One of the most remarkable developments in pseudoscience and religion, beginning in the 1970s, and generally considered an outgrowth of the 1960s "Counterculture," is the set of beliefs usually called New Age. This social and religious movement basically incorporates almost all of pseudoscience, apart from ideas like Creationism that are based on fundamentalist religious frameworks. The religious basis of the New Age is a form of pantheism, the idea that everything in the universe is "conscious and alive," and that human beings are essentially godlike, and have godlike powers if properly trained. Most New Agers appear to have merged their New Age beliefs with whatever somewhat ill-defined religious concepts they already profess, so that for example angels and "ascended spirit masters and guides" can be communicated with and can provide help and guidance on a daily basis. One of the hallmarks of the New Age is belief in the healing powers of crystals. Another hallmark is "trance channeling," an outgrowth of 19th Century Spiritualism. In the 1960s and 1970s many paperback collections of "trance readings" by hillbilly psychic Edgar Cayce became available, with titles such as EDGAR CAYCE ON REINCARNATION, EDGAR CAYCE ON ATLANTIS, EDGAR CAYCE ON NATURE'S REMEDIES, etc., etc., and these largely incoherent "teachings" became for many New Agers a kind of Holy Scripture.
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Although most New Agers today have never heard of them, the synthesizers, collectors and initial popularizers of many, if not most, of the components of the New Age belief framework were Helena Blavatski, who co-founded the once influential religion of Theosophy, and onetime follower Alice Bailey, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Also a number of flying saucer-based religious cults created mainly in the 1950s, such as those of George Adamski and many imitators, were based on Theosophical teachings and spread those ideas into pseudoscience in a general way as "teachings of the masters of wisdom who are sending out these flying saucers on a mission to earth."
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Because New Age beliefs cover such
a vast spectrum,
incorporating nearly every popular pseudoscience, it is very
difficult to determine who
in the US should be considered a bona fide New Ager. There is a
general feeling among sociologists that the New Age movement is
losing members, and a no-religion
group is steadily growing, but I suspect this is wishful
thinking. However sympathetically one views the New Age
movement, the distressing fact remains, that this is just one
more movement that is resolutely anti-reality and anti-science,
yet another way that ancient magical
thinking keeps making a comeback in an increasingly
technology-ruled world where primitive beliefs can only
damage lives. Additional
food for thought.
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Although the New Age
movement involves many religious concepts, it is not
sociologically organized as a religion. There are no New Age
"churches." And New Agers who are conventionally religious
adopt their New Age beliefs "on top of" their religious
beliefs, with a firm partition between, so that followers of
the New Age simply ignore conflicts between their conventional
religion and the New Age beliefs. The only groups which firmly
reject New Age materials are religious fundamentalists, and
the non-religious. Basically, the public sees the New
Age as a lifestyle choice!
Science in the modern USA is under continual attack from many different fronts... yet science is all we have, it is the only way we have discovered to describe and understand the world we live in, and nevertheless...