Miracles and the Law of Attraction
Written on June 9, 2008 by Tom Stine
Leo over at Zen Habits wrote a post yesterday on the Law of Attraction, basically giving it a big thumbs down. Leo took a very interesting position: a very rational, western scientific perspective on accomplishing things in life.
My first response was to smile and laugh. I mean, for a site called Zen Habits, you would think there would be a little, well, Zen in his response. But no matter. I left a longish comment for him, kind of an off-the-cuff assortment of thoughts and ideas. Here it is:
“Very cool post. Interesting, too, coming as it does on a site called ZEN Habits. No, Zen doesn’t really have much to do with the Law of Attraction, so let’s not get sidetracked there. But let’s do consider that the ultimate foundation of Zen is Buddhism, and the Buddha had some pretty wild things to say about the world, our experience of it, it’s reality, etc.
“I won’t get into the details, but suffice it to say that if you delve into any school of Eastern thought, you will find ideas that are completely at odds with our typical, rationalistic world view. The world we look upon, so convinced of its utter reality, maybe isn’t as real as we think. So much that we believe in ultimately becomes so much ‘mumbo-jumbo.’ ”
“Look at the history of science itself. It is littered with the train wrecks of once ‘unassailable’ givens, things that were so incredibly obvious that you had to be a fool to question them.
“So, can I really think something into existence? Why not. Sure, I can’t prove I can, but then again, we can’t ‘prove’ much of science. That’s why scientists are usually pretty honest by calling things ‘theories’ and ‘hypotheses.’ Very few laws in science, but even those only rest on the simple fact that they’ve always occurred every time they are repeated.
“I guess my bottom line for you, Leo, is a simple question: do you believe in magic? Do you believe in miracles? Do you think that we really have a reasonable handle on what is true and what isn’t? While I’m not fan of the LOA and its devotees, I am a fan of miracles. I’m a fan of being incredibly surprised by the mystery of life that works in some really remarkable ways.
“Lastly, let me leave you with a fantastic statement by one of the most talented writers of the 20th century, Arthur C. Clarke:
“ ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
“Think about it. Maybe we just haven’t worked out the technology of ‘magic.’ ”
And that was the end of my comment. Leo was really getting into the comments, so he responded quite quickly:
@Tom Stine, who wrote:“I guess my bottom line for you, Leo, is a simple question: do you believe in magic? Do you believe in miracles? Do you think that we really have a reasonable handle on what is true and what isn’t?”‘
I certainly do believe in magic and miracles! It is almost impossible to be a parent, for example, and not believe in miracles. It’s hard to do a run at 5 a.m., and watch the sun turn a new day into a miracle, and not believe in magic. It’s hard to go through life, with your eyes and heart wide open, and not believe in magic and miracles.
However, I don’t think that means they are supernatural, meaning that they are outside the realm of science. I think science is just another way of looking at the same things. Is a child a miracle? Yes, I believe so … but a child can also be explained by science.
Is it a miracle when you overcome amazing odds, using the power of positive thinking, to achieve something incredible, as many people have? Absolutely! And yet, that doesn’t mean that science can’t explain it.
The problem comes, in my mind, when we take these miracles and come up with explanations for them that are totally unprovable, that have no real basis in reality, for no good reason, as is often done.
After reading Leo’s comments, I decided to post another comment in response. And I did. And guess what? Leo deleted it! I’ve never had the experience of being bounced before. How cool is that? I’m a radical fit for the delete key. I know the comment got left because a friend informed me that he read it via email (he was receiving follow-ups). Well, I saved the comment before I posted, so I have the comment in its entirety. You can judge how “evil” I was:
[Please note: after I posted this article, Leo wrote to say that he had not deleted my comment, but he couldn't find it, either. Obviously he had a technical snafu, not surprising, given the volume of comments he gets and inevitable glitches, etc. It was quite nice of him to leave a comment below. He's quite the stand-up guy, and I was a bit surprised that he would delete my comment in the first place. C'est la vie!]
“Leo, you made some good points. However, your reply left me thinking that you don’t really believe in miracles, the miraculous kind. You know, the person dying of cancer who does some spiritual ‘mumbo-jumbo’ for a few months and is completely healed, leaving her doctors stunned. The medical community calls it ’spontaneous remission’ but that’s a fancy word for ‘we have no idea what happened.’ That’s what the average person calls ‘a miracle.’
“As for me, give me water-into-wine, levitation (the Maharishi kind), spontaneous healing, blind men seeing, all the cool stuff you read about in Yogananda and other works. That’s my kind of miracle.
“Honestly, I don’t think that ’science’ is all it’s cracked up to be. Too many people have too much ‘faith’ in science. The scientific method has its limits. How do you study a phenomenon that might be beyond the mind, such as miracles? What do you use to study it? All science has at its disposal is the human mind. Miracles, the real kind, may be beyond the capabilities of science to explain.
“None of that means that they are supernatural or outside of reality in some way. I’m just questioning the capacity of the human mind to comprehend the totality of nature, the completeness of reality.
“Whether one wants to admit it or not, science is a belief system. The belief at the core goes something like ‘if we study something long enough using the ’scientific method’ then we will understand it.’ You can’t really prove that one wrong, can you? But it may in fact be wrong.
“And this is the type of thing that drives a decent number of physicists (you know, the quantum mechanics guys) to sound more Buddhist than a Buddhist.
“Again, the LOA may be right, may be wrong. But I suspect that most people, myself included, are more turned off by the salesmen for it and the Secret than anything else. They are a bit hard to swallow. And, for most people , the LOA just seems too hokie and simplistic to be believable. And it just might be wrong. And then again….
“Just some more thoughts for you Leo. Namaste.”
I invite you all to head over to Zen Habits and check out the post. It makes for fun reading. Well, actually, the best reading is in the comments. Some really good ones are there. A whole host of people showed-up to join in. Enjoy!
