(I have reposted the below response so that it is tied to Alex's original post at the top of this thread.)
So this is my first post here, though I have been tuning in to the many great youtube conversations for a while. Nothing was too surprising to me regarding Trump, and on that subject I have nothing to add beyond what others here have expressed. On Ed's Christian faith I have some thoughts.
Alex, I totally get why you challenge people who are critical thinkers in some areas yet happily drop into the faith mode in others, particularly things ethical and spiritual. It seemed pretty obvious to me that Ed has a need to just plain believe in something that can be left beyond rigorous investigation, like an anchor that keeps one moored while everything else is movable by wind and wave. I have observed that when this kind of dependance on faith looms large in a person's mind and life there is often a need to categorize some well know area(s) that others "believe in" as just not up to snuff, even when the supporting evidence is easily found, as with UFO and alien phenomena. Hence Ed's rather lazy justification of disbelief based on UFO personalities rather than research by actual, qualified experts. Really quite something as he said that, yeah, he had read all about it! So while it may not compute how the same person can be such a hard nosed investigator, faith based believer, and lazy skeptic all at the same time, it does make sense from a psychological standpoint. Personal history of course also plays a big role.
Anyway, what I find most interesting about this kind of epistemological compartmentalization, which I think we all must deal with in others AND ourselves, is why it happens. I think it begins early in our life. As thinking creatures we must piece together everything thing we "know" but that always really means what we think we know. As children we initially learn a lot of things by trial and error, pulling on this, pushing on that, arranging things by colors and shapes, tastes we like and don't like, etc. On that level what we "know" is pretty simple and well anchored, with nothing much resting on this level of knowledge beyond what's happening in the moment. But when we learn a language we begin to learn what others THINK about us and the world, and our emotions becme closely involved with meanings and choices.
It struck me years ago that an abstraction as seemingly straightforward as 1+1=2 involves an emotional component that registers it as true in ones mind. You can see this happening when teaching a child to count. At first they don't get it, then they associate the number 2 with the observed objects and the word "two," and fnally when they like and FEEL the experience it becomes true to them. It is the feeling that finalizes the knowledge. If the feeling of rightness does not follow an experience or explanation we may sometimes nod our heads due to pressure or lack of real interest, but we won't really believe the thing is true. Unfortunately, this natural estimation of things often gets beaten out of people, and literally beating people to disavow these kinds of core beliefs has been used to break them and lay he way for mind control. But in a normal mind in normal environments, 1+1+believing=2. Operationally, seeing is not just the passive registering of an experience, seeing is BELIEVING.
Pardon the preamble, but now I can go past the particular example of Opperman's beliefs and get at your question about skepticism and spirituality. First of all, I get your mission because it has personally been mine since I was a kid, and has led me to believe and then later disbelieve all manner of factoids and systems, political, economic, psychological, ufological, mythological, scientific, and on and on. At most times I wanted to know what was (in some sense) true, and relied on apparent facts, personal experiences, the ideas and expertise of others, reasoning to steer my inquries, AND anything ranging from subtle attractions to this idea or that, to whole sets of persuasive arguments accompanied by equally strong gut feelings. It all had to somehow hang together, withstand my skeptical approach, satisfy my feeling that there was more to know than most people cared to entertain, and that the results of this kind of quest would ultimately be good. Good in terms of better, more accurate knowledge, helping to make the world a better place for myself and others, and good in a moral and spiritual sense. Broadly and deeply GOOD.
Note that some things I did not (or want to) become skeptical about, as my philosophical studies and thinking ruled out knowingly commiting stupid fallacies, such as using reasoning to show that reasoning is unreasonable, or becoming skeptical about skepticism. (This lifetime is too short to waste time on word games once you become familiar with them.) So now, after 62 years on board and around 50 years of growing and continuous inquiry, many personal PSI and consciousness experiments and experiences, tons of reading and research on UFOs, esoteric beliefs, hard science, and on and on, I realize that it still comes down to the same internal things as they relate to the experienced world: cntinue to visit all the useful places that 1+1+believing=2 can take me, and similarly let curiosity+skepticism+experience=THE JOURNEY take me down a road that, at the very least, is not just a mindless trip on autopilot.
In fact, why knowingly go down any roads, side trips or big cosmic highways, on auto pilot? That is the feeling I got about Opperman when you queried him on Christianity and UFOs. How can one be so careful and commited to facts and reliable stories in one area and then just float in others? Like I said, some people need anchors that are beyond questioning, and at the same time things to disbelieve, thus providing a psycho-epistemological counterweight that demonstrates balance to themselves and others. However, for the skeptic who is also aware of life's spiritual component, I think skepticism is somehow both a mooring AND a directional guide. It is not an object of faith but a faithful ally in our objective to know what's really out there. It objects to all faiths while allowing all inquiries and experiences, for the entertaining all thoughts and possible realities, like a compass that does not point where to go, just where not to stay.
So yeah, I think skepticism is indispensible in all real journeys (even on regular road trips) and especially when it comes to the barely known, the uncharted, the bigger or stranger than imagined, and certainly in the quest to know what life and consciousness is about. Plopping down in comfy spots along the way is just as bad as refusing to look out the window because it may cause some cognitive dissonance! There is no reason to think that the truth about things spiritual will be a nice, familiar story, or that Trump can't be that bad, or that UFOs are real in just the ways we want them to be. Never stop, except when meditating.