers and dipping into bath tubs, the piano on the music room at the top and all the excercise equipment + balcony at the very top right above me.
All of that is supported not by a giant block of concrete, but some steel beams encased in concrete that transfer all of that mass into the really shitty columns made of steel that were pile driven into the GROUND not too deep below the base of the building.
Just as I can be looking up at the 40+ floors of magic above me when I am walking to my car you should consider that our brains are not designed to comprehend the vast amounts of information that we have access to. And yet, things that don't make sense to the human mind are all around us.
I drive a car that is now almost 20 years old. It's super low mileage, not abused by me and by the previous owner and it runs perfect. I maintain it like crazy and baby it so it will last even longer because I really like it. Just thinking about humans being able to make all the the materials and each of the components in this car, put it together, make it not only work but work basically perfectly for 20 years and be able to sell it for profit ... staggers the imagination.
You are right they are lying and support your skepticism, however, our universe has cause and effect which means it is computable. A computable universe can be measured and anything that can be computed and measured can, more or less, be explored with mathematics, logic and symbolic representation. I too reject the language scientists use to describe things like space-time, but proving the earth is round is trivial, you just measure the shadow of fixed length stick in different parts of the world at a specific time of the day/year and use trigonometry to get the answer.
>You just measure the shadow of fixed length stick in different parts of the world...
That also requires independent measurement of long distances (can't rely on maps). A close sun can produce different angles as well. But then, since we accept that atmospheric lensing can make purely geometric experiments unusable (allowing us see around the curve, why can't lensing also distort those results?
>Our brains are not designed to comprehend vast amounts...
I like your skyscraper example, but I disagree with the conclusion. The aesthetic of the universe being beyond any kind of human intuition and being completely indifferent is not the result of modern science, but motivation behind it. You do not need that aesthetic to build skyscrapers, and the engineering calculations only make easier what is intuitively understood. You do not even need vast amounts of calculations if you take advantage of scale and repetition.
In fact, it is illogical than any feat of engineering or scientific discovery should give rise to that aesthetic, because those things are the result of understanding. Only one's own ignorance and compliance compel him to surrender understanding to magic. And there is a lot of people who do that else they wouldn't have pull off 9/11 and the War on Terror.
The atheist's aesthetic is propaganda. Whether the motivation behind is to gain better division of labor, or if it is the reflection of deep seated fears behind those who rather God not exist, one can speculate.
On skepticism: Skepticism is the critical analysis of new ideas in the frame and context of existing wisdom. It is why most people initially reject FE immediately. The problem is that we do not really have existing wisdom, because we live in a post-racial, 1984 clown world, where everyone is atomized and reprogrammed on an ever more rapid basis. Among the very first programming is to reject previous wisdom. They tell us traditional beliefs are outdated and the result of flawed thinking. They tell us to reject wisdom altogether, and that there is only truth in the ever changing present.
I agree that skepticism must be applied from multiple perspectives. In my post, I tried to adopt the one nowadays less frequently adopted. I am thoroughly indoctrinated in the other, and I am not convinced either way.
However, the criteria for a conspiracy theory also includes the size and strength of potential motives, because with enough resources any fraud is possible. Personally, I think the FEers win in this regard.
(post is archived)