How do you respond to criticisms of skepticism like that of Robert Anton Wilson, who labels skeptics as “irrational rationalists” and accuses skeptics of launching a “New Inquisition”?
A. First, I would say that Wilson doesn’t distinguish between a philosophical Skeptic and an ordinary skeptic. Second, I would agree with what Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World: “no skeptic compels belief….New Agers are not…being called up before criminal tribunals, nor whipped for having visions, and they are certainly not being burned at the stake” (p. 301). Being open-minded shouldn’t mean being gullible. There is little virtue in being so uncritical as to consider every idea the equal of every other idea. Reasonable people learn from experience and distinguish ideas that have failed from those that have passed rigorous empirical tests. Reasonable people don’t believe things just because they are possibly true. Reasonable people distinguish probable from improbable ideas and notions. Reasonable people trust impersonal testing such as control group, double-blind studies, and have learned from experience the dangers of wishful thinking, communal reinforcement, confirmati
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