I always required evidence to believe claims, but this is sadly not the general case. ¿Are you naturally skeptical or did you learn skepticism?

An interesting case of both, for me.

As a young person, I believed in a lot of nonskeptical things. I took religion and politics for granted because, initially, my interest was in other things, all of which I treated with an exacting approach to the truth - in particular, science.

When I grew and began to find the fault lines between science/history and religion (and morality), I did what I'd always done and compared one with the other until one vanished and the other ascended.

By the time I'd found there was a national skeptic movement, I already was one. Learning about skepticism helped me to refine my toolbox, though it did not create it.

4138973 I'm a mix between INTP and INTJ. Curiosity and skepticism came naturally to me.

When I was young, I believed what I was taught, for the most part. I had a tendency to remember and compile what I was taught, compare the pieces, and point out certain inconsistencies, but the bedrock of it I accepted rather uncritically. I was so surrounded by religious points of view - those who did not share them choosing to keep quiet - that it simply did not occur to me that they could all be mistaken. Particularly when so many of them would speak from personal experience.

I even assumed that since I generally could not see or feel the invisible, ineffable things the others saw or felt, there must be something wrong with me.

It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly when and where that started to change. I'm sure my first exposure to contrary ideas was from fiction - mostly in the vein of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Still, it takes time to completely uproot a belief that you have invested over a seventh of your life in. Time, and a certain amount of courage. For many years, the answer I'd have given you about what I believe would have varied depending on what mood you caught me in, or what had influenced me most recently. By the time I'd reached adulthood, I was firmly ambivalent, and only partly out of politeness.

Still, every time I came across a skeptical viewpoint, it made sense. You might say I was always a skeptic at heart, but for the longest time I felt like it was not permitted. The religious implications are quite clear: "If you do not believe in these specific things, you are a bad person."

That's a powerful thing to try to shake.

I think i'm skeptical by nature, however I was definitely raised in an environment conductive to skepticism. My parents always encouraged me to come to my own conclusion and back it up.

4139074

> “I’m a mix between INTP and INTJ. Curiosity and skepticism came naturally to me.”

I am skeptical about these online personality-tests.

4139152
Well, there might be problems with those tests, but they work.
At least Myer-Briggs does. What I really like about this test is that with input on no more than four scales it can create a complex analysis of a characters, goals, way of thought and typical behaviour.
It might not be 100% backed up by studies, but for me it worked. I got INTP (So I'm natural at scepticism btw.) and most of the stuff they predicted for me fit spot on. The for the few aspects where I diverged, I could find a match a INFP, the type that fit my test second best.

I also applied it to close friends and family and each time the results were valid. Thus, so far, the test is supported by evidence. It also gives you some new insights into typical conflicts between specific friends that reoccur over and over, so I can't help but approve it.

4139267

> "I also applied it to close friends and family and each time the results were valid. Thus, so far, the test is supported by evidence. It also gives you some new insights into typical conflicts between specific friends that reoccur over and over, so I can't help but approve it.""

That could be a combination of the Barnum-Effect (give a room of ponies personalized horoscopes, and everpony agrees that each individual horoscope is accurate and personalized, until one askes them to share with everypony else, when they discover that they all have the same horoscope consisting of generalized statements which apply about everypony) and confirmation bias. ¿Have you tried to disprove the hypothesis?:

0 Gather a group of ponies.
1 Give the test.
2 Let a coin decide whether a pony receive the true result or a random result.
3 Ask the ponies whether they feel that the results are accurate..
4 Compare the accuracy-rates of the control group to the experimental group.

We can very easily fool ourselves. Science is a tool against self-deception. Science is all about trying to disprove hypotheses.

4139074
4139267
The skeptic in me points out that the Myers-Briggs has been largely discontinued as a serious tool.

http://doubtfulnews.com/2012/12/myers-briggs-test-on-its-way-out/
http://skepdic.com/myersb.html
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
"Though the MBTI is popular in schools and businesses, it's disfavored by many in the psychological community for its low reliability and external validity. The most common personality assessment tools used by psychologists are the MMPI-2 or the MCMI-III."
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221
http://skepticwars.blogspot.com/2013/05/have-we-all-been-duped-by-myers-briggs.html

When something is no longer embraced by scientific professionals but becomes popular among nonskeptical, nonscientific circles...

4138973 I started out with a little skepticism so I was never without it, but the environment I was in bred more until it became more acute. It might also be related to my competitive nature and desire to win, offset by my disinterest with sports leading to my affinity in argument. I can win arguments as a sort of sport which I really enjoy. To win arguments, you need to be skeptical so now I'm very skeptical.

4139475
4139694
Well, it is called "Myer Briggs Type Indicator" and not "Myer Briggs Type Determinator" for a reason. It doesn't give an accurate, always fitting result, that you should determine your life by.

