Mysticism:

Religions attempt to control our beliefs even in things outside the physical realm.
Extreme atheist skeptics try to shatter people's beliefs.
I find funny parallels between the two at times.


One may note the conceptual attack on mysticism by our culture is multi-pronged. Religions dislike it because it suggests a lack of necessity for organized religions and has historically been rather hard to subjugate and control other than through persecution and extermination. Consumer society hates it because it's really difficult to market supernatural kinds of arcane things. Science, we'd rather just plain not deal with it given the opportunity because, as you know, the domain of science and modis operandi of science people tends to be concerned with the physical world and things you can measure empirically.

Now, before you can get your anti anything-that-isn't-empirical game on, tighten your tinfoil hat a little tighter, point at & use the drugs and psychosis thought terminating cliche that Thomas Szach (sp?) was talking about, or shove a cross at me really hard this is already going to be the last entry I am going to write on this topic for a good long while to begin with...