FAQ

Ideally, we hope to decide degree of yes and no according to the firmness of the facts that we are standing for. Of course, since we are not perfect human beings, we, too, have some prejudges and biased views. This may lead us to stronger denial than the facts we are standing.

We know this may happen to us, and it is part of our activities to figure out how and why this happen to us. If we see some prejudges in us, we know it is important to mend it. It is a valuable part of our activities.

You can compare naysayer and us by asking same question on supernatural matters. The result may be same, but you can see the different procedures and you can see we have more information and consideration on the matter on our side.

If we do not have enough facts to consider, the answer may become “unknown”. Since our aim is not getting yes/no answers, we do not think suspending the conclusion is no good. More important thing is to respect the fact than get some answers.

Naysayer sometime is tolerant to unreasonable denial. Sceptics are not. This again, we do not seek negative answers toward supernatural matters. What we seek is reasonable way of description.

We skeptics are likely to deny each phenomenon but do not deny completely generalized events. For example, we may draw conclusions that “the performance of Uri Geller is not interaction of unknown power” and “Hundredth Monkey phenomenon is a lie” but we never say, “It is impossible that any kind of spirits may interact with outside world at micro level” or “All magic would not exist”.

Anyway, if the critical result mentioned by skeptics is turned out to be wrong, we skeptics would gladly change the opinion.

Aliens are visiting the Earth and often crash (from physics to biology, there are so many treasure to be searched); nuclear war had happened in super ancient time; mind powers of human beings can block the gravity; If these were proved to be true, it would stir up our intellectual curiosity just same as the time delay based on special theory of relativity and double helix of DNA!

After all, to skeptics, deny something means to remove the phoney tricks and it is not ultra conservatives nor get rid of heretical science. Though it is very small expectation, we are anticipating the existence of supernatural phenomenon.

• *do not deny completely generalized events
  The attitude is differ by skeptics, but we ASIOS are skeptics closely related to Secular Humanism like Carl Sagan and Dawkins, and because of it, we do not promote dogmatic refusal theory.

Skeptical stances disclaim the unshaken dogma and absolute true, but we also do not accept easy relativism that claims anything would be all right. We are not philosophical skeptics that the conclusion should be suspended forever and we are not agnostics.

Skeptics’s value that “alternate if it was mistake” cannot be separated with our attitude that even if we made our best effort we must accept the possibilities that there can be still some mistake.

If conspiriologist whose stance is not possible to disproof call him or her self a skeptics, his or her idea is not skeptical because this person refuse to accept mistakes and not making enough effort to store knowledge that might be true. Skeptics put strict criteria to the knowledge and still hold humiliation.

Human beings make many mistakes. Skeptics pay their best effort to not to make mistakes, but there are always possibilities to make mistakes. We realize this fact. Therefore, we absolutely need to alternate our opinion if we found out our mistakes. This is the good faith to the fact and belief skeptics have.

• *Intellectual ethics that trying to be honest to the fact means, if it would bring you a peace in your mind to believe the wrong idea, it is better to know the fact based on evidence and accept this fact.
• *Easy relativism mentioned here is the idea that mixes truth and untruth saying, “There are no absolute facts. If the whole society believes that is the fact. Fact is just relative matters that changes depending on the situation. Therefore, anything can be fact and vies versa”

Some complain us that we skeptics don’t understand the dreams and romance.

“I thought map of Piri Reis was romantic, but the skeptics only can doubt or deny the map of the Antarctica drawn by Piri Reis. What hidebound, stupid and stubborn people! They are poor people with out the romance and dream. I think being romantic is mach better.”

If you prefer fiction, there are stories and novels far more interesting than a supernatural phenomenon like O-parts. People complain that the skeptics lack the romance and dream, but aren’t they prefer the supernatural phenomenon and feel the romance and dream because there are possibilities and expectations that these are nonfictions and could be true?

When the expectations for the truth are disproved, these people say that there are no dreams and romances. What is important to them? Aren’t they denying truth for their sweet dreams? Can we call this attitude with full of dreams and romances?

We are searching truth that we can feel real the dreams and romances. we must at first take fraud away to find the real romances. If you are to find a real jewel buried in a number of cobbles, first thing you must do is to take the cobbles away one by one, checking that these cobbles are not the jewels we are looking for. You would not call yourself the one who don’t understand dreams and romance of jewel searchers each time you throw out a cobble.

For example, the MJ-12 documents famous in Roswell incidence are now revealed counterfeit documents based on various evident. But if you still believe MJ-12 documents are real, despite of all these evidences, are you not obstinate?

Let us discuss more delicate examples. For example, in the area of parapsychology, they now carry very strict experiments. Watching these experiments, Skeptics may think that macro PK can not happen, but there are rational basis to continue the experiments on micro PK. We do not say “There are no psychic power macro or micro, it is nonsense to think about it” like most of naysayer. We also wouldn’t declare “all PK is proved macro and micro,” like most of yes-sayer.

Our attitude is not stubborn. We think we are pliable than naysayer and yes-sayer.

We are disapproving these people who call themselves Skeptics, but just repeating laughter and attack to the supernatural phenomenon. We think, if you are a skeptic, you should make a good research on the target at the first place, and then carry rational criticism openly showing the entire basis for that review.

Sometimes people think our critic based on the fact as ridicule and aggressive opinion regardless of the content because of those who are just abusive and belligerent call themselves Skeptics. This is not what we wish and we are very sorry about it.

Please look at our critic from the point of view if we are indicating a firm and rational bases. We hope we should not be laughing or attacking the anti-opinion without any reasonable fact that our opinions are based on.

