The only ‘harm’ if any is when you approach the concept of The Secret with doubts in your mind. In that case you will only achieve negative results and become frustrated in the process (sic).

This gets into one of the more controversial aspects of The Secret – whether it’s based on faith or science.

If you watch The Secret, they try to beat you over the head that this is based in science. I’ve mentioned in a previous post how their interpretation of quantum physics differs from mainstream physicists. However, the point I want to make in this post is that science isn’t based in faith.

If you’ve ever taken a science course, you know that experiments must be based in the philosophy of the scientific method. That is, a researcher forms hypothesis – that is, her explanation of some natural phenomena. Then, she puts together an experiment to test that hypothesis, and painstakingly works to eliminate biases and outside forces that may effect her experiment’s outcome. If she gets the results she expects, great. If not, she theorizes why her results may have strayed from her hypothesis.

But her research alone doesn’t make something universally accepted. Next, other researchers try to replicate her results. If they get similar results, they will modify the experiment slightly and see if the results are also predicted. They will publish their findings in peer reviewed journals so that others may look at the experiment and point out biases they may have missed – or other possible explanations for the results they received.

As research around a subject builds, those ideas and hypotheses become theories, which in turn lead to more hypotheses and experiments. In other worlds, science does not just accept on faith that one researcher’s results are true. There is a healthy dose of skepticism and doubt in any findings that aren’t consistent with mainstream theories – those theories that have become accepted as “the best explanation we have so far” for natural phenomenon.

On the other hand, if you listen to Rhonda Byrne or you trace the principles of The Secret movement back, you’ll find it has its foundations in the New Thought Movement of the 19th century. That is, it’s based in faith and spirituality, not science. Faith, in this regard, is defined as “belief that is not based on proof.”

You must have faith that you can accomplish this or that. You must have faith that it works every time, no exceptions. You must have faith that the universe is a large catalog and all you need to do is pick out exactly what you want. You must have faith that if you ask and believe, you will receive.

Now, you might say, “it worked for me” or “it worked for Rhonda Byrne” – isn’t that proof enough? From a scientific perspective, no, it isn’t. Testimonials and first hand accounts can be misleading – just ask any trial lawyer who must interview several witnesses for his recent court case. Chances are slim that they will tell the exact same story.

Part of this is because our memories just aren’t as good as we think. As time passes, we tend to forget bits and pieces.

But much of it has to do with our upbringing and how we process information. Both you and I can attend the exact same event and walk away with completely different experiences.

Or take, for instance, this past year’s Superbowl where the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears. If you were a Colts fan, you’d experience the game completely differently than a Bears fan, who’d experience the game completely different form someone who disliked football.

Our perceptions, likes, dislikes, fears, and past experiences are all factors in how we interpret situations. Since no one has exactly the same perceptions, likes, dislikes, fears, and past experiences, it’s impossible for two people to have the exact same experience – they’d each interpret it differently.

The same holds true for the law of attraction. You may swear up and down that it’s working for you in a particular way, whereas I might observe your situation and conclude that you got what you wanted, not because of law of attraction, but simply the effect of an action you took last month. Or perhaps because you decided to focus solely on one thing – so you began noticing other opportunities and resources that could help you.

In other words, proof based on experience is subjective. It may be true for you – or even true for many people in a particular situation – but that doesn’t mean that it works every time, no exceptions.

For it to be proven scientifically, several researchers would have to do independent studies controlling for outside factors that may affect the experiment. They’d form a hypothesis, run the experiment to control for specific variables, observe the outcome and interpret the findings. Then, others would repeat the same experiment. If they continued to get the same results, then, they’d construct a theory and hammer out the specifics – when it works, when it doesn’t, why it works, why it doesn’t. They’d look at the math, chemistry, psychology, and every other factor that might play a role in the overarching explanation. They’d drill down to the core processes and explain this is how it is working. That’s science.

• there’s no such thing as a coincidence
• everything happens for a reason
• nothing in your life happens by accident
• everything happens in accordance with God’s plan

Perhaps those are comforting things, but is that really true? And if so, what does that mean?

