You Tuber & Religious Scholar Dr Andrew M Henry Promotes a Deadly “Religious” Scam

Dr Andrew M. Henry PhD, is a “scholar of religious studies.” He has a popular You Tube channel dedicated to “improving the public’s religious literacy”.

Usually he covers slightly off-beat religious topics in a serious but approachable manner. I’ve watched quite a few of his videos over the last few years, and expected something sensible from him in his recent video, which is on a topic that I have covered extensively here since 2009 — the deadly dangerous scam known as the law of attraction, The Secret, Positive Thinking, manifesting.

To be clear, I can easily understand why people encountering this scam for the first time don’t immediately recognise the dangers. That’s the whole point of manipulative scams– they mimic something harmless. But I have absolutely no patience whatsoever for someone who presents himself as a serious academic and then plays dumb — very dumb — about the very clear and very well documented trail of destruction this scam has left behind it.

It turns out that he is in fact himself promoting a law of attraction scammer, with whom he shares a sponsor. I assume that fellow is promoting him back. Uncritical cross-promotion is of course one of the manipulative techniques that scammers love. It encircles the customer in a net of scammers who all endorse each other, isolating them from critical voices.

Well, here is my attempt to break through that encirclement. Dr Henry says nothing about the open invitation to fraud, quackery, ruthless manipulation, and pointless risk-taking that this scam involves. And nothing about the psychological dangers of believing the deceptive fake science it is based on.

And despite being a scholar of religious history, Dr Henry promotes the New Age hit film The Secret without mentioning that it is squarely based on a febrile (and borderline anti-semitic) conspiracy theory.

Dr Henry, I must inform you that there is no secret cabal of rich men who used this secret knowledge to get rich. They are not going to kill Rhonda Byrne. And Albert Einstein was not secretly an alchemist. You don’t need to stay “neutral” about any of it. It is not “a matter for theologians to decide”.

And if The Secret’s version of history is right, then everything you wrote in your PhD thesis is wrong. Same for anthropology, sociology and archaeology, which you claim are your academic fields of interest. All of it wrong. Same for the whole of physics — it would all be overturned root and branch if the law of attraction really exists. Maybe Rhonda Byrne will invite you to give her acceptance speech to the Nobel Committee.

In other words, Dr Andrew M. Henry has made a fool of himself peddling pseudo-science and promoting a deadly scam. And he is trying to make some quick cash by endangering his own audience. His support for this scam is an invitation to the most ruthless and dangerous scammers to use his PhD-status to reinforce their credibility.

He clearly doesn’t realise how deeply he’s been suckered into this manipulative fraud. Nor do the other academics he features in his video realise how dangerous and stupid it is promote this kind of thing under the cloak of it being “woman-friendly”. For heavens sake you idiots — it’s marketed at women. It targets disempowered women, especially single mothers, for exploitation. And it places everyone who gets drawn into its seductive web in imminent danger.

It only looks harmless if you refuse to consider the harm.

And Dr Henry refuses to consider the harm.

So let’s have a brief look at what Dr Henry conceals from his audience.

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James Arthur Ray — Star of The Secret and 3 Time Killer

James Arthur Ray shot to stardom in 2006 after he appeared in The Secret. Oprah invited him onto her show and instantly turned him into a mega-star and gave him access to a vast new audience. Then in 2009 he killed three of his customers and was sent to jail.

Oprah never apologised for setting a killer loose on her audience.

And I don’t expect Dr Henry will do so either. Instead he repeatedly features Oprah’s blessings for The Secret, without breathing a word about the victims or the crimes.

This is not just a case of a bad person who happened to also believe in the law of attraction. Witness testimony clearly shows that Ray believed that his victims had manifested their own deaths, and that he was therefore absolved of all responsibility. He cooked three people to death in a bogus sweat-lodge, which he had deliberately overheated, and from which there was no escape.

Later that night, with a couple of dozen people airlifted to hospital in a critical condition, and two already dead and one to die later on life support, Ray sent out an email to his mailing list reporting, in true positive thinking style, that the event had been “a success”.

Below is a screen shot of Ray’s first appearance in The Secret.

It’s a subliminal image, briefly flashed at viewers at a climactic moment at the end of the opening sequence. For some of his victims, this was probably the first they ever saw of him — and they didn’t even register it. Now thanks to Dr Henry it will again be for some people their first — subliminal — exposure to this convicted killer, as he tries to rebuild his post-prison career.

It is also worth noting that both the investigating officer and the state prosecutor were awake to the dangers of manipulative persuasion.

They had specialist training in investigating child abuse, which helped them recognise the manipulative practices that Ray was using. They were not thrown off the investigation by his attempts to frame it as “an accident”. (Three months earlier the San Diego police had been persuaded by Ray’s staff not to investigate the death of a participant at one of his events. The story behind that is even more sickening than the deaths which he was locked up for.)

Dr Henry says nothing to his audience about manipulation, despite its obvious and widespread usage by law of attraction teachers.

Detective Ross Diskin with James Ray– not much attraction, plenty of law

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Louise Hay — Deadly Cancer Quack

Dr Henry introduces to his audience the deadly cancer quack Louise Hay. (As is usual for famous New Age swindlers, she was also promoted by Oprah.)

Somehow, Dr Henry manages to spend several minutes promoting Louise Hay without once mentioning her claims about having a cure for cancer. Yet that is exactly what she’s famous for.

Instead, he shows some footage of her from the 1980s when she was an AIDS quack for a brief period, but he doesn’t mention AIDS either — nor leprosy, nor muscular dystrophy or leukemia or any of the other illnesses she claims to know how to heal. Instead he presents Hay merely as someone whose religious beliefs include the notion that “You are 100% responsible for all that happens to you.”

