What The Secret means to me...

[Clancy]

To me science is asking questions and looking for the answers. I live a scientific life, because I am always asking questions and looking for answers. Science is inquiry leading to knowledge.

I'm sorry, that's simply not true. I refuse to explain the scientific method here, it will just irritate some people. If you want to understand what it is, and why it's not simply 'asking questions and looking for answers', peruse some of the links here
https://www.google.com/search?client...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[PeteS]

Hey Clancy, Thanks for the cool Google link. Here is one thing I found there:

REASONING IN SCIENCE

Learning about the scientific method is almost like saying that you are learning how to learn. You see, the scientific method is the way scientists learn and study the world around them. It can be used to study anything from a leaf to a dog to the entire Universe.

The basis of the scientific method is asking questions and then trying to come up with the answers. You could ask, "Why do dogs and cats have hair?" One answer might be that it keeps them warm. BOOM! It's the scientific method in action. (OK, settle down.)

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Just about everything starts with a question. Usually, scientists come up with questions by looking at the world around them. "Hey look! What's that?" See that squiggly thing at the end of the sentence? A question has been born.

So you've got a scientist. When scientists see something they don't understand they have some huge urge to answer questions and discover new things. It's just one of those scientist personality traits. The trick is that you have to be able to offer some evidence that confirms every answer you give. If you can't test your answer, other scientists can't test it to see if you were right or not. ...

Yes, it goes on but I feel my point that asking questions is scientific is made. I do see that your point may be that I didn't say anything about what is learned being verifiable by others is part of science. Yes, that is science and begins when one says: "Look at what I discovered," to their friends and family. I am saying we are all practicing the scientific method as we learn and grow, we are not necessarily all professional Scientists. I am saying that the scientific method has grown out of our natural curiosity about the world.

Link to the whole article:
https://www.biology4kids.com/files/s...scimethod.html

Enjoy yourself,

Peter
https://SharePrayer.com

[Clancy]

Hey Clancy, Thanks for the cool Google link. Here is one thing I found there:

Odd that you omit the part of the article that defines the scientific method, which is clearly not simply asking questions, or Ophrah Winfrey would be considered a scientist (trust me, she isn't).

I'm sorry I brought it up. Science and wacco simply don't mix.

[poetrygeek]

Barry, I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. There is no compelling evidence for the existence of a soul. The electrochemical reactions are NOT still possible after death, because oxygen deprivation to the brain kills the neurons that compose the neural net which holds the information pattern that is the entire sum total of our personalities. At that moment, the "soul" extinguishes, radiates away from the body as information-free heat, and everything that person has ever been is forever gone.

The only "mystery" left is in details. The general framework is known. What is left, if you really need it, is wishful thinking.

Life is just metabolism: energy consumption, energy use. It isn't a mysterious ephemeral force. It's just the operation of an organism until that organism stops functioning. No "other dimensions". No cosmic mysteries. No hokey get-out-of-Death-free mechanisms. We live--lucky to be accidental die-rolls of DNA created through a million accidents of history that brought our parents together--and then we die. That's all.

Why (oh, why!) must humans have such grandiose ideas about themselves? Why must they think that they live forever, that their existence has importance, that we somehow matter in any sense other than to one another in the narrow time in which we live? It's not hard, if you're willing not to get freaked out by the fact that you're going to die and disappear, to see the world and know what is and isn't.

Heaven, hell, reincarnation, astral projection, magic, gods, "esoteric mysteries"...these are the artifacts of times when we were ignorant. They were the best answers the people at those times could come up with. But they're not the best answers any more. They're rank superstitious nonsense. Choosing to cling to them in the face of what we now know to be true about ourselves and the Universe is, in essence, to spit on the only thing humans evolved to be any good at: intelligence.

What's beatiful about this world is our differences in thought, physical appearance, beliefs, etc......but what we do all share is faith. Faith in something.....name it whatever you may choose, but it's there. Whether it's something so small as faith that your lavender will grow in your garden, or faith that you will one day hug your parents again.....it's still all faith. Some of us base more of our lives on it than others, which is fine. I personally believe in many aspects of 'The Secret' and some aspects of it, I don't. But I do believe it's scary when one doesn't see that they are a pebble that creates a ripple that has unknown boundaries. We are not only connected to one another, everywhere.....but (what 'The Secret' lacks) we are also connected to this beautiful earth, who so lovingly has housed us, until we started abusing it in such a way that it is slowly attempting to rid itself of us, as we try to rid our bodies of the flu. Everything, if you stop and really attempt to narrow it down, comes down to either Love or Fear. So religion, The Secret, etc. etc.......most could just be summed up as 'live in a state of Love'.........and with that, harmony will surround you.

[Dixon]

...An open mind is terrible thing to waste, especially one as sharp as yours obviously is. Royce

Hello again, Royce;

I, too, have sometimes been accused of being close-minded because, like Mark, I express myself passionately and don't always include qualifiers such as "It seems to me that..." or "the weight of the evidence indicates that...", so I sound like I'm absolutely certain (thus close-minded).

But neither of those factors is a good indicator of close-mindedness. Passionate self-expression is only SOMETIMES associated with emotionally held, rather than rationally held, beliefs, and therefore close-mindedness. Similarly, leaving out qualifiers SOMETIMES means that the person is inappropriately certain (thus close-minded).

I find that when I speak loosely, not bothering to include qualifiers in every sentence, someone will complain, but when I get really precise and put all the qualifiers in, people complain about how dry or tight-assed that sounds, so it's a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation. Occasionally I make blanket statements such as "I could be wrong about anything at any time" or "I don't know anything for sure", hoping that I then won't have to include such qualifiers in every sentence, but soon someone is complaining again.

I can only think of 4 good reasons for suspecting someone of close-mindedness:

1) They admit it ("I'm close-minded for Jesus", "I know I'm right and no one can convince me otherwise", "Forget about evidence; this is about faith", etc.).

2) Consistent retreat into transparently fallacious reasoning by someone who is smart enough to know better.

3) Refusal to engage in a critique of their belief COULD indicate close-mindedness (though it could just mean they don't have the time right now).

4) Refusal to change their mind even in the face of an apparently valid argument which they can't refute is good evidence of close-mindedness.

Note that mere disagreement with us does not indicate close-mindedness. Many tend to assume that anyone who disagrees with them is close-minded. The reasoning seems to be something like "I know I'm right, so anyone who can't see that must be close-minded". Thus the attribution of close-mindedness to another is, ironically, often a close-minded defense mechanism!

If you want to really test Mark's open-mindedness, give him compelling, irrefutable arguments supporting something he doesn't believe in or opposing something he does believe in, and then see if he changes. Of course, the "danger" is that he'll show you that your arguments are full of holes, in which case it will be incumbent upon YOU to change. The process of dialogical critical thinking is a great test of open-mindedness.

I for one am REALLY sick of being seen as close-minded by people who haven't given me anything remotely approaching good evidence for the belief they want me to accept. Folks, people who accept your claims in the absence of compelling evidence aren't demonstrating open-mindedness; they're demonstrating stupidity!

Apparently;

Dixon

[Dixon]

...The Secret is a scientific method of theory and experiment...

PeteS

While I agree with some of the advice you gave in your post, I must take exception to your characterization of the grandiloquently-named "the Secret" as a scientific method. The kind of "try it and see if it works for you" approach which characterizes "the Secret" (an approach which some scientists refer to as "unsystematic judgment"), is a million miles from being scientific, because it doesn't screen out common sources of distortion, bias and fallacy.

For instance, can you state your falsifiable hypothesis which, when tested, will show you whether "the Secret" is false, not just verify it as true?

How have you specified and quantified the results which you would interpret as good evidence for your hypothesis? In other words, how are you identifying and measuring the outcome of your "test" of "the Secret"?

Where are your properly chosen experimental and control groups, and are they big enough to give valid results?

By what procedures do you screen out confounding factors which will make you think "the Secret" works even if it doesn't, such as the confirmation bias, the effort justification effect, wishful thinking, and many more?

The extremely detailed and precise procedures of science aren't just some kind of arcane game; they're necessary to correct for our usual fallacies. Even if we're honest, intelligent and sane, our unsystematic judgment is nowhere near as valid as we'd like to think; that's why science had to be invented in the first place. Attempting to confer unearned authority on our beliefs by inaccurately describing them as scientific is naive at best, fraudulent at worst.

