David Falk: yes, I'm sure this is what you have been taught in
church, but that you were taught it doesn't mean that it touches reality
at any two contiguous points. It is imperative for many branches of
fundamentalist christianity to constantly feel conspired against...so
they cite humanist manifestos and theosophical societies and concoct
these vast and dark organizations that exist nowhere but in the minds of
those who conceive these theories.

"New Age" is one of these notions. Basically, it's anything that is
not Christianity, except satanism, though the phrase "new age occultism"
sometimes blurs that line. Here we've got dozens and dozens of different
groups, maybe even hundreds, all with competing notions, all with certain
levels of antagonism toward one another...described by you as a specific
religious movment with similar systems, concocted through a "content
model developed by the theosophical society, one of the early mind
science cults."

Having now so defined it as a deliberate conspiracy, and part of a
cult out to control our minds, you can dismiss it, AND add into it
anything you choose. And this is exactly what happens. You say you
don't agree or like my saying that this gets done by fundamentalists, then
you turn *right* around and do it yourself.

Once again, I don't believe a word the new age groups or any other
group puts forth. Nor am I tarring fundamentalist groups. I'm simply
saying out loud and in public what's generally said in private among
the majority of fundamentalist groups. That tends to make some of them
upset. Like when you confront them on the school prayer issue; and you
pare it down to the notion that they want THEIR prayers prayed, that
they don't want a prayer to the great turtle on whose back the world
rests, or to Thor, or Zeus, or Mammon, or Mohammed, or Buddha.

Having read the bible cover to cover twice, I can sometimes only
conclude that Christ would be *profoundly* unhappy with many of the things
said and done in his name. He didn't like people to make specatacles of
prayer and devotion. Remember the suggestion to go into your closet to
pray? That only the hippocrites and pharisees make big deals of their
belief by dragging it out into the public places? Christians were urged
to lay not your hands upon the law, to keep separate from the state, to
offer to Caesar that which was Caesar's and to god that which was god's;
because the state was by its very nature corrupt, christians were told to
keep apart from it. I think he would be ashamed, and disgraced, at the
notion of christian theme parks and the transition of personal belief
into big business.

(Misspelled hypocrites and spectacles above. Pretend they were
spelled correctly and we'll move on.)

There is much of christianity to commend it; its emphasis on faith,
and charity, and devotion to others...and there is also much that works
against it, a tendency toward brittleness and persecution complexes and
vindictiveness and the tendency to portray anything that is not itself
as evil or satanic or a conspiracy...and a huge dollop of defensiveness.
You can find fundamentalists on both sides of this division. It's just
that to some, if you speak this way about a part, you are accused of
speaking this way about *all*. But I don't fall for that gag; I've
seen it too many times.

jms