Christianity has struggled with the debate between predestination and free will since its beginnings. The free will philosophy states that we are free to make decisions that will effect the outcomes of our lives independently of any particular cause or supernatural force.

Predestination, on the other hand, states that some mystical force such as fate or the gods are in complete control of our lives. They’ve planned out our lives from well before we came into this world and crafted a universe that unfolds according to their programming.

We know that as we live our lives, many things are caused by something. If we don’t pay our bills (cause), we’ll be kicked out of our home or apartment, our car will be taken away, and our credit score will be damaged (effects). We know that if we don’t eat or drink for several weeks (cause), we’ll die of dehydration or malnutrition (effect).

But can that philosophy be applied to everything, all the time, no exceptions? Was Einstein right when he proclaimed “[God] does not throw dice”?

If this were true, you would have to accept the premises that everything that happens is solely because the gods, fate, or destiny has programmed it into us and our environment. Our every decision or move is known in advance and fits squarely into their overarching “plan”. In this case, God or some other supernatural force would be said to be omniscience – all knowing – and not only does this deity or force know what the future holds, everything in the future unfolds based on what God wants.

Many people are uncomfortable with this notion because it implies that we are all puppets on a string. Our every decision and outcome has been determined in advance and we are simply actors and actresses playing out our assigned role on God’s stage.

However, if we are simply playing out the role which we were assigned, the question becomes “are we to blame for our actions?” Is it fair to punish people for acting in accordance with God’s intention?

In our society, we tend to hold people accountable for their actions. If someone steals, rapes or murders, we’ll give them a trial in court to determine their innocence or guilt, but except in extreme cases, we assume they knew what they were doing when they committed the act and chose to do it anyway. In other words, they were responsible for their actions, and therefore they deserve to be punished accordingly.

(There’s a huge body of philosophical literature that discusses whether we are truly responsible for our own actions – see Wikipedia’s philosophical treatise on free will for an overview.)

On the other hand, if we know that everything is happening because of God’s plan, should we help the poor and those in need? If God has dealt them their hand, shouldn’t they play their cards? Why should anyone step in and give them a hand, put food on the table or give them emotional support? After all, this is how God intended.

Perhaps you could argue that while it’s true that God deals some people a bad hand, he also puts others in their lives to help them with their ordeals and gives them the resources to overcome their situation. This is simply God teaching us a lesson like a father might teach his children. Christians often point to the Book of Job as an example. Still, it’s difficult to comprehend why God would such catastrophic things to happen – like 9/11, the Holocaust, or the myriad of natural disasters ranging from massive tsunamis to volcano eruptions to category 5 hurricanes. Are all of these merely the result of God teaching us a lesson?

With Einstein, we know that as quantum theory developed, most physicists came to disagree with Einstein. Specifically, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg’s theories directly conflicted with Einstein’s. Bohr and Einstein even had intense debates about how particles might pass through a slit in order to prove that there was uncertainty at the quantum level (Einstein disagreed with this, but Bohr’s arguments became the dominant belief).

That said, there are still many things we don’t know about quantum theory. Physicist Stephen Hawking wrote in his book, A Brief History of Time,

“These quantum theories are deterministic in the sense that they give laws for the evolution of the wave with time. Thus if one knows the wave at one time, one can calculate it at any other time. The unpredictable, random element comes in only when we try to interpret the wave in terms of the positions and velocities of particles. But maybe this is our mistake: maybe there are no positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities. The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability.”

Still, even if particles acted as waves in all cases, we’d still perceive uncertainty in our lives. If we flip a coin, we know with certainty that it will either land as heads or tails. But the correct answer is a mystery to us until the act has been completed. Much of how we analyze our life is hindsight. Perhaps we know that because we called heads and the coin landed as tails, the other team got the ball first, got early momentum and got an early lead that eventually led to them winning the game. Would we still have played if we knew in advance the other team was going to win?

