New Age

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:

• Belief that conscious thought molds reality to some extent.

• 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.

• Divination, especially Tarot, I-Ching, and Western and Chinese Astrology.

• Green politics, especially the more extreme and mystical "deep green" movements.

• Flying saucers.

• "Alternative" health (see the earlier section).

• Vegetarianism.

• Pacifism.

• Conspiracy theories to explain why the rest of the world does not follow the same beliefs.

• Rejection of science and logic as tools for understanding the universe. A reliance on feelings and intuition as guides to action.

• 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.

Many people are of the belief that Satanism and New Age are synonymous. This is incorrect. First, 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.

7.2: What is the Gaia hypothesis?

There are several versions. The following taxonomy was suggested by James Kirchner in Scientists on Gaia:

• Influential Gaia: the biota has a substantial influence over certain aspects of the abiotic world

• Coevolutionary Gaia: the biota influences the abiotic environment, and the latter influences the evolution of the biota by Darwinian processes.

• Homeostatic Gaia: the interplay between biota and environment is characterized by stabilizing negative feedback loops.

• Teleological Gaia: the atmosphere is kept in homeostasis not just by the biosphere, but in some sense for the biosphere.

• Optimizing Gaia: the biota manipulates its environment for the purpose of creating biologically favorable conditions for itself.

References:

For a range of interesting perspectives on the Gaia hypothesis, see the SF novel Earth by David Brin.

James Lovelock, Ages of Gaia, W. W. Norton, 1988.

Scientists on Gaia, ed. by Stephen Schneider and Penelope Boston, MIT Press 1991.

The latter book is a collection of papers presented at an American Geophysical Union Symposium in 1988. Most are technical, but the introductory papers are eminently readable. The whole range of scientific opinion is displayed, from Lovelock and Margulis to critics such as James Kirchner.

7.3: Was Nostradamus a prophet?

No. His supporters are very good at predicting events after the fact, often relying on doubtful translations of the original French to bolster their case. But they have had absolutely no success at predicting the future. Up until a few years ago most Nostradamus books were predicting a nuclear war between America and the USSR. None of them predicted the breakup of the Soviet block.

Nostradamus was a Protestant in a time and place when the Inquisition was torturing and burning heretics. To avoid their attention, Nostradamus couched his political letters to other Protestants in obscure symbolism. It is these writings that are now being reinterpreted as prophecy, despite straightforward interpretations which link them to the time Nostradamus wrote them. If you try hard enough, you can find connections between the symbols and numbers used by Nostradamus and almost anything else, particularly if you allow multi-lingual puns and rhymes.

A good general reference on Nostradamus is:

The Mask of Nostradamus
James Randi
Charles Scribner's Sons
ISBN 0-684-19056-7
BF1815.N8R35 1990

This is now available from Prometheus in paperback.

7.4: Does astrology work?

No. A number of studies have been done which have failed to find any predictive power in astrology. Psychologists have also done studies showing that people will agree with almost any statement made about them provided that it is a mild compliment. Hence testimonials and personal impressions about how accurate a horoscope is are not evidence that astrology works. See also section 0.9 on cold reading.

One report about research into astrology is:
Carlson, Shawn. (1985) "A double-blind test of astrology",
Nature, 318 (Dec. 5), 419-425.

Arguments against this position can be found in the alt.astrology FAQ.

7.4.1: Could astrology work by gravity?

Some people argue that we are affected by the gravity of the planets (just as tides are caused by the gravity of the Moon and Sun), and that this is the connection between the motion of the planets and mundane events on Earth.

Leaving aside the fact that astrology doesn't work (see above), gravity is simply too weak to do this. Gravitational force on a mass (such as a human being) decreases with the square of the distance to the other mass. But the Earth is affected just as strongly by the other mass, and accelerates slightly towards it. So the net effect on us is nil. What is important is the difference in gravity between the two sides of the mass. This decreases with the third power of the distance (i.e. very fast) but increases with the distance between the near and far sides. Hence the Moon and Sun cause tides because the Earth is very large. But the difference in gravity between one end of a human and the other is absolutely minuscule.

Also, if this were the mechanism behind astrology then the most significant thing in astrology would be the position of the Moon, with the time of day coming second (as it is for tides). The position of the planets would be completely irrelevant because they are so much further away than the Moon and so much smaller than the Sun.

7.4.2: What is the `Mars Effect'?

French scientist Michael Gauquelin has discovered an apparent correlation between the position of some planets at the time of birth and the career followed as an adult. The strongest correlation is between the time when Mars rises on the day of birth and athletic prowess. However:

• The Effect seems to come and go depending on exactly what the sample population is. Most of the controversy seems to revolve around who did what to which sample populations.

• Nothing found by Gauqelin bears any resemblance to classical astrology, so claims that Gauqelin has somehow "validated" astrology are bogus.

For more information, see

Michel Gauquelin, Neoastrology: A Copernican Revolution, 1991, N.Y.: Viking Arkana, was, I believe, his last book.

Patrick Curry, "Research on the Mars Effect," Zetetic Scholar #9, pp. 34-53. This is followed by a number of critical commentaries, which continue in Zetetic Scholar #s 10 and 11.

Curry's article and Richard Kammann's article in ZS #10 are the most detailed and reliable sources of information on CSICOP's examination of Gauquelin. You should, of course, also read the U.S. test reports in the Winter 1979 Skeptical Inquirer--pay closest attention to Dennis Rawlins' report, which correctly criticizes both the main CSICOP report and Gauquelin's report. Also of great importance is Abell, Kurtz, and Zelen's "Reappraisal" of the Mars effect study in the Spring 1983 Skeptical Inquirer, and Suitbert Ertel's "Update on the 'Mars Effect'" in the Winter 1992 SI.

You can obtain back issues of the Zetetic Scholar from Marcello Truzzi, Dept. of Sociology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197. I suspect that issues 9, 10, and 11 are now available only in photocopied form. In 1987 they were $8 each.

7.4.3: But couldn't there be some undiscovered connection between people and plants?

Well of course there could be. There could be an invisible snorg reading this over your shoulder right now (don't look round). If there was repeatable evidence that astrology worked then scientists would look into it.

7.5: What is Kirlian Photography?

[Information from a posting by Dave Palmer <dpalmer@csulb.edu>]

The technique involves applying a high-frequency, high-voltage electrical source (such as from a Tesla coil) to a subject. The source is also very low-current, so the subject does not get electrocuted (it's the current in electricity that does the harm, not the voltage). When this is done, an "aura" of lightning-like electrical discharges forms around the subject. This field is visible to the naked eye (in a dark room, anyway), and may be photographed. Adherents of Kirlian photography claim that this field is some sort of "life energy" which may indicate things about the subject, such as health, psychic ability, and so forth. They claim that Kirlian photography sometimes shows the "phantom effect." That is, if a limb is amputated from the subject (or, less gruesomely, if a piece is torn off a leaf), that the field will still show the missing piece for a time, because its "life energy" is still there.

There is no truth to the claims that it shows any sort of "aura" or "life energy." It is merely a coronal discharge, complete with ozone production. The most damaging argument against the "life energy" claim is that Kirlian photography works on any subject that conducts electricity, even completely lifeless metal, or synthetic sponges soaked in salt water.

The field produced jumps around quite a bit. Because the shape of the field changes, it can occasionally appear to outline non-existent areas of the subject, hence the phantom effect. Dave Palmer reports producing the phantom effect with tin foil about as often with leaves. Far more often, he got false phantom effects, that is, pictures of pieces of the subject that had never existed.