Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ozymandias]

My library is a government document repository. This means we get a lot of weird, long documents that the government writes and assumes no one outside of the government cares about (and probably no one inside reads either).

One such subject we get a lot of documents on is WIPP- the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant [Wiki source]. TL;DR: It's a big hole in the ground that they filled with nuclear waste and covered up. As part of creating this, they had to assure people it was safe. Out of this assurance came the document I hold now in my hand: Expert Judgment on Inadverent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

This is a real government document written by real people who were paid real tax money to imagine scenarios in which WIPP might be uncovered by people.

Let's take a look inside!

A Feminist World, 2091

Summary: Women dominated in society, numerically through the choice of having girl babies and socially. Extreme feminist values and perspectives also dominated. Twentieth-century science was discredited as misguided male aggressive epistemological arrogance. The Feminist Alternative Potash Corporation began mining in the WIPP site. Although the miners saw the markers, they dismissed the warnings as another example of inferior, inadequate, and muddled masculine thinking. They penetrated a storage area, releasing radionuclides.

They proceed to define probabilities related to the likelyhood of this scenario, e.g.:

Very high of significant numbers of women and some men having "feminist views"that define 20th-century science as inferior, inadequate, and muddled masculine thinking.

Fun!

Let's try another scenario!

Human Warriors Return From Space, 11991

Summary: Spacebattleship V was returning to Mesa Spaceport when the ship malfunctions. With only partial control, the commander headed for the only nearby area clear of buildings and human habitation, the WIPP site. Although he saw a pattern of earth on the open area, he did not know what it meant. He saw no warning lights. His sensors received no electronic warning. Before he crashed, he fired his forward lasers to reduce the speed of impact. The laser blasting plus the exploding fuel and weapons during the crash penetrated the repository, releasing radionuclides.

Low that a spaceport will be built somewhere within 500 miles or so of WIPP. (Ha!)

Virus Impairs Computerized People, 11991

Summary: Most of the work in society was done by computerized people, humanoid computer-robots. A virus infected them and spread to epidemic proportions. Computerized people constructing gratte-terres in New Mexico began drilling and constructing shafts compulsively in disregard of their programming prohibitions. Because of the disorienting virus, computerized workers ignored the markers at the WIPP site and penetrated the repository, releasing radionuclides.

Now, each of these summaries actually has a few pages explaining in detail exactly what will occur. And there's lots of these scenarios that I'm now too bored with to continue to type out, but include: A fanatical religious cult worshiping the warning symbols at the WIPP site and digging it up, global illiteracy rendering people incapable of knowing not to dig there, or a WIPP museum causing 10000 years of humanity to cling to a figure known as Nickey Nuke.

It's a good read. Check it out.

[Ballard]

I uh..

I have no words. I am amazed and amused and absolutely speechless.

[nobo]

If you recycle nuclear fuel you can almost eliminate waste. and apparently keep those feminsts at bay.

[Dazed]

God damn feminists takin' over my world.

[est]

I would feel quite bad about deriding the work of these people, as they are quite obviously pants-on-head retarded.

[Radical AC]

Whoever wrote that had to have been bored and joking... I refuse to believe it is in any way serious. 

Feminism becomes Idiocracy?
Spaceships that, when damaged, can still crash land without a re-entry window by using lasers to shoot the ground without Columbiaing all over the sky?
A spaceport in Mesa?

And, I'm just throwing this out there, but I think he stole the cult idea from Planet of the Apes 2.

[Is it cold in here?]

How do I get a job like that one?

[est]

Seriously.  I would write down Han & my friends as referees who could attest to my shit-talking abilities.

[Jace]

Seriously.  I would write down Han & my friends as referees who could attest to my shit-talking abilities.

Your typos are getting better, or referees are something different in Australia.

[est]

References are written.  Referees are people who you give the phone number of and they tell the prospective employer about you.

[schimmy]

They are also the people who ensure your favourite sports team always loses.

[Tom]

Man some of those are so wrong. Everyone knows that we hit the singularity, at the most, 40 years from now.

[Jace]

References are written.  Referees are people who you give the phone number of and they tell the prospective employer about you.

See, in America, a reference is the latter and a recommendation is the former. At least, this has been the case for me.

[Spluff]

Nope, it's the same worldwide. A recommendation differs slightly from a reference, in that a letter of recommendation is usually addressed specifically to a person, and directly applies to the job you are applying for, whereas a reference is more general.

