"Though you haven't heard of it, there are some fundamentalist churches that encourage dating and marrying nonbelievers and trying to convert them."

"It's called 'missionary dating' and it's a real thing."

Opening a religion post with "Though you haven't heard of it,...." cracks me up. It's now the story of my life and - while Emily Yoffe may not have heard of it - feminist NewAge is definitely THE "fundamentalist church" where "fishing" has always been real, too, so ♪shut-up♬.

"The assumptions of homeopathy,…are in overt contradiction to those of acupuncture which, in turn, are out of sync with those of reflexology, aromatherapy and Reiki.

Instead, each branch of alternative medicine has its own axioms that are largely detached from reality or, indeed, from the axioms of other branches of alternative medicine."

As far as I know, whites will only really stand up to Oprah on two topics - cattle futures and race - when they curiously, but proudly, love to point out how rich she's gotten with their full support:

You know, selling dangerous, bogus, NewAge occult "remedies" and the gurus and beliefs that go with 'em,...

 

“Not only is Celtic Reiki used for healing, it is also used for goal manifestations.”

I’ve really come to detest Dr. Mehmet Oz.

You remember Dr. Mehmet Oz, don’t you? How can you escape him? He is, after all, Oprah Winfrey’s protege, and of late he’s really been living up (or down) to the example set by his television mentor, who of late apparently thinks nothing of promoting faith healing quack John of God on her show. Following in the footsteps of his much more famous and well-known mentor, this season on his television show, The Dr. Oz Show, Dr. Oz has in some ways imitated Oprah and in some ways gone her one better (one worse, really) in promoting the Oprah-fication of medicine. And this season has been a particularly bad one for science-based medicine on The Dr. Oz Show. Apparently Dr. Oz felt that he had to surpass what he did last season, which included inviting a man whom I consider to be one of the foremost sellers of quackery on the Internet, Dr. Joseph Mercola. Prior to that, Dr. Oz had done an episode touting the glories of that form of faith healing known as reiki. In between, he made appearances at various panels of woo-friendly physicians trying to coopt President Obama’s health insurance reform initiative to cover more “holistic” care (i.e., “integrative medicine”).

I'm pretty sure there's a lot of folks like Camille Paglia, positive this is the truth, that NewAge ended a long time ago:

  I wrote a long piece for Arion at Boston University a couple of years ago called “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s” trying to give reasons—trying to sketch this combination of things with poetry, religion, spirituality that would produce the New Age movement. And then trying to diagnose why the whole thing collapsed,...

Meanwhile, my impression of the current landscape - as a "spiritual" minefield - is confirmed even as it's denied:

  The Theos survey discovered that 40% of the sample (and a small majority of women) had at some time engaged in a "New Age" activity - for example, a Tarot card reading or a Reiki healing session. These activities seem to be equally popular with those who describe themselves as religious and those who do not,…

Which is how and why atheists are doomed to end up alone - as "compassionate" NewAgers  love to point out:

We're not part of their cult,...