Chances are, we wouldn’t (just as we like watching the highlights of the big plays after the fact, but few of us actually like sitting through a rerun of a game that has already been played and that we already know the outcome of). Our excitement and enthusiasm comes from our belief that how we play the game shapes the outcome – that our choices matter – that it’s the excitement of playing the game at that moment which is important.

Though I’d agree that it’s somewhat deceptive or misleading in its attempts to claim science as its foundation, I don’t think it’s overtly harmful. Yes, the philosophy’s incomplete – and they haven’t spent much time hammering out the specifics – but if you simply take it for a “feel good” docu-drama, it’s not going to harm anyone. As long as you don’t think too deeply about the underlying principle of the law of attraction, the movie’s an inspirational piece to get you to sit up and take notice that you can control your thoughts and feelings.

It’s certainly true that as consumers in a capitalistic society, we’re exposed to so much marketing hype each day – by some reports, over 3000 messages a day. The amount of data on the Internet doubles each year. The US, alone, published 172,000 books in 2005. The UK beat us with 206,000. It’s impossible for us to give each of these things our full attention. We’d go nuts! So we filter out what isn’t relevant to us and focus on what is relevant. For instance, if you watched tv last night – do you actually remember which commercials you saw? Can you name the product or service they were promoting? Chances are, you may remember one or two that stood out but many people don’t remember any.

Those that do stand out are likely to either be entertaining in some way, or relevant to you – such as a character from the tv show you’re watching does a commercial spot, or you see an ad for TurboTax and think that wow, April 16 is just 10 days away – maybe you should get started on your taxes.

We also live in an attention deficit society where we can’t sit still for 5 minutes without an interruption. We’re a generation of multitaskers (though the NY Times reminds us that we’re not as good at multitasking as we may think we are. We’re always available with cell phones, email, pagers, and instant messengers. There’s a distraction around every corner.

So from a psychological perspective, it makes a lot of sense that we don’t notice something until we become aware of it and start to make it a priority. For instance, I only started watching 24 at Season Five. Before that, I was oblivious to Jack Bauer and CTU. Thanks to the constant updates from my family, who were avid fans, I finally caved, watched the season premiere and was hooked. Before this, 24 didn’t matter. After this, 24 became a priority – must watch tv (at least until Heroes came along!)

It’s easy to tell what people focus most on – just take a look at how they spend their days and what they spend their money on. As James Ray said last night on the teleseminar, when people tell you they “don’t have time”, they’re just making an excuse. We always find the time for things we consider a priority. And usually, we find the money.

Can Positive Thinking Cure Disease?

Where The Secret gets a bit esoteric is in its attempt to explain why bad things happen to good people. This certainly isn’t a new question. Countless philosophers and theologians have tried to understand the problem of evil for centuries – or at least as long as ethical monotheism has been around. To frame the question, how can evil exist in a world if there is an omnipotent, omnipresent God? Or, in the language of The Secret, if the universe is a large catalog and all you have to do is pick out what you want, why is it that some of us seem to choose bad things like cancer, rape, and natural disasters? Why is it that some of us never seem to lose weight, no matter how hard we try? Why can’t some of us get out of debt – or at least make enough to cover our monthly expenses?

The Secret claims it’s because we have all these negative beliefs that are poisoning our lives. As we focus on getting out of debt, we filter out all but “debt”. As we focus on curing ourselves from disease, we filter out all but “disease”. It’s these thoughts that are creating the problems in our lives.

Now I admit, from a purely philosophical point of view, this has a tiny bit of weight. If you’re having a bad day, each little annoyance is magnified. If you’re having a good day, a minor annoyance is just a drop in the bucket. It’s all relative. You don’t complain nearly as much about your $35 parking ticket if you just found out you won $10,000. But if you get a parking ticket and your air conditioner dies and you lose an important client account at work, things seem to go from bad to worse.

But from a physical standpoint, there is absolutely no evidence that we attract cancer into our lives – or that negative thinkers are more likely to get cancer than positive thinkers. Yes, positive thinkers tend to fight the disease a bit harder. They’re not ready to quit living just yet – whereas some people give in to the disease. But given the opportunity to have modern medical treatment, most people would choose that AND positive thinking instead of JUST positive thinking.

