Tag Archives: Scepticism

What Is Truth?

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I’m sceptical (or skeptical if you’re in the US). It’s a legacy of my years of believing the promises of Christianity. Preachers, pastors, Bible study leaders told me for 25 years that the promises of the bible, of Jesus himself, were all true. And like a fool I believed them. Jesus had made a new creature out of me; he loved me; he was guiding my life; he was returning soon; I’d be resurrected; I’d live in heaven forever… and on and on.

What a preposterous set of propositions! It took my Great Realisation, my own personal revelation that there was no God, to make me see how ridiculous they were.

It is this that left me with a legacy of scepticism. If I’d been misled all this time by people I respected and admired, what else was I accepting as true that very well might not be? I wasn’t going to be fooled again and so began to question practically everything I was told by authorities, experts and the media. If it seemed ‘off’, as we say these days, not quite right or too good (or bad) to be true I asked, ‘Who says so?’, ‘How do they know this?’, ‘What is the evidence?’, ‘Do they jump to conclusions or is their reasoning sound?’, ‘Why should I believe what they say?’ It’s exhausting, I assure you, having to search out the evidence – the primary sources of information – and to sift through it, recognising any bias that has been imposed on it. It’s either this or I must accept without question that everything I’m told is true. I can’t do that any more.

Here are a few examples of claims that I’ve been sceptical of on the recent past:

We are being guided by the science, said politicians during Covid to ensure compliance with whatever lockdown measures were being imposed. Did this really just mean was ‘we are being guided by our interpretation of some rather suspect data’? It became clear after we emerged from the hysteria surrounding the pandemic that this was the case.

Tens of thousands will die of Covid unless you comply: this based on computer predictions which turned out to be very far from accurate: the suspect data that ‘guided’ politicians.

A woman can have a penis. A man can have cervix. Yes, our politicians told us this during our recent fixation with transgenderism. Whatever you think of people changing sex, these two statements, designed to change hearts and minds, if not penises and cervixes, are patently false. Whatever was guiding those who said such things, it certainly wasn’t ‘the science’.

No more irresponsible, undeliverable promises. So said the Prime Minister exactly a year ago. I’m not going to be sceptical or cynical about this. I feel sure it’ll turn out to be true. Is he implying though that promises made earlier than this were indeed ‘irresponsible and undeliverable’. Surely not.

We will not raise taxes on working people (and energy prices will fall by £300 in the long term), Labour politicians, now the government, said only last year in an attempt to gain our votes. I was sceptical about this, as with much they said, and for the first time in many years Labour did not get my vote. Taxes have increased considerably for working people and everyone else in the last year and are set to rise again this week. The price of energy has risen too, by 18%, and will do so again in January. A £300 reduction by 2030, if it happens at all, is not really going to offset this by much. This was all very predictable; since when do politicians tell us the truth in order to get us to vote for them?

Anything Donald Trump says. Insert your selection here.

The NHS is the envy of the world. Pundits and politicians are very fond of this one. They like to add too that the NHS is underfunded. But the NHS is expensive, management heavy and wasteful. Is it really the envy of the world, and if it is, so what, when it’s constantly in crisis at home?

The BBC is the envy of the world. It is impartial and balanced. Is it? A number of independent reviews have determined that it has its own agendas and biases. During lockdowns it fuelled hysteria and now contributes to climate change panic. Rather than reporting facts, it tells us too often what we’re meant to think about issues. It has also been rocked over the past dozen years by sleaze and scandals.

Islam is a religion of peace. So many questions about this one. Many Western politicians have claimed something like it. President George W. Bush did, shortly after 9/11. Perhaps ordinary Muslims are committed to peace but there are many Islamists (the term now used for Muslim extremists) are evidently not: as well as 9/11 there have been acts of Islamist terrorism in London (7th July 2005), at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, in Manchester, the slaughter in the street of an off duty soldier, the massacre of Israeli young people in October 2023, the killing of Christians and others in Nigeria.. Is ‘Allahu Akbar’ really a cry of peace?