Hay of course belonged to the fanatical Christian Science Church. For Dr Henry this gives her diplomatic immunity as a devout Christian. He does note that some people believe that sociological and genetic factors also play a role in people’s lives, but remains neutral on where he stands in this regard.

Again Dr Henry, the serious academic, chooses to play dumb. He must know that Hay’s personal cancer-healing story falls apart as soon as it’s checked. Maybe that’s why he avoids even mentioning it at all — it would instantly derail his entire feel-good chummy promotion of these ghouls, quacks and fraudsters.

Louise Hay claimed to have healed a malignant cervical tumor using positive thinking. She said that the doctors were amazed. This is the basis of her entire business: selling her miraculous healing method, proven to work by her own healing story. She made millions from it and set up a vast publishing empire promoting other quacks and quack-cures.

But let’s back up a bit. She said that she healed her cancer in 1978 or 79 — she can’t remember which. The doctors who diagnosed it as terminal? She can’t remember their names. What stage was her cancer at when she healed it? She can’t remember.

Four years earlier, in 1975 she had published a book claiming you can cure cancer using positive thinking. Then she “got cancer” and “healed it” using her method…. But didn’t think to keep any photos or documents or letters or anything else that would prove this healing miracle which she had already predicted.

Is there any evidence that she cured her own cancer? No.

Is there any evidence that she even had cancer? No.

Is there any evidence that positive thoughts cure cancer? No.

Is there any evidence that negative thoughts cause cancer? No.

Did Dr Andrew M. Henry PhD mention any of this to his audience? No.

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The POWER of Positive Thinking

The next thing Dr Henry wants to remain neutral about is Donald Trump.

Trump’s pastor and life long friend was Norman Vincent Peale, the inventor of the hideous prayer-based scam, The Power of Positive Thinking, from which the law of attraction sprouted. (Basically the law of attraction is Peale’s positive thinking, only with fake quantum physics in place of Jesus.)

Dr Henry shows some interesting footage of Trump saying Peale was “the greatest public speaker”. But of course, he says nothing about the possibility that Trump practices Peale’s methods, even though much of Trump’s most distinctively odd behaviour accords perfectly with Peale’s teachings.

(For example — recall Trump’s otherwise baffling pronouncement that John McCain was not a war hero “because he got captured”. McCain must have been so scared of getting captured that he manifested it, the big cry-baby. Same with Trump’s disdain for victims of natural disasters — disasters manifested by losers.)

Believing you can use positive thinking to “create your own reality” would explain Trump’s refusal to plan anything in advance and just improvise policy on the hop. (It works surprisingly well as long as you can maintain dominance and are insulated from the consequences. It knocks everyone else off balance and creates chaos, amidst which he is the only one looking calm and in control.)

Narcissistic self aggrandisement, a psychopathic loathing of victims, and a profound detachment from reality — all of these line up perfectly with positive thinking….

How might all of that combine with access to nuclear weapons? Or inciting mass political violence?

Dr Henry doesn’t think it’s worth discussing, and passes over it in silence.

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Some people might recall how during the pandemic, Trump was confused by covid testing. He couldn’t understand how a “negative” test could be a good thing, and wound up saying that he had “tested negative, but in a positive sense”.

This brings us to the next topic– the psychological effects of dividing up thoughts, emotions and events into “positive” and “negative”.

Mental Health and Polarising Reality into Positive & Negative

Dr Henry opens his stupid video with the idea that humans are “magnets” for the events that befall them, because “like attracts like.” (Of course magnetism is the attraction of opposites, but Henry plays dumb about that too.)

Dr Henry probably knows that this stupid idea is derived from medieval alchemy, where it was not stupid at all. It involves the “law of correspondences”, and “doctrine of signatures”, in which microcosm reflects macrocosm. So the human body (microcosm) reflects the cosmos (macrocosm). The vast and elegant system of alchemy should be right in Dr Henry’s academic wheel-house. He must know that The Secret is a crass and manipulative distortion of it, but as usual, he holds his tongue.

But what of the psychological effects of believing that some thoughts are “positive” and have a positive electrical charge, and that others are “negative” and have a negative charge…. And that these electrical charges literally “attract” objects and events that also — somehow — carry the same electrical charge.

This is the law of attraction.

So if you have a positively charged image of a positively charged Lamborghini, (or bicycle, or sex partner, or parking space, or state of health), that thought will draw the desired object or event towards you as surely as night follows day. It’s the LAW.

And the same holds true for “the negative”…….. And that is where it all gets very very scammy and manipulative.

IF YOU GET SCARED YOU WILL ATTRACT YOUR FEARS INTO YOUR LIFE.

This is the threat that lurks in the background of this grotesque and evil scam.

Upfront the sellers promise you that you can have everything you want….. But if you don’t let them teach you how to use this power positively, you will manifest your worst fears instead. What’s more, if you doubt, question or criticise it, your “negativity” will ruin your life or end it.

Louise Hay’s fans have repeatedly told me I will get cancer because I have criticised her. Rhonda Byrne says explicitly that all criticism is “negativity” and must be shunned.

It creates a culture in the “positive thinking” community in which criticism is prohibited and authority dominates. Consumer protection is non-existent and unthinkable.

I have no idea why Dr Henry himself obeys this ban on criticism so doggedly in his video, but he most certainly does. This is how manipulation works, ladies and gentlemen. Dr Henry has submitted himself to the unwritten laws, and probably doesn’t even realise it. (Nor does he have any motivation to as it would ruin his idiotic sales pitch.)