We skeptics make effort to get to the truth of the issue using the scientific method. We don’t use science because we believe that the science is all mighty and unquestioning. It is because we know from our experience that the scientific method works well. Prophecy might be the easiest example. Science foretells where the mars will be in 100 years precisely from now using its theory.

Maybe you think, “There is no wonder that scientific prophecy come true. It is natural.” Scientific theory is made as it mach to the natural laws. We think the naturalness of scientific theory is something very important. Other than scientific theory, is there any system that can make the prophecy that come true without any wonder?

Science maybe far from perfection. But it is the most successful method that we can use to know the truth of matters, and at the same time, the most confirmed method that it is successful to know the truth. We can’t even think about any method other than scientific method to pursuit the truth. It is out of our imagination.

If understanding all about scientific methods, then still there is an approach better than science, we will not hesitate to use that approach. We are dwelling on the fact and not on the method called science.

We don’t think we can obtain faultless and perfect truth. Even if we obtained such a truth, we think we can’t recognize it as a perfect truth. In this stance, we are close to philosophic skepticism. However if this type of attitude is a reality, we don’t think this enlightenment would help us to solve problems of our world. Rather, this enlightenment takes our eyes from solving realistic issues forever.

We believe we can reach real truth little by little by taking off the example which is not likely to be true and embrace the example which is more likely to be true. We use various criteria to do this; are there enough bases? Is it unreasonable or not? Our aim is not to doubt, but straight-ahead evaluation based on facts.

First of all, scientifically speaking, psychic power and the “The Message From Water” have different character and have to be treated differently.

Possibilities are may not be high, but psychic power is treated by scientific research, using scientific methodology to see if it exists in reality. Experiments are continued because researchers accept “if the psychic power exist it could be proved by science” as premise. Science of psychic power is called parapsychology. The researchers of parapsychology believe that psychic power can be solved by scientific method.

For “The Message from Water”, if the influence that “The Message from Water” postulate really exist, that can be checked by the scientific experiment. “The Message from Water” does something like experiment and it may look like science, but from the true eyes of science, these are not proper experiment at all. This can’t be solved by science? No, this is not science at all. And let say if the influence exist, other experiment of water would not go as well as they are going now.

So the situation varies case by case. The most important part of this question is what “scientifically solved” mean is. We don’t know by what means you are saying “It can’t be solved by today’s science”. Our answer would be different by the meaning of your question.

There are many steps for scientific investigation. Here, let us set them into four; the first step is “confirmation of the phenomenon”. Here, we make sure if the alleged phenomenon really exist or not. The second step is “confirmation of relation between causes and phenomenon”. Here, we check the alleged cause and alleged phenomenon are in covariant relationship. The third step is “confirmation of cause and effect logic”. We check if there exist real cause and effect logic between known cause and the result. The fourth step is “investment of mechanism”. We check how the cause and effect occur.

Let us think about supernatural phenomenon. At first step, story that is not fact drops off. In case of supernatural phenomenon, it often happens that there are only stories and no real fact exists. Fictional horror stories are the case.

At second step, natural phenomenon that has no relation to special cause drops off. The phenomenon itself has no wonder. Good example is the claim that “if you concentrate you can erase the clouds”.

What drops off at step 3 is the case “different reality was the cause of supernatural phenomenon”. For example, something thought to be a poltergeist was caused by vibration of construction site of neighborhood. The house was vibrating sympathetically. You may be surprised but it is difficult than you think to clear step 3. If the phenomenon clear step 3, then it could be classified as supernatural phenomenon. Exceptionally, sometimes at step 4, it becomes clear that the phenomenon had not passed step 3.

Now you know what is “solved scientifically”. Then think about what you are saying “not solved by science”. You must divide the status not examined by science and status that can’t be solved by science clearly.

Please refer to “Q The science is not all mighty, don’t you know?” for the reason we use science to search the truce.

We have to first know what you mean by religion, because the idea of religion varies in a wide range and it can’t be treated as one. It is a difficult question what religion means. So let us speak most generally, based on these premise.

We believe, originally, religion and occultism also had searched the reality of nature. In this meaning, they had same aim as science. However, religion and occultism had had a disadvantage to chase the objective facts because they thought a great deal of what humans felt, thought, believed and how humans should be.

In the contrast, science put aside human happiness and salvation for the meantime and specialized to search objective fact. Thus science evolved into the method fitted to figure truths and facts.

When we chase fact, selecting science is just matching right method with the right job, isn’t it?

Concerning laughing, each skeptic has their own ideas depending on their characteristics. Someone laugh when it is really fun. Some laugh a strategic laughter and other may mock.

For example, like story of Nyantros, letter five on the five thousand yen note symbolizes the Nyantros beating Japanese with straight shots and hook shots, is really fun and you would laugh whether you are skeptics or not. May be this is not the case you are asking for.

Sometimes make the comedy out of pseudo science is more effective to criticize irrational ideas than presenting precise research reports. Some skeptics may use laugh with that kind of strategy. One laughed at don’t feel good, but to strike back, you should look at the basis these are criticized and discuss these. We do not agree with mock, but what you should do is same; take a look at the basis of criticizm or denial. To discuss the theme of your claim that “Skeptics are repeating same faults”, we must first know on what basis your claim is done.

If you would like to claim “Skeptics are repeating same faults”, please do not look upon the examples of well known scientists of the past. The point is how your claim is based on hard evidences. When you could prove your evidences are good enough to think about, then the skeptics that make fun of you are laughed at.