[Luke C]

Stop derailing the thread talking about est and his typo or lack of a typo.

Please tell me someone wrote a scenario involving zombies.

[supersheep]

Direct link to PDF.

The ten scenarios (pp. 164-191):
A Feminist World, 2091
Mysticism and Religion, 2091
Buried Treasure, 2091
WIPP as the Nation’s Nuclear Waste Site, 2091
A Houston to Los Angeles Tunnel, 2991
Global Illiteracy, 2991
Virus Impairs Computerized People, 11991
Human Warriors Return from Space, 11991
Nickey Nuke and WIPP Worlds, 11991
Industrial WIPP, the Solar Desert, 2000 to 12,000

Also interesting is the markers they wanted to use - some of them are a bit mad looking... (On the wiki page)

[jhocking]

It's a good read. Check it out.

Wait, did I miss the link? Where is the document? I wish to read it!


edit after reading the thread:

Direct link to PDF.

yes!

[Ozymandias]

Oh, yeah. ALso of note: this was written by people at Sandia National Labs.

These people are supposed to be the best and brightest government researchers. People who have extreme clearance to ultimate experimental military technology.

Maybe they know something we don't.

[Jimor]

Ahhh, I knew I had heard about this before. In the list of participants (pg 36) is Greg Benford, who's listed under his academic credential as a physicist, but is better known as a science fiction author. He wrote an article about his participation for Analog Science Fiction a few years ago.

I think they all got caught up in writing (bad) science fiction on the govt's dime. If I have time, it might be interesting to see which parts Benford worked on, his stuff is usually quite good.

[mberan42]

How do I get a job like that one?

[A Shoggoth on the Roof]

(from the mysticism and religion)

They might have been stopped, if the federal government had not been in a period of chaos or if the government  of New Mexico had not been controlled by financial institutions headquartered
in Japan and Switzerland.

dude, japan, I always knew those fuckers were up to something

[Victorinia]

Feminism becomes Idiocracy?

Very high of significant numbers of women and some men having "feminist views" that define 20th-century science as inferior, inadequate, and muddled masculine thinking.

This ideology is actually pretty well represented in ecofeminism. There are women out there who think that way. Not all ecofeminists, nor, from what I've read, even the majority of them, but they definitely exist.
Just sayin'.

This is pretty great, though. I wonder what other gold is buried in government documents?

[onewheelwizzard]

As an ecofeminist myself, I can say honestly that I do believe that the majority of 20th-Century Western science IS, in fact, "inferior, inadequate, and muddled masculine thinking."

I mean, 19th-Century science and 18th-Century science and 17th-Century science were all accurately described this way too.  I don't think the more recent innovations in science have really done a whole lot to solve the problem.

[pwhodges]

My wife was having an interview for a very high-power university job in genetics.  One of the panel (female, not a scientist) kept asking her what she would "do for women" if appointed.  My wife at first responded that she did not treat women differently, and had needed no special treatment to get where she was.  Finally she lost it, and said "genetics is not a pink and fluffy subject".  She didn't get offered the job, which annoyed her, as she had actually been the referee for the grant application that created the post!

I don't understand your comment.

[Alex C]

Our knowledge of the universe is certainly filled with mistakes and flaws, but my question to those who call science "inferior and inadequate" has always been "Inferior to what, exactly?"

[Ozymandias]

I am legitimately interested in what the "feminist" approach to science is, besides what this silly document has already defined as basically "fuck the last 2000 years of science, because men controlled it".

This is now an extreme curiosity.

[Alex C]

Yeah, I mean, I take feminism pretty seriously, but I'm really unsure what the feminist perspective would have to say on the use of diatoms as an environmental monitor other than "stop doing that."

Bah. I'm being unnecessarily glib and dismissive here. Apologies. I just rarely hear much on the subject of ecofeminism that isn't tied up in primitivist ideology, which I pretty soundly reject.

[pwhodges]

the majority of 20th-Century Western science IS, in fact, "inferior, inadequate, and muddled masculine thinking."  I mean, 19th-Century science and 18th-Century science and 17th-Century science were all accurately described this way too.

So an eco-feminist view of gravity, evolution, Ohm's law, DNA, X-rays would differ how?  I like to have knowledge to base a view on - is this somehow bad?

