Thanks for the links. Those are very useful.

I suppose one of the shortcomings of the “skeptical collective” as it were is that many of us are really a mix of hobby scientists and armchair philosophers, myself included, seeking both an outlet and validation for our thinking. I’m not sure if having ready access to a worldwide audience is a good thing or not, but like anything we hang out our shingles and hope to get some feedback from both sides of the debate. I hope I don’t give the impression of bending blindly to the ideas of that so-called collective, but it has served as a ready starting point for some of these ideas. And you’re correct: most really good information is much more primary in source.

Cheers.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Take a look yourself at the following two examples and see how much more realistic, how much more logically coherent they are:

1) http://fallacyfiles.org/

2) http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/fallacy.htm

Actually, the latter has the more accurate definitions, but the former has an impressive organization. Both provide definitions that skeptics and _some_ non-skeptics (the smart ones;) should agree on.