After 17 entries yet only 7 comments, you might be wondering why I haven't done my usual quit-blogging thing.  (Isn't it cute how I use the second person, as if I have regular readers?)  Well, I'll tell you why, hopefully in a series of Why I'm Doing This entries.  This first one will be rather specific, as in why I'm writing this particular blog.  I anticipate that later entries will discuss the overall benefits of skepticism, scientific literacy, critical thinking, and other goodies I'm trying to promote here.

'Leaders'?  Where We're Going We Don't Need 'Leaders'

Note that I didn't use the phrase lead by example in the title of this entry.  Right off the bat, I'm not so arrogant that I think people should consider me a "leader" in their life.  Beyond that, skeptics can't really have authoritative leaders, kind of by definition.  That's one of the catch-22s of the skeptical movement, and why it's pretty damn impressive that it ever progressed and organized itself enough to warrant the term "movement."  Corralling self-proclaimed independent thinkers has been justifiably compared to herding cats.

The third, and most important, reason I didn't use the word "leader" is because I don't want to make you think the way I do.  I don't want you to parrot my arguments against homeopathy or creationism; if something interests you, I want you to look into it for yourself and come to your own conclusions.  This cannot be emphasized enough: skepticism is a method, not a result.

It's actually even deeper than that: I don't want you to be a skeptic if you don't want to be one.  I of course feel you should be a skeptic (or at least have some skeptical tendencies) because I personally think that it's a good way to view the world.  On the other hand, I'm sure you think your way of viewing the world is pretty damn good as well.  But, if you indeed do want to incorporate some skepticism into your life, I want to act as an example for you.

You might wonder why I feel that this is necessary.  As humans, we do a lot of things merely because everybody does it, often without giving our actions even a passing thought.  This isn't a criticism, because I think a lot of it is subconscious: why even consider not doing something if it's natural for everyone to just do it?  I think that simply witnessing someone going against the flow inspires people to think about things they'd previously just rolled with.  I'm not talking about changing peoples' minds, per se, but instead rousing people out of society's entrenched patterns and encouraging them to do what they truly want to do.

How 'Bout Some Examples?

That last paragraph was getting a bit bullshitty, so let's ground this discussion with a few examples.  These two instances show how my friends inspired me to think about something I'd just resigned myself to doing previously.  Ultimately, I decided that I would do what I actually wanted to do, rather than just roll with what I'd assumed everybody does.  The examples are of a religious/nonreligious nature, which is unfortunate because I think skepticism and religiosity/atheism/agnosticism/non-theism/etc-ism are separate issues.  (See Entry 13, unless of course you're a triskaidekaphobe, in which case we'll talk later.)  However, these are the clearest examples I can think of to demonstrate what I'm rambling about.  Before we begin, let me emphasize that my friends did not change my mind, they merely acted as examples of people who had questioned the things I'd taken for granted.

I had always assumed that everyone got married in churches, unless, of course, you were (a) intoxicated, (b) within the city limits of Las Vegas, and (c) there was an Elvis impersonator nearby asking if you promised to love this woman tender, love her true.  I don't remember the details of the conversation I had about this; in fact, it might not have even been a single conversation.  (Memory is surprisingly fallible, which is the main reason why the plural of anecdote isn't data.)  At some point I was talking with some people about marriage and made it clear that "I guess I'll get married in a church."  I was even planning to go Episcopalian, because I knew I didn't want to go through the confirmation process to get married in a Catholic church.

When my friends expressed surprise at this (they knew I didn't go to church), I happily returned their surprise because I really thought everyone got married in a church.  The fact that some of them weren't going to get married in a church opened my eyes to that possibility, and in due course I decided against it myself.  They didn't change my mind, as such; they just showed me that I could act on what I actually thought and felt, rather than just slogging through what I'd resigned myself to without thinking about it.

I had also assumed that everyone got their children baptized.  As far as I knew, everyone who wasn't Jewish or another non-Christian religion had been baptized as an infant.  When I mentioned this to my girlfriend, she balked at the comment and asked why I would baptize my child if I didn't believe in the religion myself.  I lamely replied something about how everybody got baptized, and she promptly listed off some people we knew who weren't baptized.  I remember that my knee-jerk reaction was surprise, as if there needed to be some kind of explicit reason why you shouldn't baptize your children.  It turns out that there wasn't a special reason my friends weren't baptized; their parents simply weren't religious people.  Since I also am not religious, I took a step back and realized that I shouldn't baptize my children.  If they decide to pursue religion later in life, I'm sure they could go through whatever rituals their faith dictates then.

"Everybody Does It"?  Not Quite!

And there we have it: one reason why I'm writing this blog.  Don't feel pressured to visit a chiropractor because all your coworkers see one, or check your horoscopes because they're printed in every newspaper out there, or doubt evolution because an alarming percentage of Americans do.  You know someone who doesn't feel that way at all: me.  The every in "everybody does it" isn't as accurate as you might think.

Also for the record, I meant it when I said I don't want you to be a skeptic if you don't want to be one.  I don't print out pamphlets or proselytize on street corners; that's what the other guys do.  I would certainly like you to think for yourself and come to your own conclusions, but I'm not going to preach skeptical inquiry and critical thinking at you.  However, if certain popular notions start smelling a bit fishy to you, hopefully you'll remember that you know someone else who agrees that there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.