Critical Thinking Discouraged in Spirituality?

One of the things that has been bothering me lately with the new age/spirituality/etc. culture, is the lack of critical thinking. I am not necessarily talking about any one person in particular, or even this forum in particular, but just my overall experience over the past decade.

It seems that there are always new bandwagons to jump on whether it is a new conspiracy theory, meditation trend, guru, etc., The problem, at least for me, is that when someone critically questions the validity of these new claims/movements, or demands proof, they are immediately attacked for not being “open minded” or “compassionate enough”.

To give one example, I had an acquaintance recently post an article stating how important marijuana is to Buddhism. Of course you at the end of the piece you had several marijuana afficionados give the obligatory, “way cool” “awesome”, etc. statements. Then several Buddhist oriented people (including myself) chimed in that he was off his rocker, and demanded some sources for his information, because taking any kind of intoxicant/mind altering drug is against the 1 of the 5 precepts of Buddhism. Therefore, there may be fringe groups who use marijuana, but as a whole any kind of intoxicant (even including alcohol) is discouraged. Almost immediately those of us who demanded actual proof for the claims, or back up sources, were attacked by other people as being mean, self-centered, too mainstream, not spiritually advanced enough, too closed minded, etc.

I for one am all for being open minded and compassionate, but I also think that you should apply the God given gift of reason and critical thinking to some of these claims. I have seen far too many people get burned and turned off of spirituality completely because they bought into a fad, or followed a charlatan guru, where just a little critical thinking and fact checking would have saved a lot of pain and grief. To me, poking holes in potentially bogus fads and claims in order to expose them as false, and to help people not run down the proverbial rabbit hole, is no different than me telling someone not to walk into a burning building. If the claims are true, they should be able to stand up to critical thinking, and be able to offer some proof.

Thoughts? Experiences with this?