How We Really Are Now (Pt. I: The Safety Dance)

How most of us talk about religion, or spiritual belief, is as weird as,...well, religion or spiritual beliefs. As an atheist blog we go a little bit deeper into the phenomena, looking at it many times as believers do - which can throw both believers and non-believers alike, who seem to think that, because we don't believe ourselves, we shouldn't get into it any deeper than one does listening to a good episode of Rush "He Is Your God" Limbaugh or NewAge Palestinian Radio. But we do. And we do it because we know that if you don't understand where believers are coming from (and most outsiders have no clue) then you miss the whole thing.

Outsiders - and an outsider can be an atheist, or a believer in one religion/spiritual practice but not another - are of course aware of the other beliefs, they just don't take them seriously. Many have a good laugh about "Gaia", when there's some news that goes against the Global Warming religion/Climate Change cult, without considering there are people who are as seriously passionate about "Gaia" as those that ridicule the concept may be about Jesus.

If they did consider that, they probably wouldn't be joking about it, considering most believers think we should all "respect" religion (a dubious concept in itself).

The Daily Show - The Pardon of the Christ
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No, what most people are doing is avoiding the topic even as they appear to speak of it, they're dancing around it, mainly because they're afraid to look insane. (We've been charged with being insane for merely looking at beliefs.) But, in so doing, they're also avoiding the most salient topic of them all:

They've created an almost untouchable sphere of influence that affects us all powerfully - in more ways than we'd like to admit - because, many times, it's deeply personal as well.

TMR, of course, feels fine criticizing all of it because, as atheists, we find those who grew angry believing George W. Bush recklessly ran his administration from a Christian viewpoint (when he admitted he thought Jesus probably didn't exist) to be just as bizarre as those drawn to Al Gore after he said "saving the planet" was a moral and spiritual duty (in the NewAge way of understanding of things). TMR sees no difference between the May 21, 2011 "Judgment Day" apocalypse scam and the NewAge 2012 Mayan calendar "Doomsday" nonsense (except one will be exposed as a fraud sooner than the other). Whether you're Pat Robertson claiming you talked to God, or J.Z. Knight declaring you can channel Ramtha, it's all the same to us:

We're surrounded - by people who, one way or another, are determined to drive madness into everyone else's everyday lives, and others who refuse to discuss it as such, or won't bother to really understand any of the phenomena.

We get no break because to behave like this - to handle belief specifically in this non-specific way - is, more than anything else, seen as safe.

As we've said, you won't be thought crazy behaving in this way. You also won't make anyone angry. You will not be breaking the NewAge rule on being "non-judgmental", nor will you possibly be found guilty for ignoring Judgment Day. As Clark Whelton recently said, discussing the non-committal way we speak these days, "What Happens In Vagueness Stays In Vagueness".

And, when it comes to religious beliefs, that's the way we like it.

But we can't stay there any longer.

To be continued,....

Save The Planet (By Calling A Spade A Spade)

"The New Agers took it up. The crystals and homeopathy crowd. Oh, I don't really mind. People can believe what they want, no problem, unless it hurts someone else."

-- James Lovelock, inventor of the "Gaia Theory" - anticipating something violent going down in environmentalism - because of the NewAge belief system.

Simon Jester seems to have gotten the point of "No Pressure", that violent 10:10 Group video, loud and clear:

"So the message here is that if you don’t agree with the Religion of the Environmentalists and the Holy Church of Global Warming, then you’ll be killed?"

Yes, Simon, that's it. But who is it, exactly, that wants to kill you?

Many would say merely "environmentalists" but that doesn't acknowledge that environmentalism, like "alternative" medicine, is an obsession of NewAgers.

Those who follow politics understand what's going on, but are reluctant to say it outright, for fear it makes them look like conspiracy theory fruitcakes-by-association. So, instead, they write long-winded articles on science, or dangerous environmentalists, while only including the Greek goddess of the earth - "Gaia" - in the titles.

Not much on who's worshipping her.

Look at that 10:10 Group video - who does it star? Why, there's Gillian Anderson of The X-Files, once again playing a skeptic.



She's not a skeptic in real life, though, as Bill Whittle pointed out way back in 2003:

"Dana Scully is a brilliant, courageous, skeptical physician who is handy with an automatic; Gillian Anderson is deep into crystals and has trouble with her shoelaces."

"Deep into crystals" = NewAge. So here we have a NewAger, who makes her living pretending to be a critical thinker, participating in a video about the NewAge desire to kill off critical thinkers.

Could NewAgers - when you include their other numerous (and we mean numerous) obsessions with nonsense - be more clear?

It is, if you follow NewAge - and, thus, NewAgers and environmentalism - and all the trouble (i.e. deaths) they've caused.

The Anchoress says of the 10:10 video:

"What a repellent bunch of people, with sick, twisted minds."

And Glenn Reynolds said:

"ECO-FASCISM JUMPS THE SHARK: 'With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.' It always ends up as mass murder, real or fantasized, with these people. That’s what they do. Treat them with all the respect they deserve."

