Awesome analysis from another blog, on skeptics.

This guy subjects a skeptical investigation of a near death experience to the same sort of analysis skeptics generally use of such things. Points out some great stuff I've been saying for years, particularly about most atheist arguments on religion. Check it out, it's a really great read. Five part series, and you can get to all the parts from the title link.

One thing I think a lot of skeptics/atheists miss is the idea of arguments. For example, I don't really care about near death experiences. They're not really a part of my spirituality or anything, I don't need them to be there as evidence for some belief I happen to hold. But when you attack this sort of skeptical inquiry, they insist you do so because you need it for your religion or whatever, when I'm much more interested in demonstrating the fact that the skeptics often use the exact same types of arguments, or in some cases the exact same arguments, that they accuse religious/paranormal believers of using. They attack these arguments as sloppy and then turn right around and use the arguments themselves. So as the author says, it's not like they don't have biases and agendas and all. I wish we'd all admit that. I mean, I don't really have an agenda, as such, if I tell you about what I believe, I'm not trying to convert you or something. But obviously I think it happens to be the case, so I do have the agenda, so to speak, of putting that out there, whether I'm selling it or not.

Thought processes fascinate me, particularly in this case, where people are violently against something and then turn around and do it themselves. Skeptics are very much into evidence, yet you can see from this article their arguments often contain precious little of it. So the exact same process they abuse because it maintains the fallacy of somebody's religion/paranormal belief seems to be just fine, when it backs their particular anti-religious/paranormal prejudice/worldview. That's sort of harsh, but I think it's fairly true in the end. Of course, I freely admit to having a prejudice towards religion, and just like the skeptics, I think it's well-founded. So again, I wouldn't so much have a problem with it, if they were honest. But they hide behind the veil of supposed "science" and "reason" and "rationality". I think this article goes a long way toward demonstrating just how false that is.