[Ozymandias]

I can see how there can be differing methodologies used in some fields, like medicine, based on feminist viewpoints but the process would, on a basic level, be the same.

I can also see how there could be disagreements on the advancement of science in academia, via journals and such, but honestly I'm not sure what a better alternative is besides just saying "the idealized version of this philosophy is way better than the reality of it."

But really, I just want OWW's thoughts, so people stop piling on him when he hasn't said any dang thing but that he agrees with a certain viewpoint.

[onewheelwizzard]

People are just getting confused about the ideas, which is fine, because there are very few resources in society espousing this viewpoint with any degree of detail.

There are a lot of angles I could take to approaching the subject here and I'm pretty sure that none of them would really "present an argument" that people could weigh favorably against the "argument" presented by Western scientific thought.  But if I explain things right, people will hopefully see why that's part of the problem.

First of all, it's important to explain where Western science comes from.  Western science was started by religious men who were reforming a masculine and Judeo-Christian society by espousing the idea that the most perfect way to serve and appreciate the Lord was to study and understand His creation, rather than offer tithes to the church and such.  The fact that the goals of science outpaced their origins does not change the fact that science, at its heart of hearts, is based on a fundamental cosmology that assumes separation between individual humans and a vast, unfeeling, unconscious, impersonal universe.  This is the model of the universe that ancient Middle Eastern politics left in its wake in the form of religion, and science has relied upon it entirely.  The ideas that the universe might be alive or conscious, or that humanity might have some form of consciousness on the collective level, or that the planet Earth might be a living organism itself, *which are all ideas that are central to pre-Judeo-Christian pagan thought* (implication: we have alternatives and they are hardly new), have been considered more or less scientific heresy, not because they challenge DATA that scientists have collected, but because they challenge the traditional model with which scientists analyze their data ... the ancient, anti-pagan, Judeo-Christian model that started with "God created the universe and we are but souls within it" and then, over time, deleted "God" and "soul" from the equation without really adding much.

Science has done next to nothing so far to directly address our basic cosmological understanding of who we are in the universe.  Now, that's fine, I suppose, because it has never purported to intend to do such a thing, but the problem is that we, as a society, NEED to directly address our basic understanding of who we are in the universe, because the one we've been using in Western society is just not working well enough.  Our society is profoundly sick in a lot of ways, and this is due in large part to the sterile, rigid, impersonal way that we've conditioned our society into viewing the universe for the last 5000 years ... and our insistence that everyone else see things the same way.

Science is a many-times-refined holdover from the days of true patriarchy (back when you could sell your daughter, etc.) but it is a holdover nonetheless.  Here's the crux of the matter ... the thread that connects science to its roots in Judeo-Christian religious thought is concurrent with and intimately connected to the oppression of women within the same time frame.  That thread, by which I mean the shared worldview of a nonliving planet, a nonliving universe, and a disconnected human individual, has been the prime weapon used by men against women for as long as it has existed as a cosmology.  Science is on one end of its spectrum and fundamentalist religion is on the other, but the fact is that they are both on the same spectrum, and we need to get off it if we're going to become a truly feminist (read: egalitarian) society.

This doesn't mean we need to do away with science.  But it does mean we need to get off this silly kick we're on in which we think science is actually an arbiter of legitimacy when it comes to ideas about "reality," rather than just one of several equally valid frameworks we can use to examine reality.

There's a lot more to be said on this, maybe it should move to DISCUSS! ... I certainly haven't yet touched on most of the important points I could be making in this discussion.

[snalin]

We need to get this over to DISCUSS, because there's a lot of stuff you are saying that seems more like LSD-initiated theories than something that's bounded in any way with reality.

[pwhodges]

science, at its heart of hearts, is based on a fundamental cosmology that assumes separation between individual humans and a vast, unfeeling, unconscious, impersonal universe.

Your science is clearly different from mine, which assumes that humans are part of the universe, and gives that universe no attributes other than those we can observe (or, as theories, extrapolate from our observations).

the shared worldview of a nonliving planet, a nonliving universe, and a disconnected human individual, has been the prime weapon used by men against women for as long as it has existed as a cosmology.

I'm sorry, but I can't see anything in that summary (which, as I just said, I don't accept anyway) that relates to sexism at all.  People  (and the societies that form their characters, perhaps) are sexist, not cosmologies.

