Hi Svartbjørn, thanks for responding (and cool name, btw).
Unfortunately that doesn't exactly address my question. My point was this: due to philosophical relativism different people will ascribe different weights to the same argument/evidence. (The controversy over relativism regards whether relativism forms a sound basis for inquiry and a proper definition of 'knowledge' - but that people's weighting of logical arguments and empirical evidence differs is an indisputable reality.) For example, Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz approach the Israel-Palestine controversy with essentially the same set of sources, but based on those sources arrive at a somewhat different understanding of the historical facts and a radically different understanding of contemporary realities. So if, for example, Chomsky were to tell Dershowitz 'You must take into account XYZ source' or 'XYZ logical argument,' he would not be gaining any ground, as Dershowitz's evaluation and weighting of that source or syllogism may be very different. (Chomsky and Dershowitz have in fact debated this topic, and this essentially describes most of what happened.)
First, thank you for the compliment.. its a nickname I got from a Norwegian friend of mine many years ago. Secondly, its nice to run into intellectuals (which is why Im here.. the vast majority of the members here are very intellectual, especially in their fields of expertise)so Im definitely enjoying the back and forth.
Now.. as to your post...unfortunately, all things are not equal.. so there is no philosophical relativism or epistemology. Just because I choose to believe that up is down and down is up or that gravity is a figment of man's imagination does not give it merit, nor does it weigh the same as scientific evidence that gravity does exist and that down is down and up is up in a gravitational environment. The same can be said for conspiracies and conspiracy theories. I can want something to be true all day long, but if the evidence isnt there to support it, then my wanting it to be true doesnt make it so. There-in lies the difference and why the philosophical aspects are a moot point.
I love philosophy.. I love philosophical discussion and debate, but philosophy is a personal choice and/or a mental exercise, it has its place but not when dealing with evidence. If a person really and truly looks at evidence, and they are honest with themselves and what they're seeing, then they will most likely draw the same or very similar conclusion that others see when they do the same thing.
Your example of palestine is more a philosophical topic and debate because the history has been mired and marred by politics over the decades. Those particular individuals you speak of see what they see through the colored lenses of their particular ideologies.. its a debate, period. No one cares what really happened, because its politically insignificant as far as those parties involved are concerned.
If you look at chemtrails, on the other hand, its been shown over and over and over.. scientifically and mathematically that its not possible for the trails people call chemtrails to exist because the amount of material required to create them in the quantities claimed are beyond the lifting limits of the aircraft themselves. It shows a lack of understanding and knowledge of the science behind powered flight and the sheer mass required for it to occur as proposed by those who say that they're real. This isnt a belief, its fact... its backed by physics, science and mathematics.
On the other hand, there are things that science -cant- explain, and science is ok with.. scientists are ok with that.. in fact they PREFER that, because it means there's more out there to learn.. more to figure out. So no, not all points of view are equal.. they never have been, nor will they ever be.. what IS equal, are the individuals rights to HAVE those points of view. Its when points of view begin to get suppressed, or when people are made to feel like complete fools or are told they arent worthy to breath the same air as others that issues arise.
I may not agree with the things Alex Jones has to say, or the way he uses tactics of fear and panic to peddle his wares.. I dont like his opinions, for the most part, because I personally think he's full of shit... but I have no problem with him expressing them UNTIL he starts forcing his opinion and point of view down others throats and tells them that they're stupid and blind. This is the same reason I dont agree with James Randi or Richard Dawkins.. though to Dawkins' credit he's relaxed a LOT over the last couple years. I agree with their science and their reasoning, but I dont agree with their presentation. They tend to come across as haughty and arrogant, and in much the same way Alex Jones does. The evidence they provide though, shows no bias... If Dawkins makes a claim and conducts and experiment then his notes and experiment are made available to anyone and everyone who has the ability to test it.. if his experiment fails replication then he goes back to the drawing board.
This is where things start to get muddy.. Scientists are human, they have egos.. they make mistakes. Science said for ages that Einstein was wrong, that his theories of special and general relativity were impossible because they broke the laws of known science at the time.. yet the predictions his theories made were shown to have merit. The down side is, his theories cover such massive distances, masses and sizes that there's no way (as of yet) to test his theories in a lab on large scale... though (and correct me if Im wrong here) the LHC was designed to try to do exactly that in some ways. This is where people mistake theory for belief. They think that just because something cant be proven, that it must automatically be a belief, when in reality its just the opposite.
