I have recently begun to consume a lot of skeptical media such as the podcasts Skeptoid and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. I like these shows because they have a slightly different worldview than I am used to and because they have a lot of interesting science content. Skeptoid focuses primarily on discussing events or concepts to see what explanations fit the facts and known science. The skeptics guide contains a variety of sections, mostly composed of science discussions or skeptical opinions about current news stories. When I say skeptical opinions, I mean that they attempt to deduce an explanation that fits science and the facts and do not feel that supernatural phenomenon or unmeasurable forces need be included for a full explanation of the situation. I think the colloquial interpretation of skeptic means more that the person is judgemental, negative, and doubtful about some large part of our experience. This perception ignores the foundational tenants of skepticism making it seem more bleak than I think it is.
It is somewhat ironic that the increase in my consumption of and agreement with much of this media goes nearly hand-in-hand with my own recommitment to attending church and exploring my own spiritual life more fully. It is still unclear to me if the two factors of my life are compensating for one another or if they are just merely compatible in a way that certainly the skeptics community does not agree with.
When I was in a writing workshop, my senior year of college, the first assignment we had was to write down our favorite book and explain why it was our favorite on a piece of paper. As I am wont to do, I wrote down my actual favorite book as opposed to one that I actually wanted to discuss or defend [once at my family's Christmas celebration we were asked to write our favorite Christmas song down and then asked to lead a singing of it. I chose my favorite song, which I didn't know the lyrics to, and which was too obscure for any of my family to know]. I wrote Stephen J. Gould's Rocks of Ages as my favorite book. It has been many years since I read it, but a core argument of the book was essentially: Science is good at answering some questions and Religion is good at answering other questions. When they attempt to answer questions that are in the other's domain, there are typically problems. He called this idea: Non-Overlapping Magisteria or NOMA. This idea has been criticized by other scientists but I found it quite interesting and compelling. I had never had severe concerns that science and religion were conflicting in my real life. If I believe in an all powerful diety, then I do not know why many Christians (typified by the young-earth creationists) feel the necessity to defend God.
I listen to quite a lot of podcasts (I am subscribed to 33) one which is called Intelligence Squared US. It is a debate program that typically addresses points of law or policy. In the most recent program, however, the item on the docket was "Death Is Not Final" When I first saw the title, my first thought was that this was not a topic that is really a debatable topic. I believe that it is not a topic that we can know until we die and that it does not fit within the magestria of science. The slant the debate ended up taking (I think agreed upon beforehand by the debaters) was the validity of claims from those that have experienced near-death experiences as proof of an afterlife. Those arguing for the motion were the man that literally coined the term near-death experience (NDE) and a man that experienced one. Those against were a physicist and academic neurologist (Stephen Novella who also hosts the Skeptics Guide to the Universe). From this panel makeup you can see that the debate was always going to be about near-death experiences and their scientific foundation as opposed to other conceptions of the afterlife. At one point in the debate, Raymond Moody (author of the book on NDEs) said that the debate should really be about philosophy and not science but he received pushback from all sides on that line. The moderator also rejected a few questions (you can hear them in the unedited audio/video) because they would not progress the science based question.
I am fairly skeptical of near death experiences and have been for a long time so I was aligned with the opposing side from the beginning. This led to a bit of a conundrum when I decided to send a link to the debate to my father. I believe in an afterlife though I was against the side for this motion because I think NDE's are not a valid source of information. So when I was writing the email to my father (a deeply religious person who believes in NDEs) I wasn't sure how to frame the recommendation.
I ended up listening to the podcast version, which has edited down and the full unedited version which was nearly twice the length of the edited version, within a few days of each other. Even now I am not sure if I listened to the unedited one because I was overly interested in the episode or if it was just more obvious that some content had been removed. Regardless, my feelings about the debate have improved from being totally dismissive of the topic to thinking that it was a really interesting debate though with an inaccurate title. I insulated myself from too much personal attachment to the topics recalling Gould's ideas of NOMA but also my personal beliefs weren't particularly attacked in this debate.
It is kind of ironic that, especially for podcasts, I look for the science perspective on most topics but I have little personal, spiritual doubt still.
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