Blessings;

Dixon

[Juggledude]

Hello again, Royce;

I, too, have sometimes been accused of being close-minded because, like Mark, I express myself passionately and don't always include qualifiers such as "It seems to me that..." or "the weight of the evidence indicates that...", so I sound like I'm absolutely certain (thus close-minded).

But neither of those factors is a good indicator of close-mindedness. Passionate self-expression is only SOMETIMES associated with emotionally held, rather than rationally held, beliefs, and therefore close-mindedness. Similarly, leaving out qualifiers SOMETIMES means that the person is inappropriately certain (thus close-minded).

I find that when I speak loosely, not bothering to include qualifiers in every sentence, someone will complain, but when I get really precise and put all the qualifiers in, people complain about how dry or tight-assed that sounds, so it's a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation. Occasionally I make blanket statements such as "I could be wrong about anything at any time" or "I don't know anything for sure", hoping that I then won't have to include such qualifiers in every sentence, but soon someone is complaining again.

I can only think of 4 good reasons for suspecting someone of close-mindedness:

1) They admit it ("I'm close-minded for Jesus", "I know I'm right and no one can convince me otherwise", "Forget about evidence; this is about faith", etc.).

2) Consistent retreat into transparently fallacious reasoning by someone who is smart enough to know better.

3) Refusal to engage in a critique of their belief COULD indicate close-mindedness (though it could just mean they don't have the time right now).

4) Refusal to change their mind even in the face of an apparently valid argument which they can't refute is good evidence of close-mindedness.

Note that mere disagreement with us does not indicate close-mindedness. Many tend to assume that anyone who disagrees with them is close-minded. The reasoning seems to be something like "I know I'm right, so anyone who can't see that must be close-minded". Thus the attribution of close-mindedness to another is, ironically, often a close-minded defense mechanism!

If you want to really test Mark's open-mindedness, give him compelling, irrefutable arguments supporting something he doesn't believe in or opposing something he does believe in, and then see if he changes. Of course, the "danger" is that he'll show you that your arguments are full of holes, in which case it will be incumbent upon YOU to change. The process of dialogical critical thinking is a great test of open-mindedness.

I for one am REALLY sick of being seen as close-minded by people who haven't given me anything remotely approaching good evidence for the belief they want me to accept. Folks, people who accept your claims in the absence of compelling evidence aren't demonstrating open-mindedness; they're demonstrating stupidity!

Apparently;

Dixon

Dixon,

I agree wholeheartedly with your observations regarding closed mindedness. I admit that I may have been a tad presumptious in flinging that poo at Mark, and only offer by means of excuse my emotional reaction to his certitude. Possibly the omission of qualifiers in his statements does reflect a certain laziness, though from my readings of his post I suspect him to be fairly punctilious, thus my opinion.

I guess we'll just need to wait for him to chime back in, ya?

For what it's worth, I have not experienced a whit of close mindedness from you, Dixon, on the contrary, anyone who has overcome the fundamentalist Christian indoctrination as you purport to have done appears exceptionally open minded, imho.

ciao,

Royce

[Nemea Laessig]

Dear Friends,

So here is the article from Salon. I am interested in what people think of it.

Cheers,
~Nemea

www.salon.com/mwt/feature...t/print.html

By continuing to hawk "The Secret," a mishmash of offensive self-help cliches, Oprah Winfrey is squandering her goodwill and influence, and preaching to the world that mammon is queen.

By Peter Birkenhead

Mar. 05, 2007 | Steve Martin used to do a routine that went like this: "You too can be a millionaire! It's easy: First, get a million dollars. Now..."

If you put that routine between hard covers, you'd have "The Secret," the self-help manifesto and bottle of minty-fresh snake oil currently topping the bestseller lists. "The Secret" espouses a "philosophy" patched together by an Australian talk-show producer named Rhonda Byrne. Though "The Secret" unabashedly appropriates and mishmashes familiar self-help clichés, it was still the subject of two recent episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" featuring a dream team of self-help gurus, all of whom contributed to the project.

The main idea of "The Secret" is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it -- and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it -- the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme -- is brilliant. But what really makes "The Secret" more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn't just endorsed "The Secret"; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame.

Why "venality"? Because, with survivors of Auschwitz still alive, Oprah writes this about "The Secret" on her Web site, "the energy you put into the world -- both good and bad -- is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day." "Venality," because Oprah, in the age of AIDS, is advertising a book that says, "You cannot 'catch' anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought." "Venality," because Oprah, from a studio within walking distance of Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green Projects, pitches a book that says, "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts."

Worse than "The Secret's" blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular "secret" of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that "like attracts like" and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite -- positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles -- and the rest of "The Secret" has a similar relationship to the truth. Here it is on biblical history: "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of." And worse than the idiocy and the bullshitting is its anti-intellectualism, because that's at the root of the other two. Here's "The Secret" on reading and, um, electricity: "When I discovered 'The Secret' I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good," and, "How does it work? Nobody knows. Just like nobody knows how electricity works. I don't, do you?" And worst of all is the craven consumerist worldview at the heart of "The Secret," because it's why the book exists: "[The Secret] is like having the Universe as your catalogue. You flip through it and say, 'I'd like to have this experience and I'd like to have that product and I'd like to have a person like that.' It is you placing your order with the Universe. It's really that easy." That's from Dr. Joe Vitale, former Amway executive and contributor to "The Secret," on Oprah.com.

Oprah Winfrey is one of the richest women in the world, and one of the most influential. Her imprimatur has helped the authors of "The Secret" sell 2 million books (and 1 million DVDs), putting it ahead of the new Harry Potter book on the Amazon bestseller list. In the time Oprah spent advertising the lies in "The Secret," she could have been exposing them to an audience that otherwise might have believed them. So why didn't she? If James Frey deserved to be raked over the coals for lying about how drunk he was, doesn't Oprah deserve some scrutiny for pitching the meretricious nonsense in "The Secret"?

Oprah has a reputation for doing good -- she probably has more perceived moral authority than anyone in this country -- and she has done a lot of good. But in light of her zealous support of a book that says, in this time of entrenched, systemic, institutionalized poverty, this time of no-bid contracts for war profiteers and heckuva-job governance, that "you can have, be, or do anything," isn't it reasonable to ask about why she does what she does, and the way she does it?

Oprah recently opened, with much fanfare, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa, and as I watched the network news stories about it, I couldn't get "The Secret" out of my mind. I kept wondering what would happen if professor Sam Mhlongo, South Africa's chief family practitioner who famously said that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, read about Oprah's connection to "The Secret" and found support there for his claim. I wondered if the students of the academy would read "The Secret" and start to believe that their parents deserved to be poor, or that the people of Darfur summoned the Janjaweed with "bad thoughts." Will the heavier girls be told, as readers of "The Secret" are, that food doesn't cause weight gain -- thinking about weight gain does? Will they be told to not even look at fat people, as "The Secret" advises? Oprah is already promoting these ideas to her television audience. Why wouldn't she espouse them to her students?

In many ways the Leadership Academy is a wonderful project, a school that will provide impoverished girls an education they otherwise might not have gotten. But it also seems to be the product, unavoidably, of the faux-spiritual, anti-intellectual, hyper-materialistic worldview expressed in "The Secret," the book that the school's founder has called "life changing."

The academy is a controversial enough project in South Africa that the government withdrew its support, because of the amount of money that's been spent on its well-reported, lavish design -- money that could have gone instead to creating perfectly fine schools that served many, many more students than the 350 who will be making use of spa facilities at the academy. But, when I watched Oprah's prime-time special about interviewing candidates for the school, it seemed to me that she wasn't nearly as excited about providing an education to the girls as she was about providing a "Secret"-like "transformative experience." (And not just for the girls, for herself; the first thing she said to the family members at the opening ceremony wasn't, "Welcome to a great moment in your daughters' lives," it was, "Welcome to the proudest moment of my life.")

