Christoph introduces a brilliant idea - the viability threshold of life which is understood as the amount and rate of mutability in the organism and the environment - make it too little and the energy present (or rather vice versa) does not even allow reproduction, make it too much and the amount of random new insertions is too great to bear meaningful sembalce to the parent organism.
Where am I going with this? To the heated debate between the religious and the skeptical. To why there seems to be a divide that cannot be crossed or breached without sacrificing something thought valuable and to why, perhaps, there should be no divide at all.
The analogy I wish to make here is that skepticism is the mutability and the viability threshold remains a viability threshold for life. In this view we will see that too much skepticism and we get an inert environment - lifelessness and, conversely, with too little skepticism we get a boiling brew of loon - divorcement from reality. This view also tells us that if we are to live, we must remain within the viability threshold's boundaries and that implies that we should combine skepticism with a sort of gullibility, an ability to make assumptions that allow for complex mental function.
Let's look at what kind of mental environment we can expect to see in the habitable zone below the viability threshold.
The critically skeptical - I must admit I do not know of people of this type, but we might expect individuals that are inherently unable to trust their senses, other people and most forms of inquiry. Perhaps an acute version of these characteristics results in paranoia. So mildly paranoid people that have developed ways to verify their unsubstantiated feelings of mistrust and cope with the state of "overskepticismization". Needless to say, this is a boundary condition and is critically close to being maladaptive. Notice that it could be possible to claim that paranoia is in fact total gullibility - the inability to critically analyze notions of total distrust.
The cynical - considered by some to be the later stage of the life-cycle of idealism and often associated with bitterness. It seems that this type of mental environment is a product of a certain maturation, an experience of life with both highs and lows. A naturally tuned, intuitive, organic skepticism. With quirks and duct-tape patches. This is probably the natural state of all old-school skeptics - they have been through life, been gullible, paid for it and vowed never to go back. This type is moderately adjusted, however, problems might arise from the principled approach to skepticism which is limited only to past experiences.
The methodical - most scientists fit this category, as well as people who are not scientists per se, but who use the scientific method, most importantly the methodological naturalism part. It differs from cynicism in that it is based not on extensive personal experience, but on an established method - a canon of experiences and ways to think about things with the express goal to arrive at reliable results that allow high-precision activities, like designing a nuclear reactor or launching a satellite into a distant planets orbit. It is important to realize that just as cynics can be mistaken due to the personality and limitations of their natural skepticism, methodological skepticism suffers a reverse flaw - it can be misapplied due to the fact that it is burrowed knowledge and people sometimes are clumsy at integrating it into their thinking. We see this when young Earth creationists try to do "science". I would claim that based solely on science's unsurpassed ability to produce quality results it is reasonable to assert that methodical skepticism is the most adapted mode of skepticism out there.
The open minded - probably the most mixed group. It can contain persons that have some methodical training, but who feel dissatisfied with its inability to give precise answers about the supernatural world like it can about the natural world. Or it can contain people who have little methodical skepticism training, but who also have little interest in other forms of inquiry - perhaps a sub-group of "not-so-open-minded" is apt. This group often trades the precision of method to the all-inclusiveness of new-age gibberish and the old line of "there's more to life then evidence" (no, there isn't).
The religious on Sundays - this, I believe, is the most disseminate mental environment on Earth. It is a direct reflection of most societies on Earth - an which only 10% are atheist (and which means that all atheists are gay for the statistically-illiterate). This means that 90% of the world's 7 billion people, that's 6.3 billion people, are exposed to religious dogma to the level to ascribe a particular faith to themselves, at least until adolescence. This type of mental environment is not without skepticism, of course - a great deal of skepticism is encouraged against everything that could threaten said faith which usually is labelled as sin. Consequently Abrahamic religions have knowledge, sex, wealth and morality - things that any sane man should care deeply about - labelled as sins to foster an environment that punishes skepticism. Luckily, a considerable amount of people realize that what they were taught as children strains credulity when they expose themselves to information outside their dogma - usually with friends, social groups, universities and lately, the web.
The fundamental - this is the critical state of gullibility beyond which all relevant ties to reality disappear. Clearly, it is inconceivable how a person with modest skeptical thinking skills (emphasis on skills) could be fundamental - his training would forever cut off the possibility of taking a single collection of ancient text at face value, much less to be divinely inspired. I would argue that for a person to be fundamental about something, there must be a peculiar union of absolute lack of skepticism towards a text or a set of ideas and an enduring, practically live or die type skepticism towards anything and everything that contradicts said text or set of ideas. Clearly, this results in a critical state because such a person would be forever at odds with reality and the natural world understood to even the most basic level. For the text would no doubt contain a creation myth, value set, social and moral rules and an extended discussion on reality understood as a manifestation of the divine, which would inevitably be incompatible with some if not most facts known to science. This is how the theological method canon differs from the scientific - it is a honed way to to think about things, however, there is no reference point, no experiment, no way to falsify the results. And it is simple to explain why - if religion is constructed by men, it is no surprise the texts show a surprising lack of insight even to as basic an idea as the existence of unseen evildoers that can be dispelled by washing hands - the germs.
We have examined the spectrum of predominant mental environments found in the world as a series of skeptical adaptation of varying degrees. I think a paraboloid graph would be fitting. What we can take away from this is that while we should surely strive to get our skepticism dose just right for high-precision thinking, perhaps we can rest comfortably even removed from the peak of ultimate skeptical fitness while preventing the critical excesses of paranoia and fundamentalism.
Discuss!
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