Christian evangelicals have been a major force the world over, especially the   
   United States. The main intellectual reason has been that Pat Robertson used   
   the arguments of postmodernism to create an intellectual basis for   
   fundamentalist Christianity. I    
   do not see why he would not. If postmodernism can be used to bring in Hare   
   Krishna or paganism, I see no reason why it cannot be used to bring in   
   Christianity as well. It was a brilliant move, and Pat Robertson used it to   
   become a leader of a very    
   powerful spiritual and political movement.   
      
   As for James Randi, the leader of the so-called “skeptic” movement, he   
   does not know what he is talking about. Why on earth would God or Ganesh or   
   the Tao want to be studied by people who do not believe in them? It says in   
   the Bible, “Do not put    
   the Lord your God to test”; and Buddha explicitly forbade his followers the   
   use of miracles as means of persuasion. The Christian's powers are not under   
   conscious control; they come either from Christ or from Christians with either   
   spiritual knowledge    
   or very strong faith – in many cases people who have converted to   
   Christianity from paganism or New Age while retaining what they have learned.   
   As for the people whose powers are under conscious control, very few of them   
   can reliably reproduce a one in    
   a million result, and those who can either do not want to call attention to   
   themselves or else they either do not need or do not want a million dollars.   
      
   With the New Age movement, we see both good things and bad things. I see   
   absolutely nothing wrong with teaching people Reiki or yoga or Zen, or   
   bringing into the West the wisdom of Native Americans or Australian   
   Aborigines. Astrology is something that I    
   once had dismissed, but it has been shown to me by people who are not stupid   
   in any way to make very precise descriptions of both individual and   
   generational character. I see none of these things as being unethical or   
   destructive. There is however    
   something that's very wrong with the New Age movement.   
      
   One of the central claims of the New Age movement is that people are   
   responsible for everything that happens to them. I find this to be morally   
   wrong. This attitude can be used to excuse any atrocity under the sun under   
   the claim that those at the    
   receiving end of the atrocity have brought it about.   
      
   It also is a claim that is very easy to stand on its head. All that one needs   
   to do is negatively impact the other person – as people of course do all the   
   time – and then the person will have to blame herself. A witch who gets   
   burned at the stake    
   will have to say that she did it and not the Grand Inquisitor. A woman who   
   gets beaten to death by her husband will have to say that she caused it and   
   not the man. And if a New Age community comes under barbaric attack from   
   Muslim or Christian    
   fundamentalists, they will also have to say that they did it to themselves.   
      
   Probably the one thing that makes people such as James Randi credible to some   
   is the fact that the main religion of the place – Christianity – has put a   
   damper upon magick, spiritism, shamanism and similar pursuits. This has   
   destroyed the evidence    
   for spiritual activity in Christian-influenced societies, leading many to   
   think that such things are hogwash. I do not have the option of such beliefs;   
   I know what I have experienced, and I also have a testimony of many others,   
   including distinguished    
   scientists, successful entrepreneurs and highly educated, highly successful   
   professionals. A person who has not seen evidence for such activity and is   
   skeptical of it is making an honest, innocent mistake. A person who has had   
   such experiences and either    
   repressed or denied them is in no way honest or innocent.   
      
   The same is the case for many in the academia, who have seen any number of   
   scientific studies that demonstrate spiritual activity but have censored them   
   or dismissed them with a likewise dishonest claim that “an extraordinary   
   claim requires an    
   extraordinary level of proof.” I see absolutely nothing extraordinary about   
   something that the bulk of humanity believes in. A far more extraordinary   
   claim is that the bulk of humanity are lunatics and that the only sane people   
   are ones partaking of    
   academic groupthink.   
      
   Pat Robertson has disgraced himself by making claims that were obviously   
   false. If AIDS had been God's way of controlling the homosexual population,   
   then the bulk of people dying of AIDS would be homosexuals in San Francisco   
   and not straight men and    
   women in Africa. And if 9-11 had been God's punishment for America for the   
   feminists and liberals living in America, then it would have happened not in   
   2001 but in 1960s and 1970s when there were far more feminists and liberals in   
   America than there were    
   the last decade. This impugns Pat Robertson and brands him America's biggest   
   conman, which of course he has been all along. It does not however impugn   
   either Christianity or spirituality.   
      
   It is valid to use reason; not valid to believe that the bulk of humanity are   
   loonies. It is valid to have faith; not valid to use it to deny one's children   
   an adequate education or to militate against science and mathematics. It is   
   valid to have    
   spiritual experience; not valid to believe that if I were to rape you and kill   
   you it would be your fault rather than mine or that the 50 million people who   
   perished in the Gulag had it coming to them or that if a truck runs over a   
   4-year-old child it is    
   her fault.   
      
   There are any number of folks on the ground with all sorts of knowledge, and   
   they have been taking it in all sorts of directions. I know of a Jehovah's   
   Witnesses family in Australia that has taken extensive interest in psychology   
   and the occult and has    
   been using that knowledge to further the Jehovah's Witnesses agenda. I know of   
   a number of Christians in both Australia and America who came to Christ after   
   having been part of the consciousness movement, Hare Krishna or the New Age   
   and have likewise    
   been using what they had learned to promote Christianity. The people who have   
   no use for such things think that they are smart, but whom they are fooling   
   really is themselves. As one of the leaders of Alcoholics Anonymous said of   
   such people, “I feel    
   sorry for you.”   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)