On the special, Oprah talked far more about what the school would do for the girls' self-esteem and material lives than what it would do for their intellects -- sometimes sounding as if she was reading directly from "The Secret." And in discussing what she was looking for in prospective students, she didn't talk about finding the next Eleanor Roosevelt or Sally Ride or Jane Smiley. Instead she used "Entertainment Tonight" language like "It Girl" to describe her ideal candidate. She praised the girls for their spirit, for how much they "shined" and "glowed," but never for their ideas or insights. Oprah puts a lot of energy and money into aesthetics -- on her show, in her magazine, at her school. The publishers of "The Secret" have learned well from their sponsor and are just as visually savvy. They have created a look for their books, DVDs, CDs and marketing materials that conjures a "Da Vinci Code" aesthetic, full of pretty faux parchment, quill-and-ink fonts and wax seals.

Oprah's TV special about the Leadership Academy, essentially an hourlong infomercial, was just as well-coiffed and "visuals"-heavy. In fact, when Oprah was choosing her students, her important criteria must have included their television interview skills. On-camera interviews with the girls were the centerpiece of the special, but as one spunky, telegenic candidate after another beamed her smile at the camera, I couldn't help wondering how Joyce Carol Oates or Gertrude Stein or Madame Curie would have fared -- would they have "shined" and "glowed," or more likely talked in non-sound-bite-friendly paragraphs and maybe even, God forbid, the sometimes "dark" tones of authentic people, and been rejected. Sadly, the girls themselves (and who can blame them, desperate 12-year-olds trying to flatter their potential benefactor) parroted banal Oprah-isms, like "I want to be the best me I can be," and "Be a leader not a follower" and "Don't blend in, blend out," with smiley gusto.

When the special was over, I found myself equally impressed and queasy, one part hopeful, one part worried. I was happy the school was there, but disturbed by the way it created an instant upper class out of the students, in a country that doesn't exactly need any more segregation into haves and have-nots. I was hopeful for the students but nervous about what, exactly, they will be taught in a place called the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy. Will it be more "best me I can be" bromides? Will "The Secret" be on the syllabus? Oprah herself is going to teach "leadership classes" at the school, after all.

Has Oprah ever done anything that didn't leave people with mixed feelings?

And at what point do we stop feeling like we have to take the good with the craven when it comes to Oprah, and the culture she's helped to create? I get nauseated when I think of people in South Africa being taught they don't have enough money because they're "blocking it with their thoughts." I'm already sickened by an American culture that teaches people, as "The Secret" does, that they "create the circumstances of their lives with the choices they make every day," a culture that elected a president who cried tears of self-congratulation at his inauguration, rejects intellectualism, and believes he can intuit the trustworthiness of world leaders by looking into their eyes. I'm sickened by a culture in which the tenets of the Oprah philosophy have become conventional wisdom, in which genuine self-actualization has been confused with self-aggrandizement, reality is whatever you want it to be, and mammon is queen.

One of Oprah's signature gimmicks has been giving stuff away to her audience ("giving" here means announcing the passing of stuff from corporate sponsors to audience members), most notably in a popular segment called "My Favorite Things." These bits have revealed an Oprah who truly revels in consumer culture, and who can seem astonishingly oblivious to the way most people live and what they can afford. She seems to celebrate every event and milestone with extravagant stuff, indeed to not know how to celebrate without it. Oprah has explained the expensive appointments of her Leadership Academy by saying, "Beauty inspires." True enough. But hasn't the lack of beauty inspired some pretty great work? And aren't there are all kinds of beauty?

You might expect a powerful person who thinks of herself as "deeply spiritual" to have a less worldly conception of it, and you might hope that she would encourage her followers to do the same, instead of urging them to buy books that call Jesus a "prosperity teacher."

But, far more than "spiritual growth" or "empowerment," Oprah and the authors of "The Secret" focus on imparting the message of getting rich. Even the biographies of the authors of "The Secret" on Oprah's Web site are revealingly fixated on their rags-to-riches stories. James Arthur Ray is described as someone who was "almost going bankrupt, [which] forced him to focus on the life he truly wanted. Now he runs a multimillion-dollar corporation dedicated to teaching people how to create wealth in all areas of their lives." The bio for Lisa Nichols says, "After hitting rock bottom at age 19, Lisa prayed for a better life. Now, she has made her fortune by motivating more than 60,000 teenagers to make better choices in their own lives." And the one for "Chicken Soup for the Soul" creator Jack Canfield reads, he "was deep in debt before he made it big. Now his best-selling books have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and Jack travels the country teaching 'The Secret' of his success."

There's no doubt that Oprah's doing a lot of good with her South African project, and with many other charitable works. And yeah, I know, her book club "gets people to read," and yadda yadda yadda. But there's also no doubt that a lot of us have been making forgiving disclaimers like that about Oprah for years. And that maybe they amount to trains-running-on-time arguments. Maybe it's time to stop. After reading "The Secret," it seemed to me that there were basically three possibilities: 1) Oprah really believes this stuff, and we should be very worried about her opening a school for anyone. 2) Oprah doesn't believe this stuff and we should be very, very worried about her opening a school for anyone. 3) Oprah doesn't know that any of this stuff is in the book or on her Web site and in a perfect world she wouldn't be allowed to open a school for anyone.

The things that Oprah does, like promoting "The Secret," can seem deceptively trivial, but it's precisely because they're silly that we should be concerned about their promotion by someone who is deadly earnest and deeply trusted by millions of people. It's important to start taking a look at Oprah because her philosophy has in many ways become the dominant one in our culture, even for people who would never consider themselves disciples. Somebody is buying enough copies of "The Secret" to make it No. 1 on the Amazon bestseller list. Those somebodies may be religious zealots or atheists, Republicans or Democrats, but they are all believers, to one degree or another, and, perhaps unwittingly, in aspects of the Oprah/"Secret" culture. And yes, sure, a lot of the believing they do is harmless fun -- everybody's got some kind of rabbit's foot in his pocket -- but we're not talking about rabbits' feet here, we're talking about whole, live rabbits pulled out of hats, and an audience that doesn't think it's being tricked.

"Secret"-style belief is a perfect product. Like Coca-Cola, it goes down easy and makes the consumer thirsty for more. It's unthreateningly simple, and a lot more facile, sentimental and, perhaps paradoxically, intractable than the old-fashioned kind of belief. Like Amway, it enlists its consumers as unofficial salespeople, and the people who constitute its market feel like they're part of a fold. It's indistinguishable from, and inextricably bound up in, the Oprah idea of self-esteem, the kind of confidence you get not from testing yourself, but from "believing" in yourself. This modern idea of faith isn't arrived at the old-fashioned way, by asking questions, but by getting answers. Instead of inquiry we have born-again epiphanies and cheesy self-help books -- we have excuses for not engaging in inquiry at all. Let other people schlep down the road to Damascus; we'll have Amazon send Damascus to us.

That "Secret"-style faith, whether it's in God, or in one's own preordained destiny to be an "American Idol," which takes all of a moment to achieve, is perhaps its most important selling point. Here's "The Secret" on arriving at faith: "Ask once, believe you have received, and all you have to do to receive is feel good." The kind of faith that couldn't be reached by shortcut, the confidence of the great doubters and worriers, of Moses and Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ, has been replaced by the insta-certainty and inflated "self-esteem" of "The Secret's" believers.

Books like "The Secret" have created, and are feeding, an enormously diverse market of disciples, and they're thriving in every corner of the culture, in megachurches and movies, politics and pop music, in sports arenas and state boards of education. Oprah has far more in common with George Bush than either would like to admit, and so do the psychics of Marin County, Calif., and the creationists of Kansas. The believers come from all walks of life, but they work the same way -- mostly by bastardizing and warping source materials, from the Bible to the Bhagavad Gita, to make them fit their worldview. On Page 23 of "The Secret" you'll find this revealing doozy: "Meditation quiets the mind, helps you control your thoughts." Of course, the goal of meditation is precisely the opposite -- it is to be conscious, to observe your thoughts honestly and clearly. But that's the last thing the believers want to encourage. The authors of "The Secret" sell "control" in the form of "empowerment" and "quiet" in the form of belief, not consciousness.

