I am a sceptic; like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, who could sometimes imagine six impossible things before breakfast, I am sceptical of many different ideas, but not necessarily before breakfast. My scepticism has evolved over many years. Some of these scepticisms have resulted in books and articles. However, I am careful not to be sceptical without reason.
My first sceptical book was about Nessie: I could not believe that a creature left over from the age of the dinosaurs lives in Loch Ness; indeed that a breeding population of them lives there. Research showed that all the reports were either mistaken of fraudulent. In this case ‘absence of evidence’ did mean ‘evidence of absence’.
Later I moved on to the UFO problem (at one time I was a member of a UFO society in the West Midlands but I have now lived in Scotland for 50 years). My investigation revealed that, like reports of Nessie, UFO reports are mostly misperceptions, sometimes of rare phenomena, or fraud. It was hard to believe that some extraterrestrial beings were visiting Earth just to frighten people or abduct them. In any case, crossing interstellar space is no trivial enterprise, requiring massive resources. I investigated one notorious case not far from Edinburgh, my home city, and found that the cause was a medical condition suffered by the reporter.
In fact I am even sceptical that intelligent alien life exists elsewhere (ILE). The more one knows about the extraordinary lucky circumstances that led to the emergence of humanity, the more one become convinced that ILE may not exist anywhere else in the universe. It is almost certain that we are the only advanced technological civilisation in the Milky Way galaxy.
As a former Christian, I even became sceptical about Jesus’ life (one definition of a sceptic is ‘atheist’). Having argued myself out of the religion and all religion, I needed to answer the question: if Jesus was not who he claimed, or others claimed, then who was he and what really happened to him? I needed to exorcise him. To do that I read a host of largely sceptical books about Jesus and gradually formed my own conclusion, one never expounded before.
The best explanation for the record of his life as portrayed in the Gospels is that he was a deluded religious fanatic who, after coming to believe that he was the expected Messiah of the Jews, planned to live the life of that figure found in the Jewish Scriptures (not a life acknowledged by conventional Judaism; it was only that of the Nazarene sect to which he belonged). It involved planning to be arrested, tried and condemned to be crucified, following which he would emerge as a second Messiah, leading Israel into battle with Rome. He expected to replace the Roman emperor and become world ruler. Does that shock you? Christians might be shocked if any read my book; more likely they would regard it as fanciful nonsense. But the evidence is all there, evidence that other writers appear to have overlooked.
My last book was a sceptical analysis of a tragic aircraft accident which occurred in June 1994 on the Mull of Kintyre. An RAF helicopter carrying 29 people altogether (the passengers were intelligence personnel from Northern Ireland) crashed into rising ground in thick fog, killing all on board. Seeing TV and written reports about the incident, I was sceptical of the MOD’s explanation (that the crew flew too low and too fast) or that of the relatives of the pilots (that there was a fault with the aircraft). In almost all cases where an aircraft flies into the ground in darkness or fog, it is because the pilots did not know where they were or thought they were somewhere else.
My investigation showed that indeed the pilots were off course in a situation where they should have taken safety precautions. They mistook their aiming point and continued with confidence that they were on their planned course even though they could not see the ground. However, my explanation has been ignored.
Sceptics are people who are inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions. You can see that I have doubted several accepted opinions. I continue to do so. My latest doubts relate to the belief that global warming will be stopped by a collective cut in greenhouse gas emissions. It is undeniable that greenhouse gasses are driving climate change, and it’s certainly beneficial for us to cut what we can in an attempt to mitigate it, but I fear it won’t be enough to have a global effect – especially while some countries, including China, continue with emission and even increase them.
The Secretary General of the UN is probably right to claim that we are ‘on the road to hell’. Consequently I support geoengineering as the only way to get the temperature down. In particular I support a scheme developed by Prof Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh to brighten ocean clouds so that more solar radiation is reflected back into space.
However, to say that I am sceptical of this idea being taken seriously would be an understatement. I have to believe that, eventually, something like that will be deployed or I would lose all hope for the future of humanity or at least our civilisation. It would be shame if the only advanced technological civilisation in the universe wiped itself out.
