The problem I have with the so-called "skeptic" movement (besides the fact they seem to have no social skills and are jerks), is they have an agenda. That agenda is to taunt New Agers by "debunking" their beliefs. The skeptics are a fringe group of idiots with way too much time on their hands.

I'm not interested in anything that nasty. I really don't care what New Agers or "skeptics" believe about one another, and I don't think the "skeptics" movement is rooted in science anymore than the New Age movement is--it is rooted in an unhealthy desire to wreak vengeance upon New Age believers, while leaving religious believers alone. It is kind of like one movement stalking another. Creepy in the extreme.

Now, I will agree that we are living in an era where many people are anti-intellectual, but I don't know that more people are anti-intellectual today vs 50 or 100 years ago.

I fully comprehend that science is often wrong, that it's "theories" (which are really just somebody's wild ass guesses dressed up in scientific language of the field in question, and often with NO data to back it up) are as rooted in their cultural belief system as snake charmers' beliefs are in theirs. The science community simply pays a whole lot more money to be indoctrinated into their belief system than John and Jane Catholic believer or Butterfly-in-the-Evening and Synde New Age believer and their priests and shamans do. The indoctrination system is called "post-secondary education" or "The University" or "Academe" or "institution of higher learning" (depending upon your denomination). A scientist, to my way of thinking (which admittedly has been unduly influenced by one of those "institutions of higher learning") is just as much as priest for the church of scientific rationalism as any pastor is for a church of Episcopalians.

I also actually know what the definition is of "metaphysical" and I know it doesn't mean what many New Agers think it means.

But I also am eternally grateful to those New Age thinkers who have stretched the boundaries a bit when it comes to questioning conventional beliefs. I agree, the majority of the New Age movement is as moribund as the Methodist church or molecular biology as an academic discipline. But there are some good thinkers out there. And as an unabashed intellectual, I love to read what a good thinker has to say. Which is why I don't feel threatened by beliefs that are far outside the mainstream.

I always thought a large part of the problem is the Inquisition nature of the attacks on those who lean towards "New Age" beliefs. Take astrologers, for instance. They aren't new kids on the block. Astrology truly is the roots system of belief to modern day astronomy. Ancient astrologers kicked ass, and figured out some very amazing stuff. If you don't believe that, go to some of the incredible archaeological treasures they built in alignment with the solstices, thousands of years ago, without any of the tools astronomers take for granted today. They were a pretty smart bunch. They had some pretty good engineers working for them too, again, with none of the tools engineers take for granted today. And they moved some mighty big rocks some mighty long distances, and piled them up in a mighty mystical way to make their temples to the stars.

As for the astrolgy of today, I think the whole real conflict is over whether it is "science" or not. Some of it is based on the science of those milleniums ago, and you throw some math in for doing the calculations. But astrology today is really a symbolic system rooted in Greco-Roman or Hindu mythology more than science, even though it does use the planets of our solar system and the rudimentary numeric system of degrees to determine the relationships between the heavenly bodies at any given time, calculated to a particular place on earth.

But it isn't as bizarre as the science community would have you believe. We all operate in our daily lives subconsciously using mythic attributions, be it "Saturnian" qualities, or the qualities attributed to red haired people, or the qualities or essence attributed to particular vocations (one that is still one of the strongest in use in contemporary times), ie what a carpenter is like, what a doctor is like, what a teacher is like, what an Arab man or an English woman is like.

Some might call those frames of reference/beliefs stereotypes rather than mythic archetypes, which is fine. I just think it is a bit more accurate to describe them as mythic archetypes when, in fact, the archetype is rooted in the ancient world.

Other than that, I'm on a journey called life, and the coolest part of it to me is exploring and examining a LOT of possibilities in ways that harm none.

The "skeptic" movement is interested in harming, psychologically in my opinion, New Age believers.

Not cool.