Five Before Chaos

As I’ve lamented before, even though living in VT spares me the frustration of living with the sheer idiocy so prevalent in the Bible Belt, and the luxury of being to be an outspoken atheist and not having to hear people constantly ramble on about their beloved Sky Fairy, the downside is that there’s a ton of hokey New Age b.s. up that is quite prominent up here. Astrology, ‘energy healing’, homeopathy and a host of other pseudoscientific garbage seem to be widely accepted by parts of the culture. Granted, it’s not as harmful as having a bunch of dominionists running around, but it’s still frustrating.

Speaking with some of these people is sometimes like speaking to a small child who hasn’t developed a sense of reasoning yet. One of the common things I’ve heard is the power of positive vibes and thinking. Now, I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean there are people that believe if you think positively about something, even something completely detached in any way from you, if enough people have those groovy thoughts, it will affect the outcome. Sure.

So I got an email today form the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry talking about some bestselling book that Oprah is plugging now, called ‘Secrets’, by Lisa Nichols. The article is called ‘Secrets and Lies’:

The problem is that neither the film nor the book has any basis in scientific reality. The Secret, Byrne states, lies in a New Age idea called the “Law of Attraction”: that similar things attract each other, so positive thoughts bring positive things and negative ones bring negative things. Of course, in physics, it is opposites that attract, but never mind that: according to Byrne, our thoughts send out vibrations that the universe (or some unspecified power) can somehow decipher and respond to. Therefore, goes the dubious logic, we have only to think very hard about the things we want, and we will get them. If you want to lose weight, Byrne writes, you’ll first have to accept that “food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight.”

If that example leaves you scratching your head, author Lisa Nichols, featured in the film, explains that “Every time you look inside your mail expecting to see a bill, guess what? It will be there. You’re expecting debt, so debt must show up. . . . Every day you confirm your thoughts. Debt is there because of the Law of Attraction. Do yourself a favor: Expect a check!” Doesn’t that make sense? According to The Secret’s economic insights, the problem is not our bills or debt; the problem is that we are expecting those pesky bills! One wonders how much time Oprah spent skimming the book before agreeing to promote this half-baked twaddle.

There’s also an ugly flipside: if you have an accident or disease, it’s your fault. There is of course a grain of truth to this: if a drunk wanders onto a highway and is hit, it’s likely his fault; if a lifelong smoker gets lung cancer, it’s likely her fault. But is everything we experience of our own making? If an airplane crashes, does that mean that one or more of the passengers brought that on himself? Do soldiers killed in Iraq simply not think enough positive thoughts?

It’s crazy how these people make up their own ‘laws’ that usually run in direct contradiction to how scientific laws really work. Homeopathy is based on the same thing, the false notion that ‘like cures like’. If a particular substance gives you hemorrhoids, ingesting a tiny, subatomic amount of it (often referred to as a ‘ghost’ molecule), will cure the ailment. Of course when you point this out, people just talk about some experience they had where the homeopathy ‘cured’ some ailment of theirs and completely disregard the placebo effect or the very distinct possibility that the symptom just went away on its own, as is the case with many ailments. Then they accuse you of working for the AMA.

The fact that this is a bestseller isn’t surprising. Critical thinking skills are not really taught in the schools, and many people have an astounding lack of understanding of cause and effect, as well as the high occurrence of coincidence in our everyday lives. Instead of being aware of these things, we’re stuck with people who insist that ‘God must have done it/was speaking to me’ or ‘the positive/negative vibrations I sent out made it happen.’ Looking at this really reveals why this country is in such a sorry state of existence. We have huge swaths of 13th century thinking in a 21st century universe.

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