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The Business Model — Exploitive, Manipulative, and Refined Over Decades

It should be clear at this point that anyone who sets up a normal business hoping to use their non-existent powers of manifestation to make it work, will probably fail. This is not true, however, for those wanting to set up a business based on flogging the law of attraction to others.

Dr Henry and his academic colleagues think this is great. They list three types of business that all combine well with running a law of attraction scam. These are also especially well suited for women to use to exploit other women, yay!!!

Each of these, by some extraordinary coincidence, is structured to be exploitive, and is an open invitation to further scamming. Of course, none of these highly qualified academics bother warning people about any of the dangers.

1. Multi-level marketing

This is a hierarchical model, in which the top few percent can make astronomical profits (seeming to confirm their skill in manifesting), while the vast majority lose their money. It’s a deliberately exploitive structure, though it looks easy to get into and “start your own business”.

To work, it would require an infinitely expanding population of fully grown adults in your ‘downline’.

2. Health products

Ideal for your own multi-level marketing business. Also an open invitation to flogging quack cures.

3. Life Coaching

This is of course a growth industry, well suited to people with a dominant personality. All you need is a quack therapy, like for example, law of attraction counseling. People will pay you to help them stay on course and avoid manifesting their worst deadly fears.

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What Dr Henry Learned from The Secret — Uncritical Cross-Promotion

As noted, Dr Henry ends the video by endorsing a law of attraction scammer with whom he shares a sponsor. I assume that fellow (Joe Scott) is returning the favour. This kind of uncritical cross-promotion is a classic scammer tactic. It shares market networks and gives the impression of a legitimate tried and tested track record.

This is the final layer that’s wrapped around this manipulative scam. The customer is encircled in a net of mutually confirming voices, to the exclusion of criticism and consumer protection standards.

This whole set up has been fine tuned over many decades. It started with (ex-Scientiologist) Werner Ehrhard, was refined by (ex-Scientologist) Tony Robbins, and was inherited by people like (ex-Scientologist) James Ray and (ex-Mormon) Esther Hicks, and (ex-Amway salesman) Gerry Hicks.

Those who inherit this slick and monstrous business plan today often don’t know about the trail of destruction it has left in the past and will inevitably leave in the future. They do, however, notice that it all runs surprisingly smoothly — as long as they don’t risk their own money or health, and only get their customers to test it on themselves.

Usually the people who are drawn into this net, are intelligent and decent people who only want the best for themselves and their loved ones. They are usually so focused on self-improvement or dealing with emotional pain, that they don’t hear the clicking of the gears as the scam gets ratcheted up tighter and tighter.

Having a supposedly respectable academic like Dr Henry similingly assure them that everything is fine, just makes it even harder to see what they are being drawn into.

Dr. Andrew M. Henry will probably make a bit of that easy viral cash out of this, but he is being an idiot and trashing his own stated aims for his “educational” You Tube channel–

dedicated to the academic, nonsectarian study of religion. We promote improving the public’s religious literacy by exploring humanity’s beliefs and rituals through an anthropological, sociological, and archaeological lens.

Don’t expect a retraction or an apology from this ex-academic for his ludicrous and spineless profiteering. As the prophet said, Money doesn’t talk, it swears.

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Article by Yakaru

James Ray rejects his own teachings (and his supporters don’t notice)

James Arthur Ray, the motivational torturer convicted of three counts of homicide, has served his jail time and completed his probationary period in Arizona. Now he’s back in his old home in Carlsbad California and is giving interviews again to the uncritical media and speaking publicly. And of course, continuing to cut a path of destruction through the lives of his customers.

But there has been at least one change in this recurring nightmare. In his new blog post, he has rejected all of his previous teachings. That’s right all of them!

None of his fawning supporters have noticed it, but there it is in black and white:

One of the biggest fallacies for the students of the Law of Attraction (that became so popular all over the world a few years ago), is the belief that “If I understand the LOA, and execute it perfectly… then nothing bad, ugly or challenging will ever happen again in my life.” This is a lack of understanding; an illusion of the grandest proportions.

An illusion of the grandest proportions. But this illusion is exactly what James Ray had been teaching up until now. This is what he wrote in The Science of Success, (which I wrote about just last month):

Anyone on Earth can apply this science, and it will make them successful every time. That’s because the Science of Success works with universal laws, laws as fundamental and unbending as the law of gravity. If you follow these laws I guarantee that you will succeed – every time, and in whatever endeavor you undertake...

So there you have it folks. James Ray now says that the product he used to sell is “an illusion of the grandest proportions” Write and demand your money back (ha ha).

This won’t bother his supporters of course. It didn’t bother them when he failed to act according to his own teachings in court, and it didn’t bother them when his own claim of “mastery” was contradicted by his jail time. So it won’t bother them that Ray’s new teachings contradict the old ones. (The product he is promoting isn’t really a set of teachings anyway. Rather, what Ray is selling is his own persona; and that product has proven itself to be completely reality-proof.)

It will, however, bother his potential customers, and it is for them that I will briefly outline a few things about the product James Ray is offering.

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The law of attraction, of course, does not exist. Those who teach it (at least the famous ones like those who appeared in The Secret) know this and do not attempt to use it in their own lives. This is demonstrated by the infighting and acrimonious court cases, cut throat business practices, blatant fraud, and general nastiness they all engage in.

Attempting to apply this nonexistent “law” to your own life is dangerous. It makes you overestimate your potential resources and your control over reality. Most importantly, it makes you ignore events that you would have recognized as a warning sign if you were using plain common sense. The course that James Ray’s life has taken over the last decade or so illustrates such failures clearly.