The defining aspect of the MBTI is it's simplicity. It creates a rather complex personality evaluation on the basis of just four boolean inputs.
You can't do something like that without making some asumptions and mistakes on the way.
This makes it unusable for a real scientific aproach.

It's simple usage is also a great strengh though.
Let's say you have an arguement with a person and cannot really find out, why your opponent cannot accept your opinion.
The Myer Briggs Indicator is a practical tool in this situation, because it allows you to determine a character model for him with a few simple steps that can help you understand his motivations and line of thought.

The results should not be handled as a godly revelation, but with caution. It is not the solution to all your problems.

The test is a tool to create a hypothesis. You have to check the hypothesis afterwards, but without the test you might often not even have a lead.

4138973
That's an "egg or chicken" question to me: my grandpa, who was my paternal figure, was a Communist; while my Grandma was a devout Catholic.

4140436
Myers-Briggs is no better than any other form of divination, it just has the veneer of respectability. It's been superseded by actually useful personality tests which tell you real things.

Similarly, I can find meaning in Tarot readings - and I have. I use them to give me inspiration for characters I write.

4138973

I think I was always skeptical. I dabbled in religion several times when I was young, because I always thought that there would come a time when I would have to choose a religion. After all, a whole bunch of people seemed to have one, so clearly there was a box somewhere that needed ticking.

But I do remember asking, as a child in Religion Education class: "what if someone just made all this stuff up? How would you know?" I was referring to the Christian Bible, but even then I knew that it could apply to just about any religious idea. (I never got an answer, but then the question is out of scope for an RE class anyway).

The defining moment in my skeptical worldview for me came a few years later, still in school, when I realised that actually, since we know there was a Big Bang and the universe had a definite beginning, maybe, maybe God could have created it. (At that time, I had no serious notions of any god other than the giant swirly cloud-god of Christianity. Sure, I knew about the Hindu pantheon, but that was a whole different area of stuff that I didn't believe in).

At that moment I realised that, should someone present evidence for God, I'd accept it - but no-one had, and no-one could. That's probably the moment I actually formulated my skeptical ideals.

After that, I began to find supernatural beliefs a bit of an annoyance. There was just something so obviously wrong about it all, that people who were supposedly my elders were believing such childish things. I still considered that maybe there was something I was missing, some revelation I hadn't had, some piece of information I didn't know, and that soon enough, religion would fall into to place for me and I could tick that box.

Of course, it didn't. I began to consider the unthinkable; maybe it was possible that you didn't have to have any beliefs? I tried telling people this, and I got this response a few times:

"You must believe in something. You can't just believe in nothing."

And stupidly, I fell for this false statement.

Ironically, I think it was creationism that finally killed off any idea of belief for me. The internet had arrived by this point, and I learned that there was a longstanding 'debate' between evolution and creationism.

I felt a little shaken. I had always accepted evolution. The first time I'd heard about it as a concept, I'd totally fallen in love with the idea - that animals could mutate into different forms over millions of years. It was awesome! That new creations could arise out of pure randomness! Surely if that was true, then anything was possible. I suspect, deep down, I liked it because it appealed to my godless outlook.

Despite that, there was still room for doubt in my mind. What if we were wrong and all animals had been created by the magic cloud-god? What if the creationists could make a compelling case? I didn't want to accept creationism, but if they were right, I would have to. I wasn't calling myself a skeptic at the time, but that was definitely how I was thinking. I simply couldn't deceive myself. It was pointless to do so.

Of course, they weren't right. And this was where I learned about the dirty side of religion called apologetics. I discovered the things that creationists would do in order to discredit evolution - not support creationism, mind you. The theory of evolution was literally under attack by people who very obviously just wanted to advance their own idiotic agendas. They'd publish scathing 'criticisms' of evolution which turned out to be built either on misunderstandings, or on complete falsehoods. And they'd even do it while pretending to be objective, as if they were just trying to advance the scientific cause like everyone else. They'd make faux 'science' publications and get the support of academics who happened to be on their side.

If you have to resort to such underhandedness, you cannot possibly be right. And I realised that this was basically all of religion in a nutshell. All religion is chicanery and misdirection. Ask a Christian to show you their God and they won't; in fact, they'll show you absolutely anything other than their God, and expect that to be good enough for you. When I was a child, it was enough to stop me asking further questions. Now that I'm an adult, I just give up, because I know that there's no progress to made anyway. Religious people don't think in the way that I do; if they did, they couldn't hold their beliefs, and so wouldn't be religious.

By this time I'd discovered the atheist movement, and I now knew that it was perfectly acceptable - and, in fact, sensible - to leave the religion box unticked.

I do sometimes wonder if I'd be a skeptic if my parents had been religious. I rather feel that I still wouldn't. I can't imagine ever not questioning something. It seems like a basic human defense mechanism which protects us from being manipulated in bad ways; why do so many people lack it?

Note: I am aware that skepticism doesn't equate simply to anti-religion; however, it's only religion that's ever really challenged it for me.