Archive for the ‘From Rationalism to New Age’ Category
Three Shades Of Spirito-Babble
Whenever someone says, “Things can be true in special ways”, hang onto your wallet and look for the exit. This locution is a pointer to someone trying to believe an obvious lie. For some people, having a “spiritual life” is completely indefinable, but nevertheless gives them permission to launch polemics against all sorts of things, […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, From Rationalism to New Age
A Pilgrimage To Hendon
Almost every age has harboured an immense reverence for “spiritual” personalities, books and paraphernalia of the distant past, none more than our own; and few indeed are the modern voices suggesting that it was just as easy to be a religious grifter in the Egypt of the Pharaohs as in modern California. Perhaps even easier, […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, From Rationalism to New Age
True For Me, Untrue For You
Whatever happened to nineteenth-century anticlericalism and atheism? In the era that the uninformed imagine to have been supremely religious, there was no shortage of voices proclaiming that the whole thing was a lot of damned nonsense. Religion was the opium of the people, it was a conspiracy of the ruling classes to befuddle the workers […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, From Rationalism to New Age
The Jesus Dynasty
The main business of the book The Da Vinci Code and its original inspiration, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail was to claim that Jesus of Nazareth sired children, and that his lineage continues today. This suggestion was so shocking to believers that the subsequent brouhaha concentrated on the alleged evidence; as far as […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, From Rationalism to New Age
First Steps in Mystagoguery
A platonic friend, whom I had thought was very wise until I started thinking about this incident, once told me that I was like an island without an anchorage, or one with a No Trespassing notice, I don’t remember just how she put it. The point was that another person could sail round and round […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, From Rationalism to New Age