Participants in Ray’s events were injured doing the risky “motivational” exercises he was giving them. He ignored the complaints, the broken limbs, the cut faces, etc. Then a participant, Colleen Conaway, died during one of his events. Any sane person using basic common sense would realize that they are not only risking the health and lives of others, but their own business interests as well. Ray lied to police about Colleen’s death and managed to avoid any criminal charges, but failed to recognize that he was asking for trouble.

Two and a half months later, Ray found himself lying to police again. This time his lies didn’t work. (He claimed that he was not in charge of the deadly fake sweat lodge that killed three and sent two dozen to hospital, and — incredibly — tried to blame it on the fire keeper. This pattern of inventing excuses and lying to shift the blame onto others continued throughout his trial, and is still going on today.)

Ray claims that he did not know that people were in distress during the sweat lodge (in which he crammed about 60 people into a low, dark sweltering tent from which there was no escape (the sides were secured), and in which he controlled the air supply and the only exit.

Well actually, he doesn’t always claim he didn’t know that people were in distress. During the pre-trial investigation his lawyers claimed that, but they dropped the claim soon after reading the witness testimony. In court, that line of defense was not raised. What came out was witness after witness saying that Ray both heard and responded to people calling out that numerous people were in trouble, wanted to leave, had passed out, were not breathing. He refused to help and simply closed the exit and kept going.

It seems to me to be entirely likely that he had a narcissistic belief that “everything happens as it should” and it’s up to the universe to pull people back from the brink of death, that any deaths would be for the “highest good” of the victims. He felt no responsibility to follow through on his promise that people were safe and would be cared for should they pass out. He does seem to have spiritual ideas about out-of-body or near death experiences, and was probably trying to induce altered mental states through heat stroke.

His recklessness not only killed three more people, but also ruined his business, his finances, cost him his freedom for two years and stained his record with three convictions for negligent homicide.

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The only way to make money with the nonexistent law of attraction is by selling it to others and taking their money. You can then point to that money and success as evidence that the law of attraction indeed does exist. But Ray can’t really do that anymore, can he — he turned his own in life into a quagmire. He’s a failure, and it’s entirely his own stupid fault. So instead of the law of attraction, he has suddenly invented a brand new “Law of Polarity”. (*See Update 2 below.) This is something makes bad things to happen to nice innocent homicidal psychopaths like James, for mystical higher purposes. Here’s the relevant sample of James Ray’s profound wisdom. Fasten your seat belts….

I was speaking to a group recently, and I reminded them that every coin has two sides—both a heads and a tails. You absolutely cannot have one without the other. This principle in the world of physics is called the Law of Polarity.

James Ray is on safe ground with the bit about the coins — that doesn’t over extend his 8th grade mathematical abilities. But the rest of it is nonsense. I would suggest people take a short cut avoiding both the law of attraction and the Law of Polarity and follow something called the Law of Common Sense instead. Common sense is wrong sometimes too of course, but it’s a LOT safer than any of Ray’s teachings.

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Ray and his bullish, cut-throat and greedy supporters want to convince you that Ray’s “suffering” in jail was a deep mystery.

It’ll probably take the rest of my days to even begin to understand and describe all that I’ve been gifted to see and experience.

But it’s no mystery and it needs no cosmic laws or quantum physics to explain. Ray was convicted and went to jail because he cooked three people to death and stood there gawping while others were desperately administering CPR. Then he went and had a shower. He was sitting in his undies eating a sandwich when the police knocked on his door. Then he tried to blame it all on Ted the fire keeper. And now he wants to tell you that he is a wise expert on human life. 

Below is a video of part of state prosecutor Sheila Polk’s summing up from Ray’s trial In it she lists the pathetic attempts at evading the charges that Ray’s attorneys made. In fact she spent more time on them than the defense did in their summing up

Sheila Polk: “Three people are dead because of the conduct and the actions of this man, James Ray. They are dead because he intentionally used heat to create an altered state and he was criminally reckless about the consequences. To use the words of the manslaughter statute, they are dead because James Ray consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that his conduct would cause death…”

(The jury, prevented from knowing of Colleen Conaway’s prior death or of previous life threatening sweat lodge events, eventually convicted Ray of the lesser charges of homicide.)

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Update 1: As always, the Salty Droid has the background story on Ray’s slippery, slimey return to grace with the uncritical media.

Update 2: LaVaughn has pointed out in the comments that Ray has in fact used ideas about “polarity” in the past, and reminded me that this was even alluded to in the “Letters of Support” sent to the judge in Ray’s trial. Ray follower, Wendy Benkowski had this to say:

James has integrity and his message has integrity. I am witnessing the power of his spoken word. I am witnessing the shadow side of Harmonic Wealth. The 2009 Spiritual Warrior Retreat is a great lesson. The LESSON has touched the consciousness of the world. I respect and honor the sacrifice of Liz, Kirby, and James. I request compassion for my friend James Ray.

Potential customers should note this. If Ray causes your death, it will be considered a “sacrifice”, according to his teachings. My apologies to the bereaved for posting that again, should they happen to read it again here.

Posted by Yakaru

Skeptic Fail #1: Michael Shermer fails to debunk the Law of Attraction

I probably should have started this series a long time ago. but I didn’t. I guess I wanted to “focus on the positive”. For many years I’ve only felt able to shake my head at some of the things that professional skeptics do, and simply focus on the good skeptic work — done mostly by amateur “skeptic” bloggers or by professionals who aren’t dependent on skepticism for their income.

I also don’t pay much attention to what professional skeptics and their organizations are doing, and I don’t see any reason to start. But some of their failures do need to be pointed out, as do the blind spots inherent in the usual skeptical approach to many issues.

