I keep wondering, Angelo, why you are trying so hard to get people here on these forums to "see where you're coming from" or "where your at" in regards to your "skepticism". It's like you are in some way uncomfortable with your own position or your methods of treating any of the subjects that you have been called out on.
As for the video that you have kindly supplied, I tend to agree with Walter in his assessment. Plait, it seems to me, is trying to organise or promote debunking as a popular movement against subjects that they fundamentally do not believe in. Like it's not enough for the individual to make up their own mind on any given subject but that pseudo science, UFOs, Ghosts, Psychics or the belief thereof must be eliminated from society altogether and that individuals are not responsible enough to exist alongside these cancerous elements of our thinking. They must be stamped out at all costs!
In his talk I keep hearing words and phrases like "movement" and "active skepticism" or "practising the art" and "what is the goal of the movement"? Why do sceptics/debunkers have to have a "movement"? Are you part of this "movement"? Are you trying to tell us, Angelo, that you as a subsciber to the theories and methods of Phil Plait and others is to actively infiltrate forums like the Paracast and make it one of your goals to vigorously debunk any of the subjects as the tenets of the "movement" dictates? Like some kind of debunker super spy mole?
Furthermore, is it one of the goals of his "scepticalmovement" to have his people infiltrate forums like the "Paracast" forums and spread the "word"?
The way HE comes across to me is like a passive aggressive zealot who can't accept that some people are receptive to the idea that there are other points of view in this world diametrically opposed to the ones that he subscribes to and not only that but he contends that these ideas must be stamped out "..to show people why they are wrong".
All he is doing is to try and accomplish his goal by being more passive and non war or warrior-like by using a more Ghandi-like intellectual approach.
Why does he think that a persons ideas, if they fall into the realms of pseudo science or the paranormal etc., must be actively discouraged or debunked by an organised "movement"? Who cares if people think like that. It certainly doesn't concern me to the point that i must rise up and go forth and eliminate these logical atheists. His ideas and those of this so called organised movement pre dispose that people cannot live alongside concepts and thought processes without being shielded from or protected by people such as him and his team of sceptodebunkers. (How insulting!!!).
Personally I believe that most critical thinking people, which includes the vast majority of us here, are more than able to discern what is crap and what is not. We don't need people like Plait et al to tell us what to do even if he and his movement had to right to anyway.
I feel sorry for you if Plait and others like him are representative of the way you think about or approach some of the subjects such as discussed on these forums. It's akin to a passive, aggressive, evangelistic, fundamentalist dislike of alternative opinion such as the witch hunts of the catholic church in the middle ages or McCarthyism of the 1950s. Just because Plait, Shermer, Randi or you don't believe in santa claus or UFOs or ghosts doesn't mean that others have no right to believe in them if they want to.
If you are asking us to understand where you are coming from then i believe that you must also understand that people here or elsewhere are not always, if at all, going to agree with you and will actively challenge you in regards to your concepts and thought processes.
