Purity and Outreach

When something goes wrong we fix it, sometimes making a new rule so it does not happen again. After a while we may get a bunch of related rules and they can be, and often are, organized into a system, perhaps a paradigm, maybe a dogma, or even an -ism. Once you've got one of those, it is easy to fall into the pattern of making your ism more ism than hism. In other words, the isms may start to compete with each other for purity, or internally, the practitioners of an ism strive for purity for their own Freudo-Junkian reasons. Purity becomes an objective.

Does this sound unfamiliar to you, like something you would not encounter in every day life? Well, that surprises me. You ae probably involved in a number of discourses in which this is happening right now.

Click here to find out how bad the situation really is. Also, learn about Shakerism, Accommodationism, and what may be the greatest threat we'll ever see to Skepticism....

.... ITSELF ....

More like this

A couple of weeks ago, I had a bit of fun with a rather clueless chiropractor by the name of J.C.
I've been writing about the attempts of proponents of various pseudoscience, quackery, and faith-based religious "healing" modalities to slip provisions friendly to their interests into the health care reform bill that will be debated in the Senate beginning today.
Every so often I come across a post by quacks or supporters of quackery that make me wish that we as skeptics and supporters of science-based medicine actually had the abilities and powers attributed to us.
Agnostic has three posts of interest over the past week: Graphs on the death of Marxism, postmodernism, and other stupid academic fads, Re

what may be the greatest threat we'll ever see to Skepticism....

.... ITSELF ....

I'm not sure I buy that. :P

Azkyroth: I'm skeptical that you have read the post yet!!!! You may need to prove it.

Aww... and I thought this would be a rant about the Debian team.

By MadScientist (not verified) on 19 Sep 2009 #permalink

I'm skeptical that you have read the post yet!!!!

I'm skeptical about your ability to approach skepticism rationally and skeptically...