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So let’s start with a generally disgraceful piece of failed skepticism which looks more like a pathetic attempt at self-promotion by Michael Shermer. He attempts to debunk the — dangerous and wrong — “Law of Attraction” as presented in The Secret. Unfortunately he ignores one of the most basic rules of skepticism, in that he didn’t sufficiently research, and therefore doesn’t understand, the idea he is criticizing. The result is that he winds up making a video that would be more likely to reinforce the belief in the Law of Attraction. This is known in the business as a failure.

The segment starts with Shermer and another professional skeptic Brian Dalton having a mock argument about whether or not the law of attraction applies to sick people or people who have had an accident. Did they attract it? Dalton pretends to believe they must have done, and Shermer plays the role of the believer who says it doesn’t apply to sick people.

Had they done a modicum of research they would have discovered almost instantly that, yes, the law of attraction says that you will attract anything you focus on, wanted or unwanted. Every single law of attraction teacher on the planet insists that you do indeed manifest negative things if you are not careful. Thus — 

“The law of attraction works whether you believe in it or not, just like the law of gravity, so buy this product and learn how to use it for yourself.”

I’m stunned that neither Shermer nor Dalton have heard that line….. That’s the basis of the whole fucking scam!

They suck you in with promising to show you how to manifest your dreams and then try to scare the pants off you with the information that you are manifesting things all the time whether you like it or not, so you better watch what you think.

This is why the idea is such a trap. All criticism of it is considered by a believer to be inherently “negative” and therefore dangerous and to be avoided lest one attract negativity into ones life. And it is based on fear — the fear that your greatest fears will become a reality if you don’t strictly control your thoughts. The Secret was carefully designed both to disable critical thinking (by presenting it as if it’s a gift from a child) and to trigger deep-seated fears in people (with numerous images of people being hunted and burned alive), without the viewer realizing what they were getting themselves into.

And Shermer and Dalton missed all of that. They don’t know what they are up against. And they are clearly oblivious to the amount of damage this idea has caused to the lives of millions of people who have tried to use it.

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These two have clearly invested a lot of time, effort and money in making this video. It’s filmed in a professional studio and has obviously been scripted. They even went to the trouble of queuing up footage of chickens for the exact moment in their scripted banter when Dalton calls Shermer a “chicken”. Really funny guys. Jeez, you blokes are a laugh a minute aren’t you.

Skeptic humor from Brian Dalton: “You’re a chicken buckaaark”

More disturbing is their sequence in which they try to “manifest” a parking space.

Shermer introduces the sequence with a smirk: “So we’re here in a parking lot with Jen…. who’s a big believer in the law of attraction.”

That’s right, two guys, both of whom have a bad reputation for manipulative dealings women have got “Jen” in the back seat of a car in a parking lot and are leering at her from the front.

This pointless and unfortunate sequence has an added piece of stupidity from Shermer which is more in the realm of normal every day poor educational practice than sexism or incompetence. Namely, he says that with Jen visualizing a parking spot, that if they find one “then clearly something is going on.” For Shermer this is just a normal over-stated “strictly for TV” Penn & Teller style mock experiment for entertainment purposes only. But it is also exactly the kind of half-baked “experiment” that millions of law of attraction believers have carried out themselves and experienced “success” with. Any believer in the LoA will simply be nodding their head at this and wondering when Shermer is going to challenge their beliefs. Again, I am stunned that Shermer doesn’t know this.

The scene ends with an abrupt cut back to the studio, with the joke that Jen was so worried about Dalton’s driving that she manifested an accident. (A further bit of patronizing and sexist tastelessness has Dalton joking that the only reason she didn’t want to work with them anymore was because she didn’t like Shermer’s beret.)

Then it gets even more tasteless and disturbing with a sequence in which they get a small child to visualize a bike, and she winds up (fictitiously) getting hit by one and taken to hospital. Again, a believer would be nodding at this and saying, “Yep, that’s why you gotta learn to do it right.” Why are they doing this?

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They sum up.

Shermer:

If good things happen because people will it, doesn’t that mean bad things also happen because people will it? Do you really think that things like disease and terror attacks happen because people will it on themselves? I don’t think so.

Excuse me, is this supposed to be skepticism? Is this the best you guys can come up with against the most malevolent, ruthless and above all most successful piece of spiritual mass manipulation in decades? — An unwitting confirmation of its main premise; a replication of exactly the kind of experiment that appears to confirm it; and lamely countering it with the phrase “I don’t think so”?

It’s so easy to assume that the only reason why people believe “weird things” is because the human brain tends to make logical fallacies. But that is to ignore virtually the whole of behavioral psychology. It also underestimates the role of manipulation and above all the ruthlessness of people willing to exploit others by what ever means are possible. Shermer and Dalton are way out of their depth with these issues.

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Part 2 looks more closely at manipulation

Posted by Yakaru

James Ray – The Prison Want Ads

James Arthur Ray, motivational speaker and star of The Secret, was found guilty of negligent homicide and sentenced to two years jail, after he cooked three people to death in a bogus sweatlodge in 2009. He is due for release on July 12 this year.

I have been wondering what James Ray will do upon his release. I’ve been expecting a slippery, slithery return to business, aimed at new customers and avoiding mention of what he’s been up to lately. Also, there are those who have clung onto him so far, hoping to grab a bargain business deal from a fallen dictator. They will be flooding the atmosphere with good vibes about Ray, and promoting exploitive “business opportunities” to the most vulnerable end of the market they can find.

That’s all still to come. But first up, the parole board requires Ray to remain in Arizona for 110 days after his release. That might pose some logistic difficulties for him I guess, but James Arthur Ray, author of Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want is an expert in using quantum physics and the Law of Attraction to get everything — yes everything — he wants… and you can too.