[Scrambled Egg Machine]

WALL OF TEXT

Group consciousness, a living planet, and a living universe? I am somewhat confused, please define your terms. Life, shared consciousness, etc.

[KharBevNor]

I'm going to try to be calm.

1) Science has little or nothing to do with christianity. Christianity had a major influence over the development of Science for maybe 600 years out of the 3000 year history of science as an emerging discipline, and certainly the catholic idea of science was massively greek. Ever hear of Hippocrates, Aristotle, Socrates, Democritus, Pythagoras, Plato, Theophrastus, Archimedes, Hipparchus etc. etc. etc.?  For that matter, Pliny, Ptolemy, Geber, Ja'far al-Sadiq, Aryabhata and Brahmagupta? Science was not formed by christianity or even by an abrahamic culture, and besides, science carries no cultural bias anyway. A scientist might, a bad theory might, science does not.

2) You seem to have a misunderstanding of how science works. Science attempts to find the simplest consistent explanation for observed phenomena. Science postulates something only if it is required. Science is incompatible with the supernatural for a number of reasons, namely:
a) supernatural phenomena are subjective and non repeatable. Science requires objective data. Things you have seen whilst taking DMT are pretty much the opposite of objective data.
b) supernatural phenomena are unknowable, and therefore do not advance the progress of science. To replace one unknown with another unknown is pointless, it is also philosophically flawed. A world spirit is just as likely as a judeo-christian god, or pan, or the norse pantheon, or the demiurge. The ideas you are advancing are not in any way logical or provable. Because they are not provable, or rational, it is impossible to base decisions on them. This does not preclude you from believing anything, but your beliefs have nothing whatsoever to do with science. Everyone has beliefs that are not scientific, even the staunchest atheists.
c) good science is absolutely unbiased. Ruthlessly so. Ideas not founded in objective, repeatable reality are quickly discarded. The very unbiased nature of science is what you seem to see as its bias, for some bizarre reason.
d) science is indistinguishable from rationalism. It arises out of logic and mathematics. Rationalism does not allow for bigotry of any sort. Sexism, racism and so on are illogical and often pseudoscientific. Pseudoscience is the enemy of good science.
 
3) You cannot argue against science from a computer terminal. You have lost your own argument. Do you have any idea how complex a computer, and the internet, are? Without theories of electromagnetism, chemistry, quantum physics, mathematics and logic (among a lot of other things) that allow us to obtain reliable, repeatable results your computer would simply not work. It is pretty much the culmination of 3000 years of scientific achievment. Without science you wouldn't have a computer, you wouldn't have clean water, you wouldn't have good food, you wouldn't have transit, you wouldn't have modern medicine. You'd likely be dead about five times over by now from one source or another without science. Don't be so ungrateful. Science is the underpinning of our entire human civilisation. It is not something you can discard for some spurious, philosophically non-sensical reason. And believe me, to say science is not the arbiter of legitimacy when it comes to objective reality is to discard science. Now we can get on to the difference between objective and subjective reality, but I really don't think you truly understand the concept. I'd recommend that you go away and read some real books by real scientists and real philosophers before continuing this discussion. You are an intelligent person and it is sad to see you being so misguided. Your ideas need to be based around a much more solid framework of understanding before you can really put them to the test of debate. Currently your ideas are vague even for metaphysics.

EDIT: Who the fuck is Pato? Stupid L key.

[ledhendrix]

I would add to this thread but Khar has said everything I would like to say in a much better manner than I possibly could.

[Ozymandias]

Okay so it is just "fuck the last 2000 years of science because men controlled it", but with an additional metaphysical nonsense clause.

That's cool I guess.

[Scrambled Egg Machine]

Khar, how is it you are so eloquent? Can you teach me your debate skills?

[J-cob9000]

but with an additional metaphysical menopause.

This is how I read this sentence.

[Gilead]

People are just getting confused about the ideas, which is fine, because there are very few resources in society espousing this viewpoint with any degree of detail.

There are a lot of angles I could take to approaching the subject here and I'm pretty sure that none of them would really "present an argument" that people could weigh favorably against the "argument" presented by Western scientific thought.  But if I explain things right, people will hopefully see why that's part of the problem.

