New Agers and Creationists
should not be President
By Roger Ebert on December 2, 2009 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (386)
New Age beliefs are the Creationism of the Progressives. I move in circles where most people would find it absurd to believe that humans didn't evolve from prehistoric ancestors, yet many of these same people quite happily believe in astrology, psychics, reincarnation, the Tarot deck, the i Ching, and sooth-saying. Palmistry and phrenology have pretty much blown over.
If you were attending a dinner party of community leaders in Dallas, Atlanta, Omaha or Colorado Springs and the conversation turned to religion, a chill might fall on the room if you confessed yourself an atheist. Yet at a dinner party of the nicest and brightest in New York, Chicago, San
Francisco and (especially) Los Angeles, if the hostess began to confide about past lives, her Sign and yours, and her healing crystals, it might not go over so well if you confessed you thought she was full of it.
New Age beliefs have largely stolen the stage from traditional religion in progressive circles. At dinner in my environs I rarely hear anyone share that they have been born again in Jesus. They may well have been, but they keep it to themselves.
They were raised to avoid religion and politics at dinner parties with strangers. Yet they assure everyone they are "a typical Gemini," were royalty in a previous lifetime, have a personal spirit guide, and have been told they will develop a serious disease but will recover from it. I rarely hear anyone share that they were a toilet cleaner in a previous lifetime and have a year to live at the most.
In polite company where fundamentalist or New Age beliefs are expressed with confidence, you have three choices: (1) Silent agreement, (2) eagerness to contribute your own similar finding, or (3) mentally composing a new answering message for your cell phone.
It's curious that so many people of different camps are offended by opposing beliefs, but will accept just about anything in their own. Most progressives believe Kirk Cameron is playing the Village Idiot in his infamous video explaining how God shaped the banana to fit the nature of the human hand (still unreleased: his video about watermelons). Most non-New Agers believe Shirley MacLaine is nutzoid for her citations of her previous lifetimes. On mainstream talk shows, MacLaine gets away with it by kidding herself. Mike Huckabee is a charmer when he answers that, yes, he does believe the earth is pretty much 10,000 years old.
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