Or not.

Actually things don’t seem to be going so Harmonically well for Death Ray. He doesn’t know where he’s going to stay in Arizona for that time and has been reduced to getting his brother, Jon C Ray, to beg to other people for money, support and a couch to sleep on. An email which Jon Ray sent out privately has fallen into the hands of the activist blogger and kick ass fake robot the Salty Droid, who kindly featured it on his website:

A Short Note on the Politics of the Law of Attraction

Over at the “Post-Abe” blog, Mariah (who sometimes comments here) has an interesting post about yet another way that the Law of Attraction disempowers its believers — this time in the realm of politics. Here’s a link to it.

The “Abe” referred to in the blog name, by the way, is “Abraham”, a spiritual entity made famous by the channeler (i.e. liar), Esther Hicks. Curiously (i.e. stupidly), the term “Abraham” is not singular, but plural. It refers to a curious collection of disembodied and diffuse invertebrates which at different times includes Buddha, Jesus and Mohamed (as well as others).

One might expect such a diverse group of critters like these to have trouble finding any common ground. At times they certainly do appear to be rather ignorant and undecided about their own teachings — in fact, it’s almost as if it’s being made up on the spot by a poorly educated and hucksterish ex-Mormon who’s being promoted by her Amway trained husband — but as it happens, there is one thing they always agree on: the Law of Attraction. I guess they only discovered it after they died. But the important thing is Buddha, Jesus and Mohamed got to lend their prestigious names to the “Abraham” label, even if their previous knowledge and talents have been completely subsumed by this corporate giant.

Anyway, before I go too far off topic, I wanted to highlight a point that Mariah made about the LoA and the current US presidential election. She noted that followers of Abraham (which she has cutely dubbed “Hicksians”) have been lately telling her that there’s no need to vote. Instead she should get into the “vortex” (this is another Abe teaching) and use the LoA to create the reality she wants.

Mariah answers them:

While you’re out there ignoring what you don’t like and pretending you’re in the {imaginary} vortex and not caring about politics, the ones who are paying attention are the ones making things happen. There’s irony there.

People believing they create their own reality, but not actually doing so… while their world is created around them by the people who are paying attention. Dang, these are disempowering teachings! 

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If the overwhelming majority of LoA fans were potential Republican voters, then keeping them away from the polling booths would probably be the only good thing that has EVER come from the stupid and ugly Law of Attraction. Certainly the LoA is much closer to the immoral and stupid Republican platform on issues like rape, birth control, health insurance, global warming, environmental protection and foreign aid. The more I think about it, the more I feel like saying to LoA fanatics, “Okay guys, right! Don’t vote, don’t insure yourselves, and above all don’t open your stupid mouth in public ever again either. Got it?”

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Subliminal Advertising in The Secret (Part 4) — In Bed With Einstein

In the earlier posts (see Part 1), we saw how the advertisers who made The Secret used various standard advertising tricks to sell Rhonda Byrne’s story and turn her audience into active promoters as well as consumers of the product. In this post, as well as some more subliminal images and some good old-fashioned lying, we will notice the way discovering The Secret has been carefully constructed around the framework of a sexual encounter….

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The film makers face their most difficult challenge in this section of the film. They have built up an entirely bogus story linking “The Secret” with ancient mystical traditions, and upped its value by claiming that people were burned alive in order for you to see it; and that the content you are about to see is the first time these ancient life secrets have ever been revealed to a mass audience.

The stage will finally be set for the dramatic entrance of The Secret’s teachers with a triumphal sequence which reaches its climax with the entirely bogus claim that Albert Einstein “knew The Secret”….

….And then somehow they have to make the transition to Bob Proctor, a man who believes no one knows how electricity works, and that receiving social benefits will alter your DNA.

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But I want to back track slightly and pick up a sexually related image that I missed in the previous post.

I speculated about the possibility that the film makers used the only white sheet of paper in the entire film to present an image that looked like a child being tucked in to bed, thus reinforcing the association of The Secret with a child. The person in sequence who laid that sheet of paper over the Emerald Tablet was the young man with shoulder length hair. But in the actual sequence, Rhonda Byrne’s hair has been photoshopped over the man’s hair. (Not so clear in this still, but it’s carried through three frames. Click on the images to enlarge.)

 

Rhonda is making a bed and is about to lie on it. (Or lay in it, for US readers. Lying or laying, they both have appropriate double meanings.)

Rhonda Byrne, we shall see is going to need to go to bed with Albert Einstein in order for the film makers to ease the transition from the great men of history to a bunch of successful, fraudulent, backstabbing losers.

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Subliminal Advertising in The Secret (Part 3) — Be positive & get burned alive

My apologies for the rather ghoulish title, but that’s what The Secret is about. As we will see in this post, one of the strongest messages buried in this opening sequence is that people were burned so that YOU could have the product that Rhonda Byrne wants to sell you.

This message is left subtly implied rather than overtly stated, because you’re not supposed to be thinking “Well if The Secret will give me everything I want, then why did so many people who knew it previously get roasted?” Instead they want people to feel the intensity of the flames and feel the fear all at a subconscious level.

The Secret runs on subconscious fear just as much as it runs on appeals to hope and greed. The latter two are masked by claims that they are simply telling you the facts: The universe really IS a massive conspiracy to make you rich…. Or to break you. It all depends on how you use the Law of Attraction, and these mystical heroes are willing to sell you the secret key.

The parallel with the Dark Ages and Catholic Church selling indulgences to rescue people from the flames of hell, will become even clearer in this post.