The promises of Oprah culture can seem irresistible, and its hallmarks are becoming ubiquitous. Believers may be separated into tribes according to what they believe, but they do it in pretty much the same way, relying on a "Secret"-style conception of "intuition" --- which seems to amount to the sneaking suspicion that they're always right -- to arrive at their tenets. Instead of the world as it is, constantly changing and full of contradiction, they see a fixed and fantastical place, where good things come to those who believe, whether it's belief in a diet, a God, or a Habit of Successful People. These believers may believe in the healing power of homeopathy, or Scripture or organizational skills -- in intelligent design, astrology or privatization. They all trust that their devotion will be rewarded with money and boyfriends and job promotions, with hockey championships and apartments. And most of all they believe -- they really, really believe -- in themselves.

For these believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-"love." But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is "spirituality," illiteracy is "authenticity," and schoolmarm moralism is "character." It's a culture where people apologize by saying, "I'm sorry you took offense at what I said," and forgive by saying, "I'm not angry at you anymore, I'm grateful to you for teaching me not to trust shitheads like you." And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented.

Not that any of this is new. Aimee Semple McPherson, "The Power of Positive Thinking," Father Coughlin, est, James Van Praagh -- pick your influential snake-oil salesman or snake oil. They were all cut from the same cloth as Oprah and "The Secret." The big, big difference is, well, the bigness. The infinitely bigger reach of the Oprah empire and its emissaries. They make their predecessors look like kids with lemonade stands. It would be stupidly dangerous to dismiss Oprah and "The Secret" as silly, or ultimately meaningless. They're reaching more people than Harry Potter, for God-force's sake. That's why what Oprah does matters, and stinks. If you reach more people than Bill O'Reilly, if you have better name recognition than Nelson Mandela, if the books you endorse sell more than Stephen King's, you should take some responsibility for your effect on the culture. The most powerful woman in the world is taking advantage of people who are desperate for meaning, by passionately championing a product that mocks the very idea of a meaningful life.

That means something.

-- By Peter Birkenhead

[Nemea Laessig]

And in case anyone wants to see The Secret videos, they are on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2MqciSMOmk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phL0RLKL8bc

This is what they are selling. Slick and shallow.

~Nemea

["Mad" Miles]

Nemea,

Wonderful article. Nails it. If only it became as well-read as "The Secret".

Ojala

"M"M

[Dixon]

I think Nirmala and Mita have both hit the nail on the head, and quite eloquently.

Dixon

No true spiritual teaching tells us to go after material wealth. The Secret isn't spiritual, it's new age greed. Spiritual teachings are about letting go/surrender/renouncing greed and hatred. This twisted metaphysical teaching doesn't recognize that happiness does not come from getting everything we want. It comes from a balanced acceptance of all life's ups and downs, not allowing difficulties to totally overwhelm us or joys to make us arrogant and overly exhuberant. It doesn't recognize that the nature of life is gain and loss, pain and pleasure, praise and blame, recognition and dishonor, always changing. We have the opportunity to learn some of our deepest lessons from our failures and losses. The hardwon qualities of humility, courage, and true self acceptance come from living an ethical life and realizing there is more to happiness than what the modern world presents. Nirmala

[Sonomamark]

Yeah, what he said. In spades. Thanks, Dixon. And thanks, Clancy, for sticking up for the scientific method when it's being mischaracterized.

What Dixon is talking about here is what is termed in logic the "burden of proof". It isn't "closed minded" to expect that if someone claims something is true, s/he must, if not prove it outright, at the very minimum show that the claim is the least convoluted explanation for the evidence available. The latter standard is called "Occam's Razor"--the idea being that the simplest theory to explain something is the most likely explanation to be true.

To be convincing, the burden on someone making a claim is to prove it. "My experience is" or "I have intuited" or "my Teacher of Ancient Wisdom says" don't carry any weight in meeting that burden. What counts is evidence and a reasonable analysis showing that the claim being made is the best explanation for the evidence available about the phenomenon under discussion.

Much of what is claimed by adherents of religions and/or "spiritual philosophies" (frankly, I can't see any difference between the two) is not only unproven, but is often, flatly disproved by the current state of science. Even when this is not the case, these claims are never the simplest explanation for the phenomena being described. Disembodied intelligences that can ignore the laws of physics at will, live forever, can hear humans' thoughts and--for some unimaginable reason--actually care what humans want? That's a pretty unlikely claim. You'd have to have a lot of solid evidence before I'd believe such a thing.

That's not closed-mindedness. It's critical thinking. The burden is not on the thinker to subscribe to wild theories just because they are suggested to him/her. The burden is on the proposer of the wild theories to present concrete justifications for why someone should believe them.

There's been a bit of talk about "faith" here. "Faith", in my estimation, is a slippery way of avoiding having to say "I choose to believe something I know there is no earthly reason to believe, because I like it better that way." There's nothing wrong with that, but I think it's fair to expect people to cop to what they're really doing.


SonomaMark

Hello again, Royce;

I, too, have sometimes been accused of being close-minded because, like Mark, I express myself passionately and don't always include qualifiers such as "It seems to me that..." or "the weight of the evidence indicates that...", so I sound like I'm absolutely certain (thus close-minded).

But neither of those factors is a good indicator of close-mindedness. Passionate self-expression is only SOMETIMES associated with emotionally held, rather than rationally held, beliefs, and therefore close-mindedness. Similarly, leaving out qualifiers SOMETIMES means that the person is inappropriately certain (thus close-minded).

I find that when I speak loosely, not bothering to include qualifiers in every sentence, someone will complain, but when I get really precise and put all the qualifiers in, people complain about how dry or tight-assed that sounds, so it's a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation. Occasionally I make blanket statements such as "I could be wrong about anything at any time" or "I don't know anything for sure", hoping that I then won't have to include such qualifiers in every sentence, but soon someone is complaining again.

I can only think of 4 good reasons for suspecting someone of close-mindedness:

1) They admit it ("I'm close-minded for Jesus", "I know I'm right and no one can convince me otherwise", "Forget about evidence; this is about faith", etc.).

2) Consistent retreat into transparently fallacious reasoning by someone who is smart enough to know better.

3) Refusal to engage in a critique of their belief COULD indicate close-mindedness (though it could just mean they don't have the time right now).

4) Refusal to change their mind even in the face of an apparently valid argument which they can't refute is good evidence of close-mindedness.

Note that mere disagreement with us does not indicate close-mindedness. Many tend to assume that anyone who disagrees with them is close-minded. The reasoning seems to be something like "I know I'm right, so anyone who can't see that must be close-minded". Thus the attribution of close-mindedness to another is, ironically, often a close-minded defense mechanism!

If you want to really test Mark's open-mindedness, give him compelling, irrefutable arguments supporting something he doesn't believe in or opposing something he does believe in, and then see if he changes. Of course, the "danger" is that he'll show you that your arguments are full of holes, in which case it will be incumbent upon YOU to change. The process of dialogical critical thinking is a great test of open-mindedness.

I for one am REALLY sick of being seen as close-minded by people who haven't given me anything remotely approaching good evidence for the belief they want me to accept. Folks, people who accept your claims in the absence of compelling evidence aren't demonstrating open-mindedness; they're demonstrating stupidity!

Apparently;

Dixon

[Sonomamark]

I think the important part of this conversation is the sociological one.

What does it mean that the "New Age" is so dissatisfied with the here-and-now, so materialistic in its acquisitional/marketing bent, so targeted toward the idle and narcissistic rich who can best afford its workshops, retreats, "healings", diets, food supplements, appliances, &c...and also presents to those who are less fortunate a marketing message dangling easy money, health and happiness through "manifestation"? What patterns can we see in the messages and marketing of vehicles like "What the Bleep", "The Secret", and the programmatic hucksterism of Anthony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra and the endless parade of "masters of ancient wisdom" that clog WACCO's bandwidth?

What does it mean that the hotbeds of New Agism in the Bay Area happen to be Marin, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma Counties? They are all predominantly rural areas, with high polarity between rich and poor. Each is a place where the rich live extravagantly on large-parcel, remote estates, while those struggling to get by are surrounded by this excess, gnawing themselves with resentment as they confront their own inability to get ahead in our increasingly polarized economy.

