Ascension Symptoms

[zenmaster]

interpreting these events in a certain way helps many people with their faith
and motivation to polarize.

Well of course it does. However, the focus and inflation on it is a symptom of no motivation to polarize, by definition. It's like staying within a feedback loop which is fed with little desire to transcend its meme.

While I agree alot of things need to be approached with skepticism, if a certain belief helps someone in their spiritual growth and has very little unwanted impact on other parts of their life then I don't think there's anything wrong with them believing in something unproven.

Of course there is not anything wrong with believing in something unproven. There are, however, pathological beliefs which are perpetuated at the expense of what amounts to a less-distorted, more-accepting or self-assessed view. You do understand these are necessarily other people's (subcultural-group borrowed or appropriated) beliefs in the first place? When you see the surrogated belief being held up in a numinous manner, with the hand-waving, you see the start of the pathological condition (because the self is thereby distanced). It's really quite fool-proof.