7.1: What do New Agers believe?
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This article is from the Scientific Skepticism FAQ, by Paul Johnson Paul@treetop.demon.co.uk with numerous contributions by others.
7.1: What do New Agers believe?
An awful lot, it would seem. New Age is not a "religion" in the
traditional sense of a defined set of spiritual beliefs. Instead it
seems to be a label applied to a loose collection of religious cults,
organisations and pseudo-sciences. Some of the more common themes
are:
o Belief that conscious thought molds reality to some extent.
o Belief that religions are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Eastern religions, especially "cult" religions, seem popular.
Mainstream eastern religions such as Hinduism and Sihkism don't seem
to attract New Age believers. Most New Agers are actively against
organised Christianity, but some favour heretical variants such as
Gnosticism. Almost any pre-Christian religious tradition has
followers in the New Age camp.
o Divination, especially Tarot, I-Ching, and Western and Chinese
Astrology.
o Green politics, especially the more extreme and mystical "deep
green" movements.
o Flying saucers.
o "Alternative" health (see the earlier section).
o Vegetarianism.
o Pacifism.
o Conspiracy theories to explain why the rest of the world does not
follow the same beliefs.
o Rejection of science and logic as tools for understanding the
universe. A reliance on feelings and intuition as guides to action.
o Pseudo-scientific jargon. New Agers talk about "rebalancing energy
fields" and "vibrational frequencies". These sound vaguely
scientific but in fact have no meaning at all.
Bear in mind that not all of these are bad just because New Age people
follow them. And by the same token, a person who follows one strand
of New Age belief may not follow any others.
Many people are of the belief that Satanism and New Age are
synonymous. This is incorrect. Many (probably most) people involved
in New Age religions *do not* believe in Heaven, Hell, the Christian
God, the Christian Devil or any other purely Christian construct.
The equation Paganism = Satanism comes from the history of
Christianity. As the Church spread through Europe it asserted its
authority by banning any competing religions. Since the Catholic
Church was the exclusive holder of the Truth, it followed that any
competing religion was False, and must therefore be an attempt by
Satan to mislead humanity. Hence anyone following another religion
was doing the work of Satan.
For more information on these ideas, check out the alt.pagan FAQ.
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