First of all, it's important to explain where Western science comes from.  Western science was started by religious men who were reforming a masculine and Judeo-Christian society by espousing the idea that the most perfect way to serve and appreciate the Lord was to study and understand His creation, rather than offer tithes to the church and such.  The fact that the goals of science outpaced their origins does not change the fact that science, at its heart of hearts, is based on a fundamental cosmology that assumes separation between individual humans and a vast, unfeeling, unconscious, impersonal universe.  This is the model of the universe that ancient Middle Eastern politics left in its wake in the form of religion, and science has relied upon it entirely.  The ideas that the universe might be alive or conscious, or that humanity might have some form of consciousness on the collective level, or that the planet Earth might be a living organism itself, *which are all ideas that are central to pre-Judeo-Christian pagan thought* (implication: we have alternatives and they are hardly new), have been considered more or less scientific heresy, not because they challenge DATA that scientists have collected, but because they challenge the traditional model with which scientists analyze their data ... the ancient, anti-pagan, Judeo-Christian model that started with "God created the universe and we are but souls within it" and then, over time, deleted "God" and "soul" from the equation without really adding much.

Science has done next to nothing so far to directly address our basic cosmological understanding of who we are in the universe.  Now, that's fine, I suppose, because it has never purported to intend to do such a thing, but the problem is that we, as a society, NEED to directly address our basic understanding of who we are in the universe, because the one we've been using in Western society is just not working well enough.  Our society is profoundly sick in a lot of ways, and this is due in large part to the sterile, rigid, impersonal way that we've conditioned our society into viewing the universe for the last 5000 years ... and our insistence that everyone else see things the same way.

Science is a many-times-refined holdover from the days of true patriarchy (back when you could sell your daughter, etc.) but it is a holdover nonetheless.  Here's the crux of the matter ... the thread that connects science to its roots in Judeo-Christian religious thought is concurrent with and intimately connected to the oppression of women within the same time frame.  That thread, by which I mean the shared worldview of a nonliving planet, a nonliving universe, and a disconnected human individual, has been the prime weapon used by men against women for as long as it has existed as a cosmology.  Science is on one end of its spectrum and fundamentalist religion is on the other, but the fact is that they are both on the same spectrum, and we need to get off it if we're going to become a truly feminist (read: egalitarian) society.

This doesn't mean we need to do away with science.  But it does mean we need to get off this silly kick we're on in which we think science is actually an arbiter of legitimacy when it comes to ideas about "reality," rather than just one of several equally valid frameworks we can use to examine reality.

There's a lot more to be said on this, maybe it should move to DISCUSS! ... I certainly haven't yet touched on most of the important points I could be making in this discussion.

[Tom]

but with an additional metaphysical menopause.

This is how I read this sentence.

Whelp, good for you!

[J-cob9000]

but with an additional metaphysical menopause.

This is how I read this sentence.

Whelp, good for you!

Indeed, it is quite good for me. We all need some metaphysical menopause in our lives.

[BeoPuppy]

[...] this was written by people at Sandia National Labs. [...]

Sandia National Labs?

SNL?

[Caspian]

Man, and here I thought OWW was a fairly sensible guy. I'll just pretend I'll never read his post, and continue to think of him solely as the guy with great taste in stoner rock. Also! Never did I think I'd actually vigorously nod my head with a Khar post, but there you go. My QC forum world is turned upside down :O

[Barmymoo]

OWW, I was following your argument fairly well until you attempted to link female oppression to the link between religion and science. Although I don't necessarily agree with the existence of that link (I really don't know much about it), I could understand where you were going.

However, you seemed to have made a completely random leap of thought that I can't begin to comprehend and I think that's the problem we're all having. Maybe your argument would make more sense if you could clarify this point?

A friend and I were talking to our law teacher about this document today and he said that although it does sound ludicrous, it is understandable that they are trying to consider possibilities such as extremist religious sects, or possibly suicide and/or terrorist groups who might wish to destroy the earth for one reason or another. Nevertheless I still think someone was having a bit of fun here.

[snalin]

Gilead won the thread.

No, wait, he won the fucking internet.

TOM FTW!

[StaedlerMars]

The other day I was in my uni's library being 'studious' and I came across a book called "the Doomsday Book". I don't remember where I put it, it's no longer in it's original place, and I didn't check it out. This made me sad.

Summary: It was basically an analysis of everything that could go wrong with the world (20 years ago) and some 'likely' doomsday scenarios. I'm really bummed out I'm in the middle of exams or I would have read that in a day.

