I was raised Catholic in England. I realized at around age 15 that there was not actually any good reason for believing in God, so I stopped.

But I've always been interested in the influence the Bible has on the lives of people. It's really a mish-mash of mixed messages, often quite horrific messages in the Old Testament. But many people claim to use it as the foundation of their philosophical and moral world view. Yet I feel that the most effective argument against Christianity for many people comes from a full reading of the Bible from beginning to end, so you can really get a sense for what's going on in there. The stories on exchristian.com have several examples of this.

What I was wondering, is what the Bible's advice or opinions on Skepticism and Debunking might be. So I had a trawl. I'd noticed in 2 Peter 3:3 that the word "scoffer" or "mocker" (Greek ἐμπαῖκται, empaiktai = mocker or deciever), was used for one who demands evidence of the second coming. The bible writer here seems to be warning against those who would doubt what it says. Jude also repeats this.

It's interesting then to see all the instances of this word, and what the Bible is saying. In many instances it reminds me of debates between believers and skeptics - and more often of discussions that believers have amongst themselves.
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The dead birds that cropped up in Beebe were unusual. But the only unusual thing about them was the sheer number and the proximity to people. While birds dropping dead is nothing new, having 5,000 drop dead, and having it happen over a town, is pretty rare.

Most of the US is uninhabited, so normally when these things happen, nobody notices, except maybe a farmer. The bird carcasses are quickly consumed. It's like it never happened, regardless of how large the flock of birds happened to be. This time of course, a very large flock of blackbirds met an unexpected end, and it just happened to be right over town, so lots of people were disturbed, making an interesting story for the media.

As with any such story, once it goes big, the media gets a taste for it and becomes hyper-sensitive, and will willingly report on any related topic, no matter how small, even up to the national level.

Thus the "dead birds" stories begin to show up:
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Over and over the press gets a hold of a story about some weird creature that can't immediate be identified, because it's lost its hair.Is their reaction "animals without hair are hard to identify"? No, it's "Mysterious Alien Chupacabra Mutant found dead!!!!!".Media, please stop. It's just an animal that has lost its hair because of death or disease. That's it. If you would wait a few days then you can put up a front page story about "hairless dead dog found in river", should you think that's a reasonable story. Here's the very latest in this venerable line of stories, from Jan 3rd, 2011.

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife has determined the mysterious hairless animal we first told you about last week in Nelson County is a hairless raccoon.Fish & Wildlife officials made the connection by matching biological features.They don't know why the raccoon lost its hair, but say there's no question about the species.

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On January 1st 2011, thousands of dead birds, mostly red-wing blackbirds, were found in Beebe Arkansas. The cause of this sudden rush of bird deaths is unknown, but there were several plausible explanations.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40874105/Note what she said: "similar events have occurred elsewhere".
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The skeptical community is very familiar with the phenomenon of pseudoscience. Pseudoscience (from the latin pseudo - fake) is something that claims to be science, but in fact does not follow the principles of science. There are many well followed topics in pseudoscience: perpetual motion, zero point energy, hexagonal water, ESP studies, intelligent design, and many more.

I was looking into a taxonomy of the sources of bunk, and of course pseudoscience was one of them. But I felt something was missing. There was no category in which to put the work of Glenn Beck, Fox News, or overly enthusiastic Local TV stations. While their stories sometimes fell into the usual categories (alternative medicine, pseudoscience, paranormal, etc), there were many that were obviously bunk, but more so because of the way the story was presented, rather than the actual story itself.

For example, the stories about the "ground zero mosque", constantly contained many factual inaccuracies, statements that were not verified or were taken out of context, and blatant insinuations. It's a pattern of inaccuracies designed not to rise to the level of conspiracy theory. It's designed to resemble journalism, so that it seems credible. But it does not follow the basic principles of journalism.

It's pseudojournalism.
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Skeptics and debunkers often take a reactive role. When something crops up that's got some bunk in it then they take some time to explain what the problem is, pointing out where the believers are in error. The amount of effort put in by the skeptical community is proportional to the amount of exposure a topic gets. High profile topics like 9/11, homeopathy, and UFOs get a lot of attention from skeptics, but low profile topics like chemtrails and FEMA coffins get far less attention.

This is partly because the topics seem such obvious bunk. Chemtrails are just persistent contrails, and FEMA coffins are just stored grave liners. However the people who believe in these various theories seem to take them very seriously, and are going to quite considerable lengths to promote the theories.

Such topics are easy to dismiss when they exist outside of the mainstream, when nobody has heard of them. But if they make the leap out of obscurity, and suddenly acquire a mass of mainstream coverage, then they grab their claws into the minds of millions more people. And once those millions of people start to suspect a theory, it's very difficult to turn around.
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Debunking, according to Merriam Webster’s DictionaryWhen you debunk an assertion, you are demonstrating that the reasoning, or the claimed facts, behind that assertion are false. You look and see what they are claiming, you identify which bits are true and which are not, then you explain this.

Debunking is NOT about taking one side of an argument, and then using whatever means possible to convince someone that you are correct. A good debunker is a good scientist. If there’s information that contradicts your position, then don’t ignore it, instead you should alter your position. ...

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Why do I use the word "debunk", and not "skeptic"?

Because "skeptic" is not a verb.

This site is about doing skeptical analysis, about skeptical activism, about skeptical investigations. It's about the best ways to find and present the best evidence, and the soundest scientific work and theories. Debunking is an active verb - debunking is about doing these thing. Simply being skeptical just sounds too passive.

Now "debunk", one might argue, has got a bit of a bad rap. Some people use the word "debunker" to mean someone who dishonestly argues for a particular position, regardless of the actual facts. Such a person might, in conspiracy culture, be described as a government or corporate "shill".
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