Daylight Atheism » New Age

The Harm Psychics Do, Continued

Ebonmuse — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:05:34 +0000

You know, I was going to write about the Pastafarian who won the right to wear a metal colander on his head for his driver's license photo - but by the time I got home from work yesterday, half a dozen other atheist bloggers had already posted about it, so never mind. Here's something a little heavier instead.

I wrote a post in ... [visit site to read more]

I Am An Atom of Atheism

Ebonmuse — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:07:33 +0000

The blog Ungodly News has created a whimsical periodic table of atheism, and I was surprised and pleased to find out that I'm on it:

visit site to read more]

News Flash: Psychics Still Useless

Ebonmuse — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:22:01 +0000

You may have heard about this bizarre story out of Texas this week, where a self-proclaimed psychic called police with a tip that a certain home was the site of a mass grave containing dozens of dismembered bodies, including the bodies of children. A swarm of reporters, FBI agents and Texas Rangers promptly converged on the address, bringing cameras, news helicopters and cadaver-sniffing dogs.

At first they found spots of ... [visit site to read more]

Weekly Link Roundup

Ebonmuse — Wed, 18 May 2011 01:11:33 +0000

I noticed a few stories this week that I haven't had time to write more about, but wanted to mention briefly:

• So-called "psychics" defraud their gullible customers out of thousands of dollars, usually through laughably obvious ploys in which they claim the client's money needs to be "cleansed". Can we please visit site to read more]

Swimming in a Sea of Pseudoscience

Ebonmuse — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:49:14 +0000

This past weekend, I was out at brunch when I saw a rack of free magazines in the restaurant's foyer. I picked out one of them, which as it turned out was a promotional brochure and schedule for something called the New Life Expo to be held in New York City this coming weekend.

I read on, and the further into it I got, the more appalled I was. If you thought that humanity was entering a new and enlightened age, this magazine will ... [visit site to read more]

Weekend Link Miscellany

Ebonmuse — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 00:06:06 +0000

I've got a couple of links this weekend, some atheism-related, some not:

• Lost a digital camera lately? It made me smile to find out about I Found Your Camera, a website helping to reunite lost cameras with their owners.

• After the terrible and entirely preventable deaths of three people during a "sweat lodge" ceremony last year, the New Age community in Sedona is ... [visit site to read more]

An Opportunity Suggests Itself

Ebonmuse — Mon, 31 May 2010 18:31:32 +0000

On the flight back from my honeymoon, I noticed an ad on my airplane promoting this sweepstakes - and my attention was drawn to the grand prize:

Win a one-on-one meeting with the renowned author and mind-body expert, Deepak Chopra, M.D. and rejuvenate your spirit with his Seduction of Spirit Retreat at the Chopra Center. Dr. Chopra is a global force in the field of human empowerment and the prolific author of fourteen ... [visit site to read more]

Popular Delusions: Out-of-Body Experiences

Ebonmuse — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:50:39 +0000

Most religious people believe in the soul, an ethereal locus of consciousness that separates from the body upon physical death and travels elsewhere to receive its reward. To people who hold this belief, it's a natural next step to guess that the soul or spirit could sometimes leave a person's body while they're still alive and travel to distant places on its own initiative. Such is the belief in out-of-body experiences, the subject of today's Popular Delusions post.

Belief in OBEs is ... [visit site to read more]

Popular Delusions X: Crystal Power

Ebonmuse — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:30:08 +0000

To mark the tenth installment of Popular Delusions, I'm turning my attention to one of the most common and enduring superstitions among the New Age set: the belief that naturally occurring crystals have some sort of special power to store, concentrate, or focus vaguely defined "energies".

A web search readily brings up hundreds of sites discussing the magical potencies of various crystals, most of which have to do with their supposed healing powers. visit site to read more]

Coming Soon to an Apocalypse Near You

Ebonmuse — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:25:08 +0000

Any informed observer of religious folly knows that setting dates for the apocalypse ranks among the major pastimes of fundamentalists and fanatics the world over. (The next most-popular pastime is explaining why those dates failed to pan out.) In fact, throughout human history, the years in which the end of the world has not been predicted to occur are probably far outnumbered by the ones in which it has. But what's most astonishing is the way these prophecies, after they have failed, ... [visit site to read more]

On Magic(k)

Ebonmuse — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:49:20 +0000

Throughout history, groups such as the Puritans have railed against what they see as the overly elaborate and ostentatious ceremony and ritual surrounding religious events. But despite the fulminations of religious reformers, ceremony and ritual are not superfluous add-ons to faith, but very much at the core of it. Belief in the supernatural is usually intended to give the believer a sense of control over events, and a highly elaborate, ritualized ceremony is often more effective at this than a ... [visit site to read more]

Book/Movie Review: The Secret

Ebonmuse — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:09:49 +0000

Lately, The Secret - a movie and its companion book produced by Rhonda Byrne - have been burning up the bestseller lists and have attracted endorsements from influential celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey. Marketed in the self-help genre, it promises viewers the key to achieving all their life goals through the power of positive thinking. (The name is a misnomer, since The Secret's teachings are hardly a secret but have been a prominent part of New Age belief systems for decades, ... [visit site to read more]