Birth of a Skeptic
The right to think for ourselves, that would seem to most of us to be one of our most fundamental rights, and yet it is one that is not only routinely impinged upon, but also one we have to fight for at a level that we may have a hard time trying to comprehend.
From the day we are born the shaping of our thoughts and minds are outsourced to others; to our parents, our priests, our teachers, to advertisers and government agents. As children our ability to fight off these influences is limited. We go to school, we seek our parents' approval, some of us go to church (or some variation thereof), and as we grow we come to see these ideas that are drilled into our skulls as 'our own'. We believe what we were taught to believe, and the price we pay if we try to deviate from that path can be downright terrifying... and as if that weren't enough there is society as a whole, insisting (and more than insisting) that we toe the line. That, and that there are quite a few unsavory characters out there harvesting the souls of those who dare question those entrenched beliefs.
Yes. stepping away from that path can be scary, and it can be dangerous. It is a minefield, and the amount of misinformation that is out there is downright terrifying, I know that from personal experience. In fact I grew up in a scientifically minded household, in one of those families in which science was the new religion, and where there were some 'fundamental truths' you just didn't question. Those were just the facts, or at least that is how they were presented to me. The problem is that over the years I have become a lot less dogmatic in that regard. I no longer trust the experts, not blindly. I listen to them, I acknowledge that they may know things I don't, but I refuse to blind myself to the existence of those experts' blind spots.
No, I don't think I'm right. Quite the contrary. In fact I take as my starting point the possibility that I might be wrong, because at the end of the day that is what being a skeptic is about: it is about eschewing our certainties and looking at the world with fresh eyes. It means trying things we don't believe in, and doing it with an open mind. It doesn't mean rejecting everything we've been told or taught, or seeing conspiracy theories under every rock, but rather it means approaching each and every question from the assumption that we don't have all the answers. It means looking at the facts, and just the facts, while trying to sidestep the background noise.
It is not an easy thing to do. It is not a popular thing to do, but the notion of finding your own path? That one is definitely worth it, and in this book I try to explain my personal journey from believing in science, to using that science as my starting point to question science.
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