I believe that at root, the "products" sold by the New Age are geared to reducing the anxieties brought on by the accelerating collapse of the middle class. For those who have moved up into the very wealthy, it tells a soothing story that that the Universe has rewarded them and they may live an extravagant, narcissistic and self-indulgent lifestyle without guilt, because this is their "Path". This can even go as far as to suggest that with enough--expensive-- "training" and "healing", a person can be immortal, either literally or through rebirth. In other words, the one downer a person of means can't avoid--death--is really only optional.

To those on the losing end of the growing social divide, the New Age dangles the prospect of leaping out of struggle and into luxury and ease without work, or luck. The New Age markets wealth, health and happiness just by scraping together the money for a workshop, a "healing", a series of classes, a "shamanic voyage" to the Yucatan, etc. It's the same old American Delusion: something for nothing.

The New Age lionizes the Self, yet specializes in avoiding self-awareness. How else to explain, say, "teachers" who fly tens of thousands of air miles annually, yet claim they are "healing the Earth"? How else to frame the NA chestnut that "we create our reality"...the implication being that if you are homeless, if you have cancer, if you are mentally ill or a victim of violence, it's your own fault?

The New Age, insofar as I can tell, is a lucrative carny game, gulling the rubes and parting them from their money in exchange for a soothing work of indulgence that gives them permission to indulge their appetites, for pretty but worthless baubles, library-paste ectoplasm and a smug, fleeting feeling of being in on a Big Secret.

And THAT, ladles and jellyspoons, is what "The Secret" means to me.


SonomaMark

[Clancy]

Write on Sonomamark, that was damn well said.

I think the important part of this conversation is the sociological one...snip

[AnneCatherine]

Well now. I've read all the very thought provoking posts in this thread and I must admit have done some very serious questioning of just what do I believe based on what I've read here. Thank you all for you time and care in posting your thoughts.

I'm not going to go into what I believe - it's very personal and I am really not a great debater - you guys would run circles around me. :)

I am curious - is there anyone out there who has had actual experiences with "The Secret" working for them? Where in every day life they can see whatever it is The Secret teaches actually being effective for them? I guess I'm asking for proof.

[Zeno Swijtink]

I thought the upshot of some of the comments in this thread was that the "Law of Attraction" cannot be proved by actual experiences since these do not provide for a control group of people who try to attract to no avail.

The mindset of people attracted to the Law of Attraction does not require a control group for proof. They find proof in the actual lived experience where They Feel the Law at Work.

See for instance this story

https://careerintensity.com/blog/200...of-attraction/

The world of test and control group is the world of irony and skeptosis, "shit happens," and possibly of "Blessed are those who do not hunger for justice, for they know that our fate, for better or worse, is the work of chance, which is past understanding" (Borges, Fragments from an Apocryphal Gospel).

I am curious - is there anyone out there who has had actual experiences with "The Secret" working for them? Where in every day life they can see whatever it is The Secret teaches actually being effective for them? I guess I'm asking for proof.

[Clancy]

I am curious - is there anyone out there who has had actual experiences with "The Secret" working for them? Where in every day life they can see whatever it is The Secret teaches actually being effective for them? I guess I'm asking for proof.

I think a good case could be made that the placebo effect is The Secret in action. I'm surprised that The Secret's supporters haven't done so.


Researchers have been studying the placebo effect for decades. In 1955, researcher H.K. Beecher published his groundbreaking paper "The Powerful Placebo," in which he concluded that, across the 26 studies he analyzed, an average of 32 percent of patients responded to placebo. In the 1960s, breakthrough studies showed the potential physiological effects of dummy pills--they tended to speed up pulse rate, increase blood pressure, and improve reaction speeds, for example, when participants were told they had taken a stimulant, and had the opposite physiological effects when participants were told they had taken a sleep-producing drug.

Yet, even after 40 years, big questions remain about the interplay of psychological and physiological mechanisms that contribute to the placebo effect. Today's brain imagery techniques do lend support, though, to the theory that thoughts and beliefs not only affect one's psychological state, but also cause the body to undergo actual biological changes.
https://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2000/100_heal.html

[Dixon]

Well now. I've read all the very thought provoking posts in this thread and I must admit have done some very serious questioning of just what do I believe based on what I've read here.

Great!

I am curious - is there anyone out there who has had actual experiences with "The Secret" working for them? Where in every day life they can see whatever it is The Secret teaches actually being effective for them? I guess I'm asking for proof.

If you want proof of this claim, asking people for their unsystematic judgments based on their personal experience is not a very good way to get it. You will have no trouble finding thousands of people who will tell you passionately that it works for them. The problem is that you're still left with this question: Did it really work for them or do they just think it did due to misinterpretation of their experience?

Properly designed and interpreted scientific studies are the gold standard for this kind of truth-seeking. It's also useful to know enough about critical thinking to be able to screen out bogus "evidence" that most people will find convincing because most folks, even intelligent ones, have little understanding of what good evidence is.

I won't bore you with the details unless you ask me to, but there are lots of reasons people would honestly perceive something like "the Secret" as effective even if it's not. If you hear something that sounds like good evidence for the efficacy of "the Secret" (or anything else, for that matter), you might want to run it by some skeptic like me for critique, by way of balance.

Blessings;

Dixon

[Nirmala]

Yeah, what he said. In spades. Thanks, Dixon. And thanks, Clancy, for sticking up for the scientific method when it's being mischaracterized.

What Dixon is talking about here is what is termed in logic the "burden of proof". It isn't "closed minded" to expect that if someone claims something is true, s/he must, if not prove it outright, at the very minimum show that the claim is the least convoluted explanation for the evidence available. The latter standard is called "Occam's Razor"--the idea being that the simplest theory to explain something is the most likely explanation to be true.

To be convincing, the burden on someone making a claim is to prove it. "My experience is" or "I have intuited" or "my Teacher of Ancient Wisdom says" don't carry any weight in meeting that burden. What counts is evidence and a reasonable analysis showing that the claim being made is the best explanation for the evidence available about the phenomenon under discussion.

Much of what is claimed by adherents of religions and/or "spiritual philosophies" (frankly, I can't see any difference between the two) is not only unproven, but is often, flatly disproved by the current state of science. Even when this is not the case, these claims are never the simplest explanation for the phenomena being described. Disembodied intelligences that can ignore the laws of physics at will, live forever, can hear humans' thoughts and--for some unimaginable reason--actually care what humans want? That's a pretty unlikely claim. You'd have to have a lot of solid evidence before I'd believe such a thing.

That's not closed-mindedness. It's critical thinking. The burden is not on the thinker to subscribe to wild theories just because they are suggested to him/her. The burden is on the proposer of the wild theories to present concrete justifications for why someone should believe them.

There's been a bit of talk about "faith" here. "Faith", in my estimation, is a slippery way of avoiding having to say "I choose to believe something I know there is no earthly reason to believe, because I like it better that way." There's nothing wrong with that, but I think it's fair to expect people to cop to what they're really doing.


SonomaMark

Many of the anti secret folks appear to be anti because their god is science. When I was in school science taught that matter and energy were two different things. Now science teaches this is not so. Then science taught that a proton had particles and waves. Now science teaches that a proton can act as either a particle or a wave. Science isn't an all knowing god. It is growing and learning. The problem I have with the secret is its materialistic bent and the underlying assumption that happiness comes from having only "good" things happen to you. This seems to me to be a shallow way of being in the world but it works for some. I suggest the following book: The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality by the Dalai Lama who has spent 40 yrs. in study with some of the greatest scientific minds as well as a lifetime of meditative, spiritual and philosophical study. He presents a brilliant analysis of why all avenues of inquiry--scientific and spiritual--must be pursued in order to arrive at a complete picture of truth.

There's so much confusion about how much impact an individual has on his or her circumstances. To be open to the law of cause and effect and the human ability to intentionally set something in motion does not need to go hand in hand with a belief in a creator god, a soul, a universe that answers you, or blame. In my own life I have seen my thoughts become words and my words become actions and have been able to create opportunities in my life I have chosen. I do not believe in a creator god, an eternal soul or blaming myself or others for the difficult circumstances in their lives. No one can do it alone, yet we all must wake up to our individual responsiblity to what we think, say and do. No one can wake us up. We must do it. In taking responsibility for our lives without blame or feeling unworthy, we must uncover the natural compassion that has been obscured by years of habitual negative patterns.

