Yeah, that's an example of an anecdote offered in support of LoA that is actually completely incoherent and contravenes the supposed mechanism by which the "Universe" acts on your desires. I mean, it hurts my brain to even discuss this stuff, because it is just insanely convoluted and self-contradictory and logically inconsistent. You can try and make a point by seizing upon one explanation or purported tenet of the "Law of Attraction," but this so called law isn't even based on a coherent theory, so the LoAer just shifts the goal posts or offers some other flowery treacle in lieu of an actual explanation. Or, there's the inevitable resort to solipsism, or the emotional appeal, like "it works for me," or "it's empowering," etc. So, when I an says he's "seen it work," that doesn't even really mean anything. Seen what, exactly? Working how? By what mechanism? In what order? Exactly who's desires are being manifested? How are the conflicting desires of multiple LoA practitioners resolved by the"Universe," or the "all-god" or whatever Ian is calling it? Can these vibrations be manifested on the other side of the planet, or only within the immediate proximity of the LoAer?
Many, many times in my life, I have wished something would happen or thought it might be nice, and lo and behold, it went down, just like I imagined. Does that mean I've been inadvertently using the LoA? Or does it just mean, as Randi and others have repeatedly demonstrated, the human mind evolved to retain information about positive correlation and discard information on incongruities and negative correlation as a survival strategy, and as such, I don't really remember (because there isn't enough space in my brain for it) all the many more times that stuff happened completely different than I imagined it would or wished it might? I think the latter far more likely than the former. Cold reading psychics, Tarot card readers, etc. all use this fact about the human mind to bilk money from their unsuspecting customers. Is what they do fraud, or are they just providing the dupes who patronize them with the "empowerment" that comes from a false belief in the ability to read the future? How is that different than the LoA belief in controlling the future of the entire "Universe" with your thoughts, as if it were a remote control car? Or the feeling of happiness you get from knowing that you'll be spending eternity at the right hand of that bearded hippy from the middle east named Jesus, thanks to his death on a Roman cross?
We reason out our best approximations of how reality actually works using logic and evidence gathered by our senses, but we don't just stop there. That data is rigorously analyzed according to consistent principles derived from the scientific method. This basic process has given us profoundly useful knowledge in innumerable ways. When that knowledge leads us to philosophically uncomfortable or emotionally disconcerting conclusions about our relationship to each other and the greater world outside ourselves, for instance, the fact that we are not actually THE center of the universe, either individually or as a species (or even a planet), and that our powers to control reality, while impressive, are not absolute or even sufficient to end war and hunger or win the love of the hot cheerleader in Sociology 101, we do not simply pitch it overboard for something more "empowering." Unless we do. And then we sound pretty lame bitching about people "raining on our parade," despite the fact that if the "Universe" worked the way we said it did, there would be no rain on anyone's parade.
The Free Talk Live BBS
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Topic: Law of Attraction (Read 90915 times)