In the last hundreds of thousands of years of homo sapiens' development the emergence of organised, totalitarian monotheistic cultures had only begun to dominate in the last mere thousands. This Messianic Impulse was brilliantly explored by Frank Herbert in his seminal science fiction opus "Dune" in the mid-TwenCen. His Missionaria Protectiva was a big reveal on how religious organisations planned for the long term.
Today technology and improved transportation has resulted in a Great Intermingling of cultures, religions and race. The purity of monotheistic programs are no longer guaranteed. Ages-old belief systems exist within larger, more tolerant and questioning cultures. New generations of thinking humans who, in earlier ignorant times would have been at the mercy of both the nature and nurture of their parents, now have access to other intellectual stimulus as they grow up (unless, of course, they are completely imprisoned in the State/Church-run schools of their parents' priests or imams).
So why, in this enlightened age, is there still an overwhelming urge to seek and own ancient mythologies? It is a historical fact that modern religions are both figuratively and literally built on the ruins of the old. Take Christianity: the Church superposed both their physical and ideological New Religion upon the old pagan religions. Not only did they commission extravagant buildings to be built on top of their defeated enemies' religious sites but they absorbed their beliefs in the process. Except that such absorption was a two-way street. The resultant evolutionary offspring was a mutant bastard called "christmas", itself now an example of a new and powerful Worship regime. It alone is responsible for many many years of irrational behaviour; entire cultures in the thrall of rampant consumerism that has very little to do with pagan or god worship.
Further examples abound. Individuals who fail to succumb to the Churches' messages take comfort in the resurrection of symbology from the Dark Ages. In practically every town and hamlet you will find small shops given to the practitioners of Tarot, Clairvoyance, Reincarnation, Karma, Psychic healers, Ouija readers, and other sundry mediums and exorcists. Most modern cultures within western America are affected by the bleed of mystical concepts from their nearest Pacific neighbours. Hospitals, where the practitioners study anatomy and biology for years or decades at a time, exist side by side with practitioners of acupuncture, diviners of water and mineral deposits, chakra healers and manipulators of chi energy. And with the invention of the Internet, this cultural bleed finds greater purchase . . .
The 60-year old weekly New Scientist magazine devotes its last page to the growing incidence of pseudoscience; or what it calls "fruitloopery". Examples are unfortunately commonplace. They usually start with titles such as "All Universal Laws and Principle Governing Life". Such metaphysical rubbish proves the authors have never attended a day in a science class in their lives. They assume pseudo-scientific
terms like “energy, light, vibration and motion” to justify a
regurgitation of all the other pop religious soundbites that have gone before and
then dump them on a gullible, equally-ignorant public all arrogantly dressed up
as a “universal truth”! This display of ignorance and stupidity is infectious. Take this excerpt: “As we learn to
relinquish our rational thinking and surrender to our intuition -- our
connection to Infinite Intelligence -- we discover how easily, effortlessly and
spontaneously events unfold for us”. WHAT!? It typifies everything that is
wrong with the world, from the gun nuts in America to the animal rights groups
in Europe to the “Kill All The Infidels” Jihadists in the Middle East. As a
species we need more rational analysis not a supernaturally justified abrogation
of it!
More sophisticated web sites abound. In this site the author explains his rationale: "And because reality is flashing in and out of existence (hypothetically at Planck time – 1044 times per second – as explained by The Resonance Project biophysicist William Brown), every time our reality oscillates between form, and the pure energy state of the field, our awareness which is constant and doesn’t flash in and out of existence informs the field what to reappear as when it makes its transition back to form at the quantum level." The fruitloopery continues with: "The human energy field is interacting and influencing the quantum field all around us at all times and the energy of our beliefs and intentions are infused into our energy field because they are defined by the energy of our thoughts and emotions." Er . . . no, they are not! In fact, it is unbelievable to an educated mind how much total bollocks is being promulgated here.
Of course, Planck time wasn't "explained" by a completely fatuous wannabe "resonance project biophysicist William Brown" Ha Ha! (The arrogance really is funny!) It was predicted by the eponymous Max Planck a hundred years ago in his formula to create a mathematical constant. As anyone with a a basic education would tell you, the whole of quantum mechanics is the attempt to explain the behaviour of matter and energy at the very, very smallest levels of existence.
These examples of "fruitloopery" would be laughable drivel if it wasn't for the fact that so many so-called responsible adults accept it at face value. Not only does our nascent, educated civilisation have to contend with mother-to-daughter, father-to-son rituals to maintain the theology of a "supreme deity", it now has to contend with propagated nonsense espousing ridiculous fantasies. Ignorance is becoming a worse disease than Ebola.
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