[onewheelwizzard]

OK guys I knew this was going to be kind of a square-peg round-hole kind of discussion, so I'll just shut up.

If your issue with what I said is that you don't think I made sense, and you're willing to entertain the notion that there might be some semblance of a reasonable point behind what I was trying and presumably failing to clearly say, PM me about it.

If you think I'm categorically wrong, that's cool.  Khar already pointed out a few glaring inaccuracies in my (admittedly experimental, out-on-a-limb) "argument" and I'm not going to try to defend myself using facts or logic because I'll readily admit to knowing that that's a losing battle.  If that's all you need to hear to dismiss where I'm coming from, sure, don't bother listening.  I'm trying to appeal to people's intuitions, not their rationally analytical minds.  I won't be able to convince anyone who isn't already at least a little sympathetic to these ideas.  It's not like the relative feminism or patriarchy of science can be a matter of fact in any case ... it's not a testable, provable, or measurable matter.

My opinion is that the mechanistic perspective that a strictly scientifically-minded worldview engenders is strongly linked to the patriarchal ideals of ancient Middle Eastern politics and religion, via the influence of the Protestant Reformation on the scientific revolution.  I don't believe science is useless or harmful, I think that taking the scientific worldview too far into the social sphere inevitably results in a bias against feminism.

[KharBevNor]

Quite frankly, that makes no sense at all no matter how many times you try and turn it and look at it another way. There is absolutely no connection between science and 'ancient middle eastern politics and religion' (just say 'judeo-christian' or 'abrahamic', please). I do not see how you can even begin to say such a thin with a straight face. The church has spent much of its history attempting to ignore, denigrate or persecute science. Religion is not at all mechanistic! There is not one thing that links science and religion apart from the fact they happen to take place on the same planet. Now the culture of science? Maybe, especially in ages past. But that is not science. You say you can't deal in facts and logic? Then you can't deal, period. If you can't even put down an argument then everything you say is worthless. Even theologists and philosophers value facts and logic. 

And a bias against feminism? Look, you're a nice guy, but that is ghastly, weaselly, feeble minded crap. How the fuck does a rational worldview work against feminism. How dare you presume to speak for feminists in saying something like that? Are you trying to imply that gender equality is not rational? Are you saying that it has to be wrapped up in your appalling drug addled pseudo-mystic bullshit? Are you saying that is the true essence of feminity?

Seriously. Try and reflect upon yourself for a bit. I have watched you over the years become something rather pitiable and unpleasant. You would really not be amiss in seeking psychiatric help. This is not a put-down, but sincere concern.

[KharBevNor]

d-d-doublepost

[onewheelwizzard]

Khar, I'm not sure if I've explained this before, but I don't treat my posts on this forums as debate as much as I treat them as experimentation.  I'm just playing around with words and ideas and trying to put them together in interesting and thought-provoking ways.  If you have the belief that my mental or emotional stability has been declining as the weirdness of my ideas has progressed, I guess I must be misrepresenting my lifestyle, because I'm a pretty well-adjusted individual, no matter how freaky and out-on-the-fringe my philosophies of choice might be.  I guess I appreciate your concern, if it's genuine?  Just out of curiosity, what exactly do you think I might need help for?  (You seem pretty set on the idea that it's about drugs for me, do you think I have a drug problem?)

Anyway, you're right.  The discipline of science runs totally counter to the prescriptions of religion, and the feminist movement has nothing to do with rejecting rationalism.  These are true statements.

However, there are some concepts that both science and religion leave completely out of the picture, that I think are important to feminism (not necessarily as a social movement but sometimes as a personal lifestyle choice).  I think of myself as being more feminist (not "more feminist than [insert person here]," just more feminist than I would be otherwise) through my belief in stuff like a living universe, a living Earth, a divine feminine that compliments (and, on this planet, usually supercedes) the divine masculine, and a bunch of other stuff also easily dismissed by both Abrahamic religious and scientific thought as "New Age mumbo-jumbo."

If you want to dismiss my New Age mumbo-jumbo, I won't hold it against you, but I do think there's a lot to be said for expanding beyond science AND religion into integral spirituality, neurotheology, and a bunch of other stuff that draws connections from the mind to the spirit to the body, and furthermore a lot to be said for looking at systems like the Earth as having life and even a form of consciousness.  If it's weird that I'm looking at stuff like that and seeing threads of feminism, I'm OK with that ... it just seems really intuitive to me.