An Apology for Skepticism. Why Constructive Skepticism?

In a 2005 essay Umberto Eco stated that “we are supposed to live in a skeptical age. In fact we live in age of outrageous credulity.” Although his argument is primarily centered on religion losing ground lately due to increasing consumerism and mass-industrialization, it can easily be applied to almost any sphere of modern man’s existence. Eco’s point, and our own in writing this study on the necessity of constructive skepticism, is not that religion, mysticism or the occult are a benefic substitute for scientific discoveries, but that a society which conceives of itself as skeptical and rational is so willing to give up religion on the ground of its irrational character, and to take up the most phantasmagoric theories (e.g. The Da Vinci Code, alien attacks, etc.) instead, without realizing that a possible absurdity is often carelessly replaced by a probable one.