The standard for who can say stupid shit is pretty low out there.

“We have no direct information that religious beliefs factored into this, but there was a belief system and homeopathic medicine did factor in.”

Standards, for who, and why you can do stupid shit - they're low, too.

And for some reason, I really, really, REALLY wanted to say that, bad,...

 

Here's an idea going around, amongst my friends, anyway:

"No More Slave Movies; Show Us as Kings and Queens Too"

I agree with the "too". It's important, that Hollywood finally makes movies about black successes in history, but here's what I also see:

   

 When you have over 400 years of untold American stories - on the brutality (and length and breath) of slavery, slaves outwitting slavers (brilliantly) the effects of slavery today, then Reconstruction and it's lies and failures (also length and effects), followed by the Civil Rights Movement, etc. - not only is it a crime how few have been told, but it's harmful to society not to mine them so we can, all, be on the same page culturally. Blacks, whites, and everyone else, need to know these stories:

Like studying the noxious, and obviously taboo, topic of NewAge (to understand our current "spiritual but not religious" culture) our racial politics - especially when it comes to identifying bad actors - too often make little sense because, as I've said, they lack context. 

We simply have to look back - to know how we got here:

And why some still resist,...

 

"The reality is, most of us will struggle an entire lifetime to resolve one or two main issues. Yoga is the most effective way I know to aid that resolution, but it’s no magic spell (though there is plenty of magic)."

“The source of the pollution is not an external contaminant such as blood or dirt, but human interaction.

  The affected person develops strong feelings of contamination that are evoked by direct contact with the violator or indirect contacts such as memories, images or reminders of the violation.”

Of course, we've been over all this before,...

 

“A mouldering pile of newspaper clippings about Prince Charles’s organic farms is a Holy Relic.”

“Anyone who wants to understand the devious, insane nature of the fraud known as L. Ron Hubbard should read this book cover to cover, and investigate all the footnotes. You will not only want $cientology ended forever, you'll feel the same way about any similar spiritual huckster that comes along in Hubbard's wake.”

“Ideally, the court would ... recognize that, in an America in which an increasing number of citizens identify with no religion, even nonsectarian, lowest-common-denominator prayers can exclude and marginalize nonbelievers. Obviously a Jew who goes to a town meeting to petition for a permit will be made uncomfortable when he is urged to join in a prayer to 'our Lord Jesus.' But an atheist in the same position will be equally offended by a request that he join in a prayer to a generic God.”

“Parents who say yoga is inherently religious have appealed a judge's ruling that allowed yoga in a public school system near San Diego, saying it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.



'Our children are not religious guinea pigs and should never be subjected to such misguided religious experimentation,' said Dean Broyles, president of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit based in Escondido, Calif.,…”

This is always the first - and the dumbest - question a NewAge apologist will ask, because it reveals the massive ignorance they have, surrounding what they think they're defending:

  "If we allow people to perform so-called “faith healings” without having to include a legal disclaimer, then why should someone have to include one for a tarot reading?"

Please, Somebody - Anybody - you want to be fair?

Bring back feeding Christians to the lions, and witch burnings, so we can all get a good night's sleep again,...

 

Doug Phillips of Vision Forum and Vision Forum Ministries resigned last week over an extramarital affair. That always seems to happen to Anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-all of you, GOP God worshippers.

Truth is not measured by the number of its followers.

Here's the media's current "crazy" black Republican candidate:

  “When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana. … The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself. … [Satan] is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it. That is why people serve Satan without ever knowing it or deciding to, but no one can be a child of God without making a decision to surrender to him. Beware of systems of spirituality which tell you to empty yourself. You will end up filled with something you probably do not want.”

But here's the media's knowledgable NewAge Master:

  “One often hears and reads about the dangers of Yoga, particularly of the ill-reputed Kundalini Yoga. The deliberately induced psychotic state, which in certain unstable individuals might easily lead to a real psychosis, is a danger that needs to be taken very seriously indeed. These things really are dangerous and ought not to be meddled with in our typically Western way. It is a meddling with Fate, which strikes at the very roots of human existence and can let loose a flood of sufferings of which no sane person ever dreamed. These sufferings correspond to the hellish torments of the chönyid state…”

And here's the man the media wants you to forget:

  “Those who become bored by conventional “Bible” religions, and seek “enlightenment” by way of the dissolution of their own critical faculties into nirvana in any form, had better take a warning. They may think they are leaving the realm of despised materialism, but they are still being asked to put their reason to sleep, and to discard their minds along with their sandals.”

So, I guess - when it comes to the media - "crazy" it is,...

 

 ADDED - H/T Althouse:

   

"Five years ago I did think I would find that single yoga tradition. But yoga constantly transformed and developed over time. Although there are a couple of main goals, there's nothing that shows up in every single yoga path.

For some traditions it was heightened consciousness and an end to suffering, a way to get out of the cycle of birth, death and re-birth that is so painful. But for other yoga traditions some of the goals were things like supernatural powers and the ability to control other people."

If you, too, find yourself trapped in a metaphysical free-for-all, not of your own choosing, you might want to try 5 Christian-Owned Companies With Godly Values to engage the NewAge scourge. True, you'll still find yourself around some equally disturbing, nonsensical, and perverted characters but, at least, you'll usually get a decent product in return and only an insignificant percentage of their white kids ever decide to grow dreadlocks.

And that, my friends, is saying something,...

Cherie Blair, Carole Caplin, Peter Foster - even Deepak Chopra - I could predict what was coming, since they're NewAgers, but not when:

  "Conman Peter Foster - the figure at the centre of the 2002 'Cheriegate' scandal - was sentenced to three years in prison in his absence today for his forbidden role in the weight loss industry."

"The Tortoise And The Hare" is ultimately a spiritual tale,..

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,...