"That said, there is a lack of solid evidence, and the grandiosity of the claims suggests brilliant insight or crackpottery in some mixture--but then, the same could be said of Eliezer, and he's clearly won many people over with his ideas."

Precisely the point. We're not interested in how to attract people to doctrines (or at least I'm not), but in determining what is true and finding ever-better ways to determine what is true.

The popularity of some idea is absolutely irrelevant in itself. We need evidence of coherence and accuracy, not prestige, in order to reach intelligent conclusions.