Those are very nice words, but, if everybody will now move to defining who "these people" with the "sick, twisted minds" pushing "fascism" actually are - when it's obvious it's the NewAgers amongst us - we think America will finally start making some headway toward defeating them, once and for all.

This Is A Rush Job (Before Limbaugh Goes On)

On this anemic Labor Day, I have to ask:

Isn't it strange how pundits can't help but make NewAge references - while discussing our politics - but leave it up to bloggers to mention the role of NewAge in our politics?

James Lee (alone) was an environmental nutjob out to save "Gaia". Sure.

Victor Davis Hanson says Obama has a "charlatan homeopathic style".

Lew Rockwell thinks the same of The New York Times' Paul Krugman, too.

But - while everyone's wondering if Obama is a Christian or a Muslim - nobody dares mention the role (and meaning) behind his NewAge advisor (and friend of Scientology) Oprah Winfrey.

It's just bizarre - almost as bizarre as the fact that, while someone like Davis will mention charlatans and homeopathy negatively, they won't write a column coming straight-out against charlatans and homeopathy throughout our society. Their criticisms are limited to Obama using the NewAge style. Nothing about Oprah. Oprah's just great.

See, the NewAge "style" is bad, but the actual practices and practitioners get no comment - from anybody - unless it's to tell us Oprah is spending the president's birthday with him or of the latest multi-million dollar deal she's closed - which is always, always, always, reported in a celebratory manner. (Hooray! The woman who brought us the worst president and economy in American history - along with her friends like James Arthur Ray, Deepak Chopra, and Rhonda Byrne using a "charlatan homeopathic style" - are the only one's getting richer during the depression!)

Not even any wondering where that money's going after it touches the Queen of NewAge's hands.

It's like they don't care - that's The Secret - even though Oprah (and The Secret) is a big reason why we have Obama as our failed president with the "charlatan homeopathic style". She's the best indicator of his entire administration's outlook.

As far as this black "Buddha" is concerned, those statements - and lines of inquiry - are the key to stopping the wrong-headed thinking we see all around us this Labor Day, and it's time for our chattering classes to either get on the ball or get off the pot.

You're supposed to be working - as we all are.

Big Up to Ann Althouse for various photographs and paintings in this post.

The Heat Is On (And It's Eating Global Warmists)

"[James] Lovelock says the events of the recent months have seen him warming to the efforts of the 'good' climate sceptics: 'What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: "Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?" If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. You need sceptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic.'

Lovelock, who 40 years ago originated the idea that the planet is a giant, self-regulating organism – the so-called Gaia theory – added that he has little sympathy for the climate scientists caught up in the UEA email scandal. He said he had not read the original emails – 'I felt reluctant to pry' – but that their reported content had left him feeling 'utterly disgusted'.

'Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science,' he said. 'I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.'"

-- Leo Hickman, getting a quote that sounds an awful lot like a certain blogger I know - and know very well - standing up for skeptics, and standards (!) acting as The Guardian.

Yo Momma's Vagina's Got Dirt In It, Part II

"The New Agers took it up. The crystals and homeopathy crowd. Oh, I don't really mind. People can believe what they want, no problem, unless it hurts someone else."

-- James Lovelock, inventor of the "Gaia Theory" and clearly a NewAger himself ("People can believe what they want") proving he doesn't read the news much - about all the "psychic" scams and deaths by people relying on homeopathy - as he yaks away about nothing, with me as The Observer.

Yo Momma's Vagina's Got Dirt In It

"Initial reaction to the Gaia hypothesis was not overly enthusiastic. Or rather, in respects, initial reaction was even worse than that, because the theory was enthusiastically embraced by the wrong people—joss-stick-burning, Eastern-religion-embracing, herb-consuming (eaten and smoked), Birkenstock-wearing, now-aging hippies and New Agers."

-- Michael Ruse, exposing the nuts in the early environmental movement of the '60's and '70's - NewAgers AKA "the wrong people" - who, cartoon-like, imagined this violent earth as their all-embracing mother, becoming a joke to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

"If it’s not more healthy or time-and labour-efficient, what is the continuing attraction of organic food for certain people? The really important thing is that organic sounds more ‘natural’. Eating organic is a way of defining oneself as natural, good, caring, different to the McDonald’s-scoffing masses. As Mark Smith, writing in the Herald (Glasgow) today, puts it: ‘There is something more intuitive going on when I choose organic, something that’s important but hard to pin down in a report full of appendices and flow charts: organic food feels closer to the source, the beginning, the start of things.’ The real desire is to be somehow close to the soil, to Mother Nature, to Gaia, or whatever you want to call it."

-- Rob Lyons, speaking with "the wrong people" today - the joke's children - now with such an all-consuming snobbery they deserve to have their heads Spiked!.

Believe it or not (despite my admittedly crass take on titling this post) these are two very-good articles - especially the first one - explaining the history, and weakness, of the "Gaia Theory" throughout history, starting back in the days of Aristotle. The second is a an expose' on the weaknesses of the Organic Food Movement, and how stuck-up it's NewAge followers are.

Namaste, Bitches.