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The use of subliminal images in the film (already explored in Part 1 and Part 2) not only reveals the film makers’ contempt for the audience; it also reveals the way in which they attempt to manipulate people into reacting in certain ways. Subliminal advertising seems to have only limited effects in very limited contexts, but following it frame by frame provides a glimpse in to the thoughts and intentions of the film makers. It shows the way they have stitched the whole fabric of lies, distortions, fear-mongering and emotional blackmail together.

Of course, no advertiser would be worth his salt if he didn’t use plenty of sexual innuendo, and that is where we will start.

Remember, so far we are barely 40 seconds into the film, in this the third post in this series. The viewer has little idea how much information they have swallowed up to this point.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Subliminal Advertising in The Secret: (Part 2) — Frightened Eyes and a Dollar Bill

Welcome to the second installment of this in-depth look at subliminal advertising and manipulative persuasion techniques in the first few minutes of The Secret.

Part 1, which should be read first to understand what’s going on, got us about 35 seconds into the film. The focus in this post is on a short burst of images of less than two seconds’ duration.

But first, let’s back up half a second or so, and look at an image I left out from the end of the last post.

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It’s worth emphasizing that the film aims to make the viewer identify with Rhonda Byrne’s character. Later we will see Byrne wishing to “share this Secret with the world”. The viewer is tacitly instructed to do the same, and is immediately given an avenue to act this out: the complete film was initially released on You Tube, and viewers were invited to share it with their friends, “as a gift”. This concept is called viral marketing and the strategy for The Secret was developed by Dan Hollings. 

Anyway, that’s why I kept pointing out in the last post that they were careful to use visuals to get the viewer to see Byrne handling a what looks like a video as well as a book. (See above image.)

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I also emphasized the “OXOX” (hugs & kisses) on the note from Byrne’s child as a theme which will recur. Remember that Byrne has just told us her father died, and a male face appeared behind her as she finds the “gift”. Look what happens to that OXOX as she opens the book – it now appears to spell out DADX. (I might be writing a bit much into that, but we’ll see more on this father theme soon.)

This is all quite subtle. But more crass, blatant and brutal subliminals are about to come. (*NB the focus here is on what these methods reveal about the intentions of the film makers. There’s little evidence for the effectiveness of such techniques.)

Subliminal Advertising in The Secret: (Part 1)

So, who knew that the film The Secret uses a relentless barrage of subliminal images in the opening sequences, to achieve its extraordinarily high emotional impact?

Subliminal advertising is of course illegal in many countries, but the advertisers who made this film present it as a kind of artistic docu-drama, and not an advertisement. That legal loophole, however, doesn’t negate the ethical considerations involved in the use of such methods. It’s also important to note that the effectiveness of such methods seems to be grossly exaggerated and often misunderstood.

The fact that there is almost no empirical support for the usefulness of subliminal messaging has not prevented numerous industries from producing and marketing tapes which allegedly communicate directly with the unconscious mind… —Skeptic’s Dictionary

But I will lay that discussion aside, and ask both fans and critics of The Secret, if you were aware that in the first minutes of the film you saw images of Ku Klux Klan ceremonies, images of people being burned alive, single frame inserts of money, single frame inserts of the Secret logo, and even subliminal flashes of the teachers themselves before they “appear” properly in the film?

Nope?

Me neither, until I slowed it down and went through it frame by frame.

Subliminals are just one of a few dozen dirty tricks these advertising wizzkids pulled on their audience. I’ll try to note a few of these other ones too as they fly past at the speed of light.

(Click on the images to enlarge them.)

Stealing Hope: James Ray’s Deadly Method (Colleen Conaway’s Story)

It’s exactly three years since The Secret star and motivational torturer, James Arthur Ray lied to police about the death of one of his customers.

Colleen Conaway was attending Ray’s Creating Absolute Wealth seminar in July 2009 when her life came to a horrible and untimely end.

Screen-shot from The Secret: “James Arthur Ray, Philosopher”

James Ray and his staff abandoned Colleen’s body in a shopping mall and managed to conceal her death from her fellow participants. Their crude and cynical cover up was also enough to convince the San Diego Police to simply declare Colleen’s death a suicide and close the case. Ray, a charismatic millionaire with his head office at nearby Carlsbad, was obviously impressive enough for the police not to have smelled a rat. (They may, however, have noticed a faint whiff of the high powered attorneys, who Ray would later pay $5 million to defend him from manslaughter charges.)

Colleen’s death only became “news” after three more people died at Ray’s next event in Arizona. But at first, no one apart from her family and friends knew of Colleen’s fate. And the role that the internationally recognized “philosopher” from The Secret had played in ending her life could only be guessed at by her family.

Blogging “The Power”: A critique of Rhonda Byrne – Part 5: Masuro Emoto

The in depth look at Rhonda Byrne’s Secret follow up, The Power continues….

The brain, Rhonda Byrne tells us, is 80% water.

In Ms Byrne’s case this is extremely easy to believe…..

She continues:

Researchers in Japan, Russia, Europe, and the United States have discovered that when water is exposed to positive words and feelings such as love and gratitude, the energy level of the water not only increases, but the structure of the water changes, making it perfectly harmonious.

The higher the positive feeling, the more beautiful and harmonious the water becomes. When water is exposed to negative emotions, such as hate, the energy level of the water decreases, and chaotic changes occur, negatively affecting the structure of the water.

So, if water is affected by our thoughts and emotions, we can turn our brains into big slush puddles of positivity, just by controlling our thoughts. We can use this positively magnetized pot of gruel to attract other positively magnetized objects to ourselves, through the “scientifically proven” Law of Attraction!!!