May you all be happy and have the greatest happiness that comes from a peaceful heart and mind.

In truth,
Nirmala

[PeteS]

Well said, Nirmala. Thank you. Peter

Many of the anti secret folks appear to be anti because their god is science. .....

[Clancy]

...all avenues of inquiry--scientific and spiritual--must be pursued in order to arrive at a complete picture of truth.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

-- Albert Einstein

[Clancy]

My religion consists of a humble admiration...

-- Albert Einstein

To the kind people who emailed asking for clarification of this post, I'm sorry, I have no interest in debating or discussing via email this wonderful topic. I think Einstein can better speak for himself than I ever could so I'll just add a few more cogent quotes...



The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there’s any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism....”


"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God."

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet"

"The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is dead. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men."

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods."

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely t o comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."

"Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within.”

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a person does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."

--Albert Einstein

[Dixon]

Many of the anti secret folks appear to be anti because their god is science.

Nirmala;

I'm not sure what you mean by saying "...their god is science." My attitude toward science is simply this: When it comes to answering questions about the structure and workings of the objective universe (questions such as "Does 'the Secret' work?), science, properly conducted, is BY FAR superior to any other system of thought, religious or secular. That's why it has been so powerful as to accelerate technological change (for better and worse) far more in the short time it has existed than in all the millennia before.

When I was in school science taught that matter and energy were two different things. Now science teaches this is not so. Then science taught that a proton had particles and waves. Now science teaches that a proton can act as either a particle or a wave .

Aaaaah, isn't correctability beautiful! But I get the impression, Nirmala, that you see the changeability you cite as evidence against the validity of science. I must insist that the opposite is true. How wonderful is a system of thought which constantly seeks out its own flaws and publicly corrects itself again and again, thus gradually accumulating better and better approximations of the truth! Which do you think is more enlightened, Nirmala, a correctable system like science which is humble enough to recognize its own imperfection and constantly strive for self-correction, or a dogmatic system such as most (maybe all) "spiritual" systems which rarely admit to being mistaken about anything? When was the last time you encountered a religious leader honest enough to publicly announce "Folks, we were wrong about this."?

Many people seem to feel that it's a choice between the uncertainty of science and the certainty of some other belief system, but that's not exactly true. It's really a choice between the REAL uncertainty of science and the PHONY certainty of religions or other dogmatic belief systems. Which do you think we should choose--real uncertainty, which may indeed provoke anxiety, or phony certainty, which allows us to feel better at the expense of truth and open-mindedness?

Science isn't an all knowing god.

I agree with you, Nirmala, that some people think of science as an "all knowing god". That twisted misunderstanding is called scientism, and is really more like a religion with its dogmatism and addiction for (phony) certainty. Let's not confuse that with real science.

No one who really understands science considers it all-knowing. Any scientist worth his/her salt knows that, as a system of inductive logic, science could not possibly give absolute certainty about anything; it can only give us tentative conclusions with varying degrees of certainty depending on how good the evidence is. Without such tentativeness, there is no correctability. Being based on a deep acknowledgement of our human fallibility, science is profoundly humble and open-minded, more so than any other system, religious or secular. That's what gives it its power.

In assessing questions like "Does 'the Secret' work?", we need to be humble enough to recognize our human fallibility and try to correct for it by various means. Those means of correction for our fallibility are known collectively as "critical thinking" and "science". Anyone who thinks that their unsystematic judgment is superior to science when it comes to answering such questions is astoundingly arrogant, or at least blissfully ignorant about our universal human capacity for fallacy.

In truth,
Nirmala

In better and better approximations of truth,
Dixon

[Dixon]

Yo, Clancy, thanks for the cool quotes. Wow--Big Al Einstein--what a guy!

Lest people get the impression that Einstein believed in a personal god, some kind of entity that could hear prayers and care about us, which is what most people seem to mean by the term "god", let's clarify that he apparently used the term god more or less metaphorically, denoting a more abstract thing like the transcendent oneness beloved of pantheist/atheists such as Spinoza and Wragg :^)

For instance, Einstein said: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist..."

He also said: "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts."

And: "The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. … The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events. … A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him …"

And: "During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image. … The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. … In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God …"

Here is a good brief article that clarifies Einstein's usage of terms like "god":

The following article is copyright ©1997 by the Skeptics Society, P.O. Box 338, Altadena, CA*91001, (626) 794-3119. Permission has been granted for noncommercial electronic circulation of this article in its entirety, including this notice.

Einstein's God
Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?

By Michael R. Gilmore

Just over a century ago, near the beginning of his intellectual life, the young Albert Einstein became a skeptic. He states so on the first page of his Autobiographical Notes (1949, pp. 3-5): "Thus I came--despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents--to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived...Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude...which has never left me..."

We all know Albert Einstein as the most famous scientist of the 20th century, and many know him as a great humanist. Some have also viewed him as religious. Indeed, in Einstein's writings there is well-known reference to God and discussion of religion (1949, 1954). Although Einstein stated he was religious and that he believed in God, it was in his own specialized sense that he used these terms. Many are aware that Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense, but it will come as a surprise to some to learn that Einstein clearly identified himself as an atheist and as an agnostic. If one understands how Einstein used the terms religion, God, atheism, and agnosticism, it is clear that he was consistent in his beliefs.

Part of the popular picture of Einstein's God and religion comes from his well-known statements, such as: "God is cunning but He is not malicious."(Also: "God is subtle but he is not bloody-minded." Or: "God is slick, but he ain't mean." (1946)

"God does not play dice."(On many occasions.)

"I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."(Unknown date.)

It is easy to see how some got the idea that Einstein was expressing a close relationship with a personal god, but it is more accurate to say he was simply expressing his ideas and beliefs about the universe.

Einstein's "belief" in Spinoza's God is one of his most widely quoted statements. But quoted out of context, like so many of these statements, it is misleading at best. It all started when Boston's Cardinal O'Connel attacked Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity and warned the youth that the theory "cloaked the ghastly apparition of atheism" and "befogged speculation, producing universal doubt about God and His creation"(Clark, 1971, 413-414). Einstein had already experienced heavier duty attacks against his theory in the form of anti-Semitic mass meetings in Germany, and he initially ignored the Cardinal's attack. Shortly thereafter though, on April 24, 1929, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled Einstein to ask: "Do you believe in God?"(Sommerfeld, 1949, 103). Einstein's return message is the famous statement: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings"( 103). The Rabbi, who was intent on defending Einstein against the Cardinal, interpreted Einstein's statement in his own way when writing: "Spinoza, who is called the God-intoxicated man, and who saw God manifest in all nature, certainly could not be called an atheist. Furthermore, Einstein points to a unity. Einstein's theory if carried out to its logical conclusion would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism. He does away with all thought of dualism or pluralism. There can be no room for any aspect of polytheism. This latter thought may have caused the Cardinal to speak out. Let us call a spade a spade"(Clark, 1971, 414). Both the Rabbi and the Cardinal would have done well to note Einstein's remark, of 1921, to Archbishop Davidson in a similar context about science: "It makes no difference. It is purely abstract science"(413).

The American physicist Steven Weinberg (1992), in critiquing Einstein's "Spinoza's God" statement, noted: "But what possible difference does it make to anyone if we use the word 'God' in place of 'order' or 'harmony,' except perhaps to avoid the accusation of having no God?" Weinberg certainly has a valid point, but we should also forgive Einstein for being a product of his times, for his poetic sense, and for his cosmic religious view regarding such things as the order and harmony of the universe.

But what, at bottom, was Einstein's belief? The long answer exists in Einstein's essays on religion and science as given in his Ideas and Opinions (1954), his Autobiographical Notes (1949), and other works. What about a short answer?

In the Summer of 1945, just before the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein wrote a short letter stating his position as an atheist (Figure 1) [Sorry, folks, I couldn't include the illustrations here--Dixon]. Ensign Guy H. Raner had written Einstein from mid-Pacific requesting a clarification on the beliefs of the world famous scientist (Figure 2). Four years later Raner again wrote Einstein for further clarification and asked "Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., 'one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being'?" Einstein's response is shown in Figure 3.

