Skeptics can be skeptics and I am myself one, a big fan of James Randi, Dawkins and everyone else who ask us to think rationally and I know most rational folks would not agree with me. I have tried homeopathy twice and it cured me both times and when I had given up on allopathic medicine. I do not care if it sounds irrational, illogical or without empirical proof, nor do I care whether it helps you or not.
IMO having experienced something beats all logic.
I don't think you're a skeptic.
Rather, I don't how skeptically you approach other issues, but you haven't approached homeopathy skeptically, and I'd say that your statement "I do not care if it sounds irrational, illogical or without empirical proof" is a flat-out rejection of skepticism.
Let's look back through what you've said so far:
Yes my treatment varied in those 8 months. The doctors prescribed various medicines with varying doses including steroids and cancer medicines. When I started taking homeopathy, I have been taking steroids since a month. If you do a little careful study (Google) of auto-immune diseases you will find that in most case the allpopathic medicines do not have a cure. Not just this but multiple factors makes me believe that it was homeopathic medicine:
a) Observation of the homeopatic doctor about mild fever that I have been carrying.
b) Color of my stools when I was attacked with the disease.
c) His accurate prediction bout my recovery and pin-pointing that the swelling in my middle finger will reduce in 4 days. (I had swelling and sever pain in all my joints)
d) After 4 days I stopped taking all allopathic medicines (except painkillers) and I recovered completely.
- you cite conventional medicine as an authority when it suits you (i.e. when it supports your claim that your condition is incurable) but then turn around and reject it when it doesn't (i.e. when it conflicts with your feelings about homeopathy). This is inconsistent.
- in a), b), and c), you jump to conclusions. Even if your homeopathic "doctor" was especially perceptive about your symptoms (though I've got more to say about that assumption below), what bearing does this have on the truth of homeopathy's claims? How does "this guy thought to ask me what colour my stool was" lead us to the conclusion "like cures like and lower concentration implies greater potency"?
- d) is a pretty good example of the
post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore because of this") logical fallacy.
And as for the emphasis you put on the special perceptiveness of your homeopathic "doctor", consider a story:
When I was a university student, just before I started going on interviews for co-op jobs, my grandmother gave me a tie. When she gave it to me, she told me about how she bought it: she went to a men's wear store near her and told the salesman that she was looking to buy a tie for her grandson. The salesman asked her a whole bunch of questions about me: what I was studying, my personality... all sorts of stuff that clothing salespeople don't usually ask. At the end of all this, he thought for a moment, and said "I have just the right tie for him!" and picked out one. My grandmother told me that she was amazed at how perceptive he was and how he was able to pick out the
ideal tie for me.
Looking back on this, I think this was a bit of a game on the part of the salesperson. While I liked the tie that my grandmother got me, I don't think it especially captured my personality or field of study more than any other tie. I think it was a version of the game played by car salespeople where no matter what your situation or needs, they'll tell you that your ideal car just happens to be one that they have in their inventory right then.
I get a vibe like that from your story about your encounter with the homeopathic doctor. I have no particular reason to assume that he wasn't gaming you.
Also, I think the most fundamental lack of skepticism in your argument so far is that you think that your personal experience carries as much evidentiary weight as you're making it out to have. I mean, what if I told you about a study that supported the effectiveness of conventional medicine, but it had a study group with a size of one, no control group, and none of the normal precautions to avoid bias, such as double-blind protocols. Would you put much stock in this? I'm guessing that you probably wouldn't, but that's exactly what you're holding out to us in support of homeopathy.
I mean, a sample size of one isn't even big enough to let us calculate a standard deviation for our sample. Your story by itself doesn't even have enough information in it for us to even start
considering its quality as evidence.
So...
- you haven't cared about the quality of the evidence supporting your position.
- you haven't bothered to consider alternate explanations for the evidence you have.
- you resorted to logical fallacies and jumps to conclusions to support your argument.
None of this sounds like the actions of a skeptic.