What is a skeptic's idea of "evidence"?

Question

What would a skeptic accept as proof or evidence of anything??

Answer 1

It truly depends on the level of conviction of your skeptic...

if you go all the way to "Cogito Ergo Summ" I think, therefore, I am... then nothing outside the personal can be considered real... even sensory evidence can be challenged with questions like "what is sound, what is sight..."  with cases like optical illusions being used as evidence not to trust anything.

Answer 2

There will never be any evidence to make a skeptic believe.

Answer 3

Anything physical, measurable, and recreate able.

Answer 4

if eyewitness evidence is good enough to send someone to death row, then why is it not good enough for any other evidence? And if only concrete scientific evidence can be used for lets say, ghostly encounters, or anything else, the how can anyone be convicted of any type of crime? there seems to be a complete double standard for what constitutes evidence. If we relied purely on concrete evidence for everything, there would have never been any convictions for hundreds of years and right now only about one in every one thousand convictions would happen. It would be anarchy. So we have complete double standards of what is good enough evidence and for what we want to apply it to.

EDIT: Eri. Based on your argument, I could then say, bring me one shred of scientific evidence that we evolved from anything else. Not a bunch of scrap bones found in a desert, but cold hard concrete undisputable evidence. You cant. its an accepted theory. They had a theory and went out and found evidence to fit the theory, not evidence to support the theory. So based on that argument, evolution never happened because its never been proven beyond any measure of scientific evidence.

Answer 5

As proof or evidence of what?  Telepathy?  Read my mind 5 times.  Or guess 9/10 cards from a deck I'm looking at.  Telekinesis?  Moving something across the room under glass.  Ghosts?  Find some credible eye-witnesses or produce it.  UFOs?  Bring me part of one that can't have been made on Earth.  Bigfoot?  A few drops of blood.  Same for aliens.  

Really, anything that can be claimed can be tested, and very simply.  Since no one has ever produced any evidence for the paranormal, we can safely dismiss it.

Answer 6

evidence is an illution that can be altered to fit the situation  eg:" the glass is half full"  

When really its Half empty!

Answer 7

I want scienific proof.  It is not smart in a scientific world to accept every theory or phenomenon as right or true until proven otherwise

Answer 8

I take as evidence an undeniable fact, which would lead to an explanation of a phenomenom, and finally result in a theory able to make predictions.

Answer 9

Check out Voltaire, because seeing is believing.

Answer 10

I would love to know the answer to this question myself? I guess someday in the future we will be able to guage the answer to this question with some piece of equipment. I have written proof of predictions that were written 5 years before they happened. Is that not empirical proof? We have photos of the residual energy of a leaf after it has been clipped. s that not proof? We have pieces of the craft of Roswell, is that not proof? We have EVP's is that not proof? ANd best of all we have our mutual experiences that sound quite a bit alike... is that not a bit of proof????

Answer 11

We use the word 'skeptic' today in the wrong sense, in a pejorative sense.  The real meaning of a 'skeptic' is someone who doesn't believe that anything can be known completely for sure.  But we use the word to mean someone who doesn't believe something in particular, a religion or something like that aliens visit the earth.

And when it comes to the latter, there are people who don't believe something because they objectively don't believe that believe that the evidence supports it, but also there are people who don't believe something because they strongly don't WANT to believe it.  Calling them both 'skeptics' lumps them both together, but they are different.

I have looked at the evidence of alien abduction, flying saucers, etc., and decided for myself that I don't believe it.  Would I like to believe it?  Well, I don't know.  It might be a cool thing to believe.  If I really really wanted to believe it, I might.  

I have decided that most paranomal stuff is baloney, based on the evidence I've seen.  People who do believe it, they have seen the same evidence that I have, but put it in a different light.  I've known people who claimed to have some psychic powers--to read auras, to get ideas about someone from touching something they owned, stuff like that--but none of them have ever told me anything I didn't know already, or predicted the future or anything like that.  James Randi and his group have offered a million dollar prize for anyone showing psychic ability under a strict pre-agreed protocol and nobody has even come close to winning the money.  So I don' t believe in it, can you blame me?

Answer 12

For me it's anything beyond anecdotal or "eye witness".Both notoriously unreliable for many reasons.What is your idea of it

Answer 13

blood samples, finger prints, shock also

Answer 14

Just do a search for "Scientific Method". That should answer your question. Look for terms and phrases such as:

controlled experiment, quantitative data, replication, standard deviation, statistical analysis, and probability.

You can also check any reasonable 6th or 7th grade English text book. They should have basic rules for argumentative writing. This is where one can learn to examine an argument for personal bias, etc.

While we're on the subject, what does a "believer" accept as evidence?

Answer 15

something that can be provable: when you get the same answer in mult. experiments

Answer 16

We all no there is no exceptable evidence.

Enjoy the fact that you have had some experience in life that makes you believe and they haven't.

Answer 17

Usually seeing or hearing something firsthand is considered "proof" for a skeptic.

Answer 18

I'm a believer because of what I see on TV such as Lisa Williams, John Edwards, Ghost Hunters, etc. I've done EVP twice and got 2 voices. I used to be hardcore skeptic til I saw shows on TV.