Combining key elements from the first and second response from Einstein there is little doubt as to his position: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."

I was fortunate to meet Guy Raner, by chance, at a humanist dinner in late 1994, at which time he told me of the Einstein letters. Raner lives in Chatsworth, California and has retired after a long teaching career. The Einstein letters, a treasured possession for most of his life, were sold in December, 1994, to a firm that deals in historical documents (Profiles in History, Beverly Hills, CA). Five years ago a very brief letter (Raner & Lerner, 1992) describing the correspondence was published in Nature. But the two Einstein letters have remained largely unknown.

Curiously enough, the wonderful and well-known biography Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel, by Banesh Hoffmann (1972) does quote from Einstein's 1945 letter to Raner. But maddeningly, although Hoffmann quotes most of the letter (194-195), he leaves out Einstein's statement: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit Priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist." Hoffmann's biography was written with the collaboration of Einstein's secretary, Helen Dukas. Could she have played a part in eliminating this important sentence, or was it Hoffmann's wish? I do not know. However, Freeman Dyson (1996) notes "that Helen wanted the world to see, the Einstein of legend, the friend of school children and impoverished students, the gently ironic philosopher, the Einstein without violent feelings and tragic mistakes." Dyson also notes that he thought Dukas "profoundly wrong in trying to hide the true Einstein from the world." Perhaps her well-intentioned protectionism included the elimination of Einstein as atheist.

Although not a favorite of physicists, Einstein, The Life and Times, by the professional biographer Ronald W. Clark (1971), contains one of the best summaries on Einstein's God: "However, Einstein's God was not the God of most men. When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later life, he tended to...clothe with different names what to many ordinary mortals--and to most Jews--looked like a variant of simple agnosticism...This was belief enough. It grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect rather than celestial reward. Einstein's God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who had the courage, the imagination, and the persistence to go on searching for them"(19).

Einstein continued to search, even to the last days of his 76 years, but his search was not for the God of Abraham or Moses. His search was for the order and harmony of the world.

Bibliography
Dyson, F. 1996. Forward In The Quotable Einstein (Calaprice, Alice, Ed. ) Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1996. (Note: The section "On Religion, God, and Philosophy" is perhaps the best brief source to present the range and depth of Einstein's views.)
Einstein, A. 1929. quoted in Sommerfeld (see below). 1949. Also as Telegram to a Jewish Newspaper, 1929; Einstein Archive Number 33-272.
___. 1946 and of unknown date. In Einstein, A Centenary Volume. (A. P. French, Ed.) Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press. 1979. 32, 73, & 67.
___. 1959 (1949). "Autobiographical Notes." In Albert Einstein, Philosopher--Scientist. (Paul Arthur Schilpp, Ed.) New York: Harper & Bros.
___. 1950. Letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive Number 59-215.
___. 1954. Ideas and Opinions. New York: Crown Pub.
___. on many occasions. In Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel. (B. Hoffmann with the collaboration of Helen Dukas.) New York: The Viking Press.
Hoffmann, B. (collaboration with Helen Dukas). 1972. Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel. New York: The Viking Press.
Raner, G. H. & Lerner, L. S. "Einstein's Beliefs." Nature, 358:102.
Sommerfeld, A. 1949. "To Albert Einstein's 70th Birthday." In Albert Einstein, Philospher-Scientist. (Paul Arthur Schilpp, Ed.) New York: Harper & Bros. 1959. 99-105.
Weinberg, S. 1992. Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon Books. 245.

[Clancy]

Lest people get the impression that Einstein believed in a personal god, some kind of entity that could hear prayers and care about us, which is what most people seem to mean by the term "god", let's clarify that he apparently used the term god more or less metaphorically, denoting a more abstract thing like the transcendent oneness beloved of pantheist/atheists such as Spinoza and Wragg :^)

Yep, pantheism. I can't think of a more humble, truth seeking philosophy/position/religion.

"The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image... Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find those who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, Francis of Assisi and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."

--Albert Einstein
https://www.geocities.com/HotSprings...1einstein.html

[nicofrog]

Mark; wow;
what a powerful re-statement of scientific dogma. And remember when science said words cant' go through air.(Radio,cellphone, microwave transmission) and when Bleeding was the medical technique of the day, and in the second world war we had sulfur, and Castor oil as drugs of choice, everybody knew you put borax in your eyes, And even my dad(Who should have known better) showed me how you could put mercury in your mouth roll it around and spit it back out.

Whoops you mentioned dna, did you know that a physical part of us is transfered to the fetus when we are born!aha eternal life scientifically proven!

True the brain cells rot, hell a lot of mine are gone already, and I gleefully look forward to total physical decomposition,preferably with worms on hand! hopefully someone will use my skull as a candle holder for a century or two! Fortunately some can learn to think with the heart . I'm wondering if everything Beethoven ever was has disintegrated yet!

The Mystery Details left would be rather vast when considering the whole Universe,wouldn't you think?or have the govt. appointed meteorologists who deny global warming also pegged the whole universe as well! Who cares about death, it happens, good thing to or we'd be about 8' deep in people world wide. Now is what matters and I guess I didn't make my self clear. THERE IS A Spirit world every bit as tangible and navigable as this infernal confuser I'm typing on. I've been there, the "Psychic"phenomena were REAL unfakeable concrete as the footing of the golden gate bridge and more majestic.

It is not to avoid death, it is to not be hung up in the mundane life story. Not about crystals amulets and charms..its about children,mothers, grandmothers,great grandmothers,chopping wood, hauling water, having a true loving moment..falling flat on your face in a frozen mudpuddle,then having another true moment.

You ask WHY,
I would re-ask why is it so important to know "What is and what isn't"
especially when SCIENTIFICALLY you know all that will change every 10 years or so Radically.
No ones clinging to anything here any more than we have to cling to air, other than to spit out the pollution our VAST intelligence put there.

I don't spit on intelligence, I can't even spell it, I just SERIOUSLY doubt that we are so good at it, but I guess that depends on what you think the symptoms of Intelligence are! Can you tell I had a lot of talks with my Dad about this! Funny my mom was a "believer" and my dad not, she visits frequently(In dream form she is dead ) and dad seldom, I guess it would be kind of like admitting he was wrong! He hated that. actually, mom didn't leave she just moved in, there was plenty of room in my heart she had nurtured it that way.Is that haunting? If so BRING ON THE GHOSTS and dispel Christian bs mind control mysticism.

Well this is fun, but I gotta go! N

Mark;

Barry, I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. There is no compelling evidence for the existence of a soul. ....

[Zeno Swijtink]

In Scientific American of this June Michael Shermer tells Oprah to witdraw her endorsement of this dvd. Now that I got cancer I can even get worked up a bit about the Lure of Attraction. Contact me privately if you wish to get a copy of the whole review (pdf). - ZS


"Skeptic: The (Other) Secret; June 2007; Scientific American Magazine; by Michael Shermer; 1 Page(s)

An old yarn about a classic marketing con game on the secret of wealth instructs you to write a book about how to make a lot of money and sell it through the mail. When your marks receive the book, they discover the secret--write a book about how to make a lot of money and sell it through the mail.

A confidence scheme similar to this can be found in The Secret (Simon & Schuster, 2006), a book and DVD by Rhonda Byrne and a cadre of self-help gurus that, thanks to Oprah Winfrey's endorsement, have now sold more than three million copies combined. The secret is the so-called law of attraction. Like attracts like. Positive thoughts sally forth from your body as magnetic energy, then return in the form of whatever it was you were thinking about. Such as money. "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts," we are told. Damn those poor Kenyans. If only they weren't such pessimistic sourpusses. The film's promotional trailer is filled with such vainglorious money mantras as "Everything I touch turns to gold," "I am a money magnet," and, my favorite, "There is more money being printed for me right now." Where? Kinko's? (...) "

cont.

[Juggledude]

[decterlove]

That nobody has REALLY thought any of it through really carefully. We've all experienced odd events and synchronicities in our lives that seem to indicate some degree of ability to move thru life with some conscious intent and have things come our way much more quickly and easily than logic would otherwise dictate. At the same time, it's toxic and ridiculous to assume that a nation suffering violence and famine somehow brought it all on themselves via some individualistic "vibe" they were all semi-consciously embracing. Or that a child has bad vibed themselves into suffering from cancer, etc...

