Professed skepticism can be nothing more than closed-mindedness as long as it is not tightly coupled with courage and curiosity. Being comfortably ensconced in a static position of ANY description is not what skepticism is. Skepticism is an activity not a protective bunker.
I agree. Professional skeptics with their smug, condescending debunkery attitude contribute nothing but despair and darkness.
Skeptics of the day roundly ridiculed the Wright brothers and their heavier than air flying machines. Einstein was slurred for his theories, and even farther back skeptics in the church decried the heliocentric theory. Skeptics of today are making hash out of attempts to harvest energy through LENR or cold fusion, and they have successfully prevented public funding for the new technology, technology that will soon burst into the public view with vigor.
The true spirit of science is to pounce greedily on new ideas with an open mind. Professional skeptics are the exact opposite of scientific. I see them as equivalent to the basest of fundamentalist preachers.