Much of this is due to different default assumptions/proclivities of different people. If person A tends to distrust authority figures and person B trusts authority figures and acquaintances more equally, then when a mutual friend claims to have an extraterrestrial encounter and this claim is disputed by government and academic sources chances are high that person A will believe the encounter occurred while person B will disagree. And it would be difficult for either to persuade the other without a shift in the thinking of the other occurring; and if one did persuade the other, it would likely trigger a change in the other's appraisal of certain people's/categories of people's trustworthiness.
This is only partially true and is a bit of a false dichotomy. As a philosopher you know full well that people fall into a LOT of categories. For example.. I dont have an automatic trust of authority, but I dont automatically DIStrust it either. If a person approaches me and goes on about ETs, abductions etc.. I ask for proof. Not because I trust authority, but because I dont automatically trust anything that any other person says. There's a video in another thread that I'll link here that explains it MUCH better than I can. Suffice it to say that unless I see evidence of a cover up, or ETs visiting this planet Im not going to be convinced. It isnt a matter of trust.. this could be a person that I trust with my life, and I would still ask for evidence.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/why-do-people-believe.1485/page-2#post-145579 (post 64.. scroll up a bit)
So the 'gentleness' of the skeptic's rebuttal and whether he takes aim at a larger theory or a very specific claim is not at the heart of our discussion; rather, it's the difference in epistemology between the skeptic and believer. I certainly would agree that it's always better to approach a disagreement politely, impersonally and with a cool head (though to be honest I found Clock's post to be rife with loaded attack terms like 'nutty', 'loony', etc, and there were a couple of logical errors as well... but that's not directly relevant now), and that it's often advisable to debate the little points rather than the whole picture.
SR1419 posted a link to a sub-forum for ex-CT believers (thanks for that btw, SR1419). It's all rather interesting. What's relevant here is that it seems that for most of them the disavowing of CT belief was at least partially a result of - and subsequently became a further cause of - a change in their underlying epistemology. One poster, who had studied philosophy, actually contrasted the epistemology he studied and applied in philosophy with that he used to justify his CTs.
On most of this we agree.. and this is why Mick has the rules he has here.. being insulting, degrading etc is generally frowned upon.. though not always in public.. Ive made a few statements here and there that Mick's had to pull me off to give me a warning here and there. I'm human.. I have bad days, I let my emotions get the better of my analytical mind and I get sardonic and a bit cynical now and then.. I feel frustration at the sheer amount of ignorance in the world and the fact that people just dont take 10 seconds to actually look something up before they go off screaming that the flipping sky is falling... or in most cases filled with CIA nanobots that are invading our bodies and programming us to serve the alphabet org thats in charge of the world.. this week.
But my question was more about whether conventional 'here's a fact - and here's a fact - and here's another' debate tactics could work in this type of disagreement, where, unlike in most academic settings, there is no foundational agreement on methodology and epistemology.
On this, we wont agree very much. There IS a foundational agreement on methodology.. its existed for centuries.
The Scientific Method.
External Quote:
a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses
This goes back to what I was talking about before.. you force your theory to fit the evidence.. you dont force the evidence into your theory. If you do, its an automatic and irreparable bias.. a confirmation bias in a lot of cases. "The Sky was much more blue when I was child" is a prime example.. and something covered in another topic that I think youd enjoy reading.
In short, I agree with the spirit of what you're getting at.. the evidence doesnt support it for the most part. There are exceptions to every rule, there always are.. its an imperfect world because we're imperfect beings.. but as long as we stick to evidence, we use the scientific method and we truly keep an open mind (IE willing to accept that we're wrong, even if it dings our ego) then we can find common ground that not all opinions and points of view are equal.. just that everyone has the equal right to have said opinions and points of view.
*edited for clarity and a couple of mis-spellings.
Of course, that I am on this site, implies that I would always argue for more. 
And it's only midnight here on the Left Coast... 
. But the evidence is never absolutely indisputable, and therefore we can never 'know' (in the Descartian sense) what the objective facts are. That's where epistemology comes in: it determines at what level of 'evidence' we say 'X is "true" ', how we weigh conflicting evidence, and how we determine what constitutes 'evidence' in the first place.