But before we get too carried away, let’s look at some of the fascinating “research” that Byrne is referring to. (I’ve dealt in previous posts with Byrne’s failure to realize that magnets attract their opposite pole, and the narcissistic stupidity of trying to attribute “positive” and “negative” charges to events and objects; and the stubborn refusal of human flesh to behave like a magnet, whether positive or negative.)

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One of Byrne’s heroes, Masuro Emoto, is probably already known to her readers, as he was featured in the smash hit pseudo-science-fiction movie What the Bleep. Emoto’s work certainly demonstrates the extraordinary power of classical pseudo-scientific method:

1. Rig up an experiment to produce the effects you desire

2. Carefully record the results

3. Run with them to the PR department as quickly as possible

Emoto’s experiments were simple and elegant: he put water in scientific looking vials and taped words to the outside, or played music, or prayed. He froze the water and photographed the crystals that formed with a powerful microscope. Without fail, the photographs reflected his hypothesis: the vials that had words like “love” taped to them formed nice crystals; those with words like “hate” or “scamming shit-weasel” taped to them produced ugly ones.

 “Love” 

 “You make me sick”

As chemist Stephen Lower points out, ice crystals form differently according to the rate of freezing and other conditions. Furthermore, the different crystal formations don’t mean that the water’s chemical structure is changed as Byrne claims. It just means that the water formed different shaped crystals.

Emoto didn’t blind his experiments either – of course, he doesn’t have to, being a practicing pseudo-scientist. Instead, he informs us, he explicitly instructed his photographers to choose the best photographs.

Just in case it’s still not clear, Emoto went looking for pretty crystals in the vials with the nice words on them, and ignored the ugly looking crystals; then he looked for ugly crystals in the vials with nasty words on them and ignored the pretty ones.

In other words, he faked his results.

He covers himself legally by saying he’s not a scientist, so the worst charge that can be made against him is slackness and stupidity, rather than fraud. People who sell useless and expensive water filters love this kind of thing, and use his faked results in their advertising. They are also saved by Emoto’s disclaimer from from being prosecuted for fraud, but the disclaimer is now one step removed from their customer’s eyes. The entire edifice of esoteric pseudo-science is built up through such progressive blurring of lines, supporting a massive industry based on claims of legitimacy that leave customers chasing their own tails if they try to verify any of it. The dictionary calls this a scam. New Agers call it Quantum Physics.

I don’t know if Rhonda Byrne has any financial interests in any water filter company, but I do know that their preferred medium is multi level marketing (aka pyramid schemes). Byrne could easily be sitting near the top of an MLM line without needing to advertise the fact anywhere on the internet. And I also know that Byrne’s colleague James Ray is involved in Kanga Water Filters. (One of his witnesses for the defense in his manslaughter trial turned out to be in his downline. She was dropped as a witness soon after Salty Droid broke the story about this apparently undeclared financial interest.)

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Anyway, Byrne is taking Emoto’s faked results and is about to build them into her even more outlandish architecture.

The center of every cell is water, and each cell is completely surrounded by a layer of water.

If this were true it would have profound implications for life on this planet. Who knows, maybe some form of amphibious life could have developed, but it would not have been the kind of thing you would want to invite home to meet your parents.

Can you imagine the impact of love and gratitude on your body? Can you imagine the power of love and gratitude to restore health? When you feel love, your love affects the water of the 100 trillion cells in your body!

There is of course, no need to imagine that. The impact of love and gratitude on the structure of your body’s water can in fact be measured with 100% accuracy. Byrne’s fans won’t be happy about it, though. It is exactly zero. The good news is that we don’t need to do anything special to the structure of our H-O-H molecules in order for our bodies to feel love and gratitude. There are much more complex and refined hormones and neuro-chemicals that do that job quite successfully.

Water has a fairly simple yet really quite wonderful structure. That’s why it’s good for splashing about in. You can also drink clean water without having to worry that it will subtly destroy you from within because it has been “exposed to negative emotions”. Really, Byrne fans, you can relax about that. And once you’ve gotten over it, you might like to apologize to your friends for trying to frighten them into buying a useless water filter from you too.

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In Part 6 we will learn more about the wonders of modern pseudo-science.

Earlier parts can be found here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4 

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Blogging “The Power”: A Critique of Rhonda Byrne – Part 4: Dollars Want You

Here we are again, bogging our way through Rhonda Byrne’s new book, The Power.

The previous post covered Ms Byrne’s claim that her “like attracts like” principle governs not only the supposed Law of Attraction, but also governs everything in the entire universe and all the laws of science.

This of course is pure bullshit.

In fact, I would argue this is probably the most spectacularly wrong notion ever to find its way into print. Byrne went into considerable detail, explaining how everything from plant nutrition to cell biology, to astrophysics is governed by this singular notion.  If this were true, the consequences would be way beyond anything I could conceive, let alone write about in a few short sentences.

But here’s a start. If electrons started attracting instead of repelling each other, we would instantly and permanently meld with everything we touch. Light would disappear entirely from the universe, and in fact there probably wouldn’t even be a universe. Rarely is an an idea so immediately and obviously demonstrably wrong. You don’t even need to read a science text. Just the fact that you can open your eyes is already enough.

Unfortunately Ms Byrne’s book centers on using this extraordinarily stupid idea as the launching pad for her great conception of the the Law of Attraction. The fact that this book even got published is a testament to the general lack of standards in Byrne’s appallingly slack profession.

This also makes it a bit tricky to review. I didn’t have high hopes for this book anyway. I was expecting lots of hollow assertions and empty rhetoric mixed in with some specious, self-serving lies; I was hoping to deftly show how people have been seduced into believing something that might initially appear plausible, but disintegrates on closer examination.  Instead, Rhonda Byrne herself has completely demolished her own ideas without any help from me at all. Should I even continue?