Heroes Not Zombies

Excellent post on the School of Life site by Christopher Hamilton about scepticism. He starts by mentioning how Socrates doubted everything but how these days all kinds of people assume they’re cleverer than that –

Politicians know how to get the economy growing again (which we all know to be a good thing) and the economists know why it all went wrong in the first place; the health experts know what we have to eat to stay healthy, and the gym instructors know just the right amount of exercise we need; the Church knows what’s gone wrong with modern morality, and the atheists know that religion was a con anyway; evolutionary scientists know that we’re driven by our genes, and philosophers know it’s all much more complicated than that.

but of course……they really don’t know, do they?

the history of thought shows that equally sensitive, reflective, intelligent people come to radically different views about – well, about pretty much everything. Human beings claim to know because it’s frightening not to know…

Interesting how the contemporary so called “skeptics” (I’m thinking “Pub Skeptics” and their like), seem to be characterised by their complete sense of certainty……busy telling everyone that their views on anything and everything are absolutely right, and claiming that they know they are right because “science” tells them so.

How did “scepticism” morph from doubting everything to claiming to know things for sure?