In other words, positive thinking alone won’t cure disease. Yes, they thought that might be the case in the 1800s. It’s a fundamental principle of the New Thought Movement (of which, Christian Science is a part). But we also know a lot more about medicine now than we do in the 1800s.

One of the biggest debates in medicine during the mid-1800s was how to recognize with certainty that someone was actually dead (so they wouldn’t bury them alive, which was a huge concern at the time). The stethoscope was only invented in 1819 and was extremely rudimentary to the sensitive devices we use today. In other words, medicine has come a long way since the 1800s.

So, in this regard, if people choose to believe in the Law of Attraction over say, getting appropriate medical help because they are certain their thoughts will heal them, then yes, this could be perceived as harmful. (And if you’re refusing medical attention for a child, that’s a legal offense – see Supreme Court ruling on mother who refused medical treatment for her 11 year old son who died because of it.)

What about the Poor and Unfortunate?

Another problem with The Secret is that because it claims we attract our circumstances. That means the people in Darfur attract the violence or that the New Orleans’ people attracted the levies to break.

Or because we want to lose weight, we should not focus on people who are overweight, but turn our thoughts to positive and healthy body images. It’s not food that’s causing our weight gain, it’s our thoughts. (Read Rhonda Byrne’s excerpt from The Secret for more on this.)

While thoughts may hold us back, virtually all physicians and dieticians will agree that if you want to lose weight – or just maintain a healthy weight – you must manage your diet and exercise regularly. Sure, you might know someone that “is thin and eats like a horse” as Rhonda says – but is this really the Universe answering this person’s wish, or simply that she has a high metabolism? I know I could eat all sorts of things as a teen and wouldn’t gain weight. Sadly, now I don’t have that ability – but then I’m also not nearly as active.

What bothers me is her quote

Make it your intention to look for, admire, and inwardly praise people with your idea of perfect-weight bodies. Seek them out and as you admire them and feel the feelings of that-you are summoning it to you. If you see people who are overweight, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it.

There’s not a lot of compassion there. Don’t observe fat people. Look away, because it’s all about you. What other people are going through doesn’t matter. It’s all about you achieving your goals.

This touches on my second biggest problem with The Secret – the selfishness of it. Virtually everything in the movie was about attracting wealth and materialism to you. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it’s all a bit selfish. There’s no desire to help out your fellow man, to give to the needy or help the sick or suffering because that’s not in your best interest and won’t get you that spiffy new car you’ve been dreaming of. There’s no real desire to genuinely connect with other human beings on a deeper level because how will that help you get that cool new mansion?

Now, I’m not about to get rid of my possessions any time soon – I’m a Taurus, and every astrology profile I’ve ever seen tells me how much I love physical possessions and cash. But money and possessions are not the end all, be all, which defines me and my personality. Yes, I want to be comfortably wealthy, but it’s also important to me to give back.

The Secret seems to ignore this. It seems to say that all you have to do is ask and “receive” – that is, take, take, take! There’s no giving involved.

On a different note, The Secret seems to imply that if we only believe hard enough and put out enough good vibes, we can control our lives. The philosophy is that here is no random chance or coincidence. Everything happens for a reason, so good people attract bad things into their lives.

So, does that mean that we shouldn’t help people because they have specifically brought these unfortunate circumstances? Worse, does that mean that they should be blamed and held accountable for their misfortunes?

I don’t buy that argument. You’d have to be a pretty cold person to tell a parent they were to blame for their child’s death or for their spouse’s cancer or hurricane Katrina.

So, taking all of this into consideration, is The Secret harmful? I guess, like just about everything out there, it could be. But in moderation and with a healthy dose of skepticism (meaning you’ll actually seek out medical treatment, help out a person in need, or take action rather than wishing for something to manifest into your lap), I’d place it squarely within the rest of the self-help/motivational materials out there. It has its good and bad points. And while it’s probably not overtly harmful, it’s not the sole answer or “the secret” to life.