We can halt or reverse the climate changes we ourselves have caused. Can we? Who says? (Greta Thunberg, yes, but no actual scientists that I can find.) We can perhaps mitigate and slow down the change, and we should. But the climate will continue to change. Are these changes solely the fault of us humans – we’re contributing to the pace of change, certainly – when the climate has been in constant change from time immemorial?

I was accused of trying to be a maverick in a recent comment on an old post. Honestly, I’m not. It’s more a case of ‘once bitten, twice shy’; I’m not going to be told ever again what to think, especially not by those who don’t present good reasons why I should (I’ve Jesus to thank for this). Everything needs to be questioned, otherwise our minds are not our own. Be sceptical.

Neil’s Third Letter, to the Sceptics

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Dear Sceptic,

I understand, I really do. Some of your explanations for what’s going on in the world are way out there. Some of them, in fact, are absolutely preposterous. But, I know how you got there. You’ve spent so long being misled, deceived and, yes, let’s face it, lied to by politicians and some of the media that you’ve come up with your own explanations for things. You’ve suspected in some cases that the establishment’s frequent misdirection and disinformation amounts to conspiracy, and certainly there have been conspiracies of silence in recent years (we’ll get to some examples soon). Unfortunately, this has meant those same authorities have been able to say that your views can be dismissed as mere conspiracy theories. You should be cancelled. Certainly some of your more way out theories – satanic overlords, faked moon-landings and microchip vaccines – need to be. Unfortunately this has also meant any reasonable arguments you’ve arrived at that run contrary to the prevailing narrative have also been airily dismissed as the work of nut-jobs and thrown in the dumpster along with all the whacky stuff.

You were right, it turned out, about Covid19. It was manufactured in a Chinese laboratory, partially funded by the US, from where it escaped in 2019. Even the US State Department has accepted that this is the most likely explanation of the virus’s origin and has asked Chinese authorities to release the relevant data (you can guess how this request was met.)

Look where it got you during the pandemic when you argued for the virus’s lab based origins. Despite the evidence you presented you were labelled conspiracy theorists, were cancelled and hurled in the ‘not worth your time’ trash can. It’s still happening now, because no-one can be allowed to upset the Chinese authorities when it could mean research labs in the West could lose Chinese sponsorship.

You’ve pointed out too that the UK government’s efforts to eliminate the country’s less than 1% contribution to to global emissions is futile. At £22 billion, its plan to ‘capture’ carbon waste is both ridiculously expensive and pointless: carbon capture has never been successfully achieved by any country that has previously attempted it. Never mind, the British taxpayer will fund this particular tilt at windmills (no pun intended); you can be dismissed as climate-change deniers, purveyors of false information as well as conspiracy theorists. A three-in-one success!

You’ve suggested that the current narrative on immigration doesn’t hold water. The government says we need present levels of immigration to fill job vacancies, sustain the economy and fund others’ welfare benefits and pensions. You’ve highlighted the unfounded assumptions inherent in this strategy, pointing out it has failed to improve the economy. You’ve suggested too that in the long term it will necessitate even more immigration to fund those currently entering the country when they draw welfare and claim their pensions. It’s a ponzi scheme writ large that merely kicks the can down the road. And for your trouble you’re labelled far-right, racist and Islamophobic (even when you don’t mention Muslims). You can always tell when those who seek to control the narrative have no counter argument; they’ll subject you to name calling, political slurs and seek to censure your views. Get with the narrative or else!

I could go on –

Question the idea that people alive today are somehow responsible for the slave trade 300 years ago: racist!

Express the view on the deleterious effects of the trans-movement on women’s rights and safety: transphobic!

Ask whether the plonkers who make stupid comments on social media should receive longer prison sentences than rapists and thugs: hate-filled bigot!

– but I won’t. Often, sceptical free thinker, you don’t get it right and others are taken in by your more whackadoodle theories. Unfortunately when you do have a point, backed by sound argument and evidence, it can easily be dismissed by lumping you in with the whackier of your brethren, and ultimately by silencing you and the platform on which you write. That’s Britain today (or is that just a conspiracy theory?)

Yours,

The Apostle Neil