The "New Age" camp which I do sorta belong to, at least I think I have a card somewhere....lemmee check here, oh yeah, here it is right behind my library card.....Is all too enthusiastic and too eager to believe in anything that's simplistic and easy, all the "get anything you want" concepts and perfectly willing to throw all scepticism aside in a New York minute if it means feeling a little groovy.....

and the Scientific community, those real hard thinkers, who need to test their breakfast cereal three times in the morning to make sure it really Oatios, are too instantly willing to dismiss anything that threatens their "we now know EVERYTHING....there is NO MORE to be Known about the Universe, except we have to untangle a couple more of these String theories....

Paradoxically, the discipline needed to really assess much of the new age belief systems is available to the science orientated personality but they just have their heads too far stuck up their asses to even consider REALLY attempting to investigate matters, in a fluid, open but careful way....

I've met scientific people that were just as dogmatic as any religious zealot from the 14th century! Everything that cannot be proven in a completely controlled repeatable experiment is considered myth, folly or as one "scientist" told..."that's okay, it's just science fiction or poetry!" when referring to something that fell out of his range of acceptable reality...

Many of us have had direct experiences that simply cannot be explained by any theory currently found in the standard repertoire of modern scientific paradigm. After my grandfather died in my parents house, the front door was opened at 5 am every morning and slammed shut, just like he used to do when he lived briefly at our home. It took my father a year to accept that this was actually happening! I walked into a den that had no lights on and the push button Sharp stereo (this was the seventies...) turned on full blast. The washing machine turned on by itself on several occasions and my sister had the frightening experience of being squeezed on several occasions. This went on for a year until my father finally the "reality" of it and yelled, "Ed, get out!" And then it ceased....

Any hardcore scientist type will tell you....A. this just didn't happen, we all imagined it. or B. I'm lying to try to sell something. C. It could have happened but it can all be explained by some extremely complicated and inelegant theory about brain cells, and whatever...

Bottom line....things like this do happen and they happen all the time and you can throw a stick in any direction and hit someone with a similar unexplainable by modern scientific thinking, experience...

Modern man somehow believes that after, what, a half a million years of human evolution, that only in the last 400 years were their any human beings that had the vaguest understanding of the Universe around them...Meanwhile, that select chosen few can't even explain the pyramids, or Stonehedge or any other of dozens or hundreds of mysteries that "primitive" people understood perfectly well...

I'm not here to praise all quasi-new age belief systems....they are obviously filled with errors and potentially dangerous seductions as well....but the worship of Scientific Reductionist Materialistic thinking must also be seriously held up to the light of a New Day....

[Sara S]

Is it just a coincidence that the following was delanceyplace.com's daily quote on May14?:
In today's excerpt--chance occurrences and
probability:



"[In chance occurrences] we find the basis for
superstition. A 'chance occurrence' occurs. Not
knowing the odds behind it, we marvel. Now, really,
what are the odds? Surely too tiny for chance!



"Alan Guth, a physicist at MIT, described an example
from his own family of how easily we turn the random
into an omen. An uncle of his, who'd lived alone, had
been found dead in his home, and a policeman had
come to deliver the bad news to Guth's mother. While
the officer was there, Guth's sister, who was traveling
on business, happened to call. 'My mother and sister
were both shocked at the timing of the call, that it
coincided with the policeman's visit, and the news of
my uncle's death,' said Guth. 'They thought that there
had to be something telepathic about it.' When Guth
heard from his mother of this miraculous instance of
kin-based telecommunion, he couldn't help but do
some
quick calculations. As a rule, his sister phoned their
mother about once a week. She tended to call either
first thing in the morning or in the evening, when she
had a moment and when her mother was likeliest to
be around. The policeman had arrived at his mother's
house at about 5:00 p.m., and, because there were
several solemn orders of business to discuss, his
visit had lasted more than an hour, possibly two. All
factors considered, Guth said to me, the odds of his
sister calling while the policeman was on-site were
[not especially low mathematically].



"The more one knows about probabilities, the less
amazing ... coincidences become. ...
John Littlewood, a renowned mathematician at the
University of Cambridge, formalized the apparent
intrusion of the supernatural into ordinary life as a kind
of natural law, which he called 'Littlewood's Law of
Miracles.' He defined a miracle as many people
might: a one-in-a-million event to which we accord
real
significance when it occurs. By his law, such miracles
arise in anyone's life at an average of once a month.
Here's how Littlewood explained it: You are out and
about and barraged by the world for some eight hours
a day. You see and hear things happening at a rate of
maybe one per second, amounting to 30,000 or so
events a day, or a million a month. The vast majority of
events you barely notice, but every so often, from the
great streams of happenings, you are treated to a
marvel: the pianist at the bar starts playing a song
you'd just been thinking of, or you pass the window of
a pawnshop and see the heirloom ring that had been
stolen from your apartment eighteen months ago.
Yes, life is full of miracles, minor, major, middling C.
It's called 'not being in a persistent vegetative state'
and
'having a life span longer than a click beetles.'


Natalie Angier, The Canon, Houghton Mifflin,
2006, pp.

That nobody has REALLY thought any of it through really carefully. We've all experienced odd events and synchronicities in our lives that seem to indicate some degree of ability to move thru life with some conscious intent and have things come our way much more quickly and easily than logic would otherwise dictate. At the same time, it's toxic and ridiculous to assume that a nation suffering violence and famine somehow brought it all on themselves via some individualistic "vibe" they were all semi-consciously embracing. Or that a child has bad vibed themselves into suffering from cancer, etc...

The "New Age" camp which I do sorta belong to, at least I think I have a card somewhere....lemmee check here, oh yeah, here it is right behind my library card.....Is all too enthusiastic and too eager to believe in anything that's simplistic and easy, all the "get anything you want" concepts and perfectly willing to throw all scepticism aside in a New York minute if it means feeling a little groovy.....

and the Scientific community, those real hard thinkers, who need to test their breakfast cereal three times in the morning to make sure it really Oatios, are too instantly willing to dismiss anything that threatens their "we now know EVERYTHING....there is NO MORE to be Known about the Universe, except we have to untangle a couple more of these String theories....

Paradoxically, the discipline needed to really assess much of the new age belief systems is available to the science orientated personality but they just have their heads too far stuck up their asses to even consider REALLY attempting to investigate matters, in a fluid, open but careful way....

I've met scientific people that were just as dogmatic as any religious zealot from the 14th century! Everything that cannot be proven in a completely controlled repeatable experiment is considered myth, folly or as one "scientist" told..."that's okay, it's just science fiction or poetry!" when referring to something that fell out of his range of acceptable reality...

Many of us have had direct experiences that simply cannot be explained by any theory currently found in the standard repertoire of modern scientific paradigm. After my grandfather died in my parents house, the front door was opened at 5 am every morning and slammed shut, just like he used to do when he lived briefly at our home. It took my father a year to accept that this was actually happening! I walked into a den that had no lights on and the push button Sharp stereo (this was the seventies...) turned on full blast. The washing machine turned on by itself on several occasions and my sister had the frightening experience of being squeezed on several occasions. This went on for a year until my father finally the "reality" of it and yelled, "Ed, get out!" And then it ceased....

Any hardcore scientist type will tell you....A. this just didn't happen, we all imagined it. or B. I'm lying to try to sell something. C. It could have happened but it can all be explained by some extremely complicated and inelegant theory about brain cells, and whatever...

Bottom line....things like this do happen and they happen all the time and you can throw a stick in any direction and hit someone with a similar unexplainable by modern scientific thinking, experience...

Modern man somehow believes that after, what, a half a million years of human evolution, that only in the last 400 years were their any human beings that had the vaguest understanding of the Universe around them...Meanwhile, that select chosen few can't even explain the pyramids, or Stonehedge or any other of dozens or hundreds of mysteries that "primitive" people understood perfectly well...

I'm not here to praise all quasi-new age belief systems....they are obviously filled with errors and potentially dangerous seductions as well....but the worship of Scientific Reductionist Materialistic thinking must also be seriously held up to the light of a New Day....