Scientific American.com has an excellent piece on “the secret of The Secret“, pointing out some of its whopping errors in logic. If we insist our thoughts alone determine what happens to us, what are we saying about victims of atrocities such as the Holocaust and Darfur?
The Secret of “The Secret”
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Swallowing The Camel 
Yes, but, if ALL the victims of those atrocities thought positively, they could have overwhelmed their enemies. 😉
I think positive thinking was part of the problem! People going into the camps, or remaining in Rwanda, were quite trusting and didn’t think the government could really be sick and evil enough to do away with them. What they could’ve used were some negative thoughts and a lotta weaponry.To be honest, I liked the first 20 minutes of “The Secret” film, because I DO believe in working to find the positive in everything (like Z is learning to do). But I draw the line at believing all the quantum stuff about our thoughts affecting physical objects and events. You can visualize success and happiness all you want, but it takes concrete action to achieve. “The Secret” folks would have you believe that once you imagine something, you’re over halfway there.
Good point! So much for thinking positive.You didn’t BUY the DVD, did you?
“Oh and btw, for those saying that God can’t be proven by science… he can’t be unproven either.”Ok, I just have to respond to this one… I think the word you’re looking for is “disproven”, as in proven to be incorrect, or in this case non-existent. Unproven refers generally refers to an idea with an incomplete or completely absent proof.At any rate, I’m really tired of religious people trying to turn this argument around. When you propose a supernatural deity the burden of proof is on you. Those who decline to believe in your god are no more obliged to disprove your theory than they are to disprove all the 9/11 quackery. It would be helpful, and probably make the world a better place, but most of the target audience probably wouldn’t get it anyway. Moreover, their failure to disprove your theory does not affirm that you are correct. This is known as the Argument from Ignorance and is a commonly employed tactic of religious believers. Ignorance about something says nothing about its existence or non-existence. In fact, the very notion that the existence of something can be disproven is false. You can make very strong claims as to why it is _extremely_ unlikely that something exists but unless you propose to be omniscient (sp?) you cannot prove that a thing does not exist.
I listened to an interview with some of “The Secret” authors on the CBC in Toronto, and at least two out-right confirmed that they think any woman who is violently raped walking home from the store attracted the attack by her negative thinking. She either secretly wanted to be raped, she invited the “bad energy” by obessively thinking about not being raped, or she wanted a positive change in her life and the rape was simply the Universe’s tool enabling it (“by allowing her to be come a rape councellor”!). The amount of contrived victim-blaming bullsh*t flowing out of these men’s mouths was incredible. They certainly have attracted my fist to their faces, if I ever have the displeasure to meet any of them in person. Grrrrrr!I am not even going to get into their economic illogic (“do you want to have the lifestyle of the top 1% wealthy people on Earth? If you truly believe in yourself, everybody can be in that top 1%! All 6 billion of us! And if you fail, well, you clearly didn’t believe hard enough”) OK, I lied, I did get into it. So cringeworthily stupid… yet making money hand over fist, aren’t they. 😦
Disturbing. But that’s the logical line of reasoning if you start from the solipsistic premise “you get what you think”. (if that was true, I’d be eating cupcakes with Alec Baldwin right now…)The Secret indeed seems to be just a slick, well-marketed piece of New Age empowerment gibberish. Sadly, it will probably boost its creators into that vaunted 1% while the true believers chide themselves for not being positive enough.
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