"There are several different kinds of skeptics. Some have a healthy skepticism which involves questioning new ideas, looking critically at evidence, but includes an open-mindedness and willingness to accept new ideas or evidence if the case is persuasive. I have no problem with skeptics of this kind, and this healthy skepticism is an essential part of scientific discovery. However, there is another kind of skeptic, the dogmatic skeptic or scientific fundamentalist, who is more concerned to defend a materialist ideology than to pursue scientific inquiry in an open-minded manner.
Such skeptics tend to oppose the kind of research I'm doing on principle, on the grounds that these questions should not be asked in a scientific way, and that subjects like the sense of being stared at, psychic pets, and memory in nature lie outside the scope of science. This kind of skeptic has made materialistic science into a kind of religion, and in my experience is not open to reason or evidence, although they often call themselves rationalists. In my opinion the correct approach in science is to put forward hypotheses, and to look at evidence in a rational manner, rather than rule out whole areas of inquiry and dismiss evidence out of hand because of some preconceived dogma."
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