What is "sceptics"

Usage examples of "sceptics".

What rewards are religious sceptics given by the established religions - or, for that matter, social and economic sceptics by the society in which they swim?

Inveterate sceptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

Occasionally they threaten sceptics with the direst imaginable penalties.

And, it must be said, some scientists and dedicated sceptics apply this tool as a blunt instrument, with little finesse.

Indeed, on most TV documentaries and talk shows, sceptics get short shrift and almost no air time.

We are not anxious to preserve the memory of such sceptics, much less their ideas.

This is a topic, therefore, in which the profounder and more philosophical sceptics will always triumph, when they endeavour to introduce an universal doubt into all subjects of human knowledge and enquiry.

But the refined and philosophical sceptics fall into an inconsistence of an opposite nature.

These sceptics, therefore, are obliged, in every question, to consider each particular evidence apart, and proportion their assent to the precise degree of evidence which occurs.

I shall never assent to so harsh an opinion as that of a celebrated writer,14 who says, that the Sceptics are not a sect of philosophers: They are only a sect of liars.

Or how do you mystics, who maintain the absolute incomprehensibility of the Deity, differ from Sceptics or Atheists, who assert, that the first cause of all is unknown and unintelligible?

Nor would any of human race merit his favour, but a very few, the philosophical Theists, who entertain, or rather indeed endeavour to entertain, suitable notions of his Divine perfections: As the only persons entitled to his compassion and indulgence would be the philosophical Sceptics, a sect almost equally rare, who, from a natural diffidence of their own capacity, suspend, or endeavour to suspend, all judgement with regard to such sublime and such extraordinary subjects.

Let us now look at the general tenor of the arguments addressed by believers to sceptics and opponents.

From the apparent usefulness of the social virtues, it has readily been inferred by sceptics, both ancient and modern, that all moral distinctions arise from education, and were, at first, invented, and afterwards encouraged, by the art of politicians, in order to render men tractable, and subdue their natural ferocity and selfishness, which incapacitated them for society.