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.

[snip]

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.

[snip]

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.

[another post, snip]

You know, it isn't accurate to say that the peoples of the East use Western medicine if they can afford to abandon their culture's traditional medicinal practices. They use both, and see them as complimentary healing modalities, not oppositional modalities the way we have been brainwashed into viewing them in the US. In Europe, where there was once a very strong and powerful tradition of herbal medicine practiced which is the root system to today's pharmaceutical industry, is more open to complimentary healing modalities than the US.

---

Guest, that space in between spirituality and science, between skeptics and the New Age, is occupied at least in part by scholars who hold a Postmodern view of the world. In your various remarks cut and pasted above you're reflecting the role of thinkers who realize that science is priviledged by Western culture, and by modern industrial religions (christianity, judaism, and muslim). They also realize that the "magical" aspects of religion, including cures and miracles and healing rituals, have been continually trumped or debunked by science. Skeptics are important for debunk frauds like the "healers" from the Philippines who palm chicken livers and do phony surgery for gullible believers. There are always going to be people in the world who need to be protected from themselves, because they don't have the tools to figure out a scam when it's put in front of them. But a postmodern view of the world holds that the spiritual beliefs (particularly those that generated in small localities and stayed put) have a great deal to offer humans today.

Postmodernists hold an inclusive (but also resigned) view of the world. They recognize that our languages carry great cultural baggage, to the benefit of some and the detriment of others. That our languages are largely influenced by dominant religions and science, and therefore, texts (whether literary or spiritual, current or mythic, written or oral tradition) must be examined carefully when used by different groups as each appropriates a share of it to convey their own beliefs and meanings. In national politics, dominant culture literature, and broad based entertainment venues, language tends to favor the general vs. the local. The PoMo resignation comes with the understanding that our schools aren't teaching critical thinking skills, and many people grow up learning (through schools and religions) how to consume, with an econonmic view of the world, not a metaphysical view of the world. They aren't learning to examine their lives and the world around them as a form of "text" or a story that can have many tellings and go many directions.

A postmodern view questions religion AND science. Neither should go unexamined by critical thinkers.

Enough generalization about specifics.

SRS