I use the word God to refer to something I consider to be real (and do so in a non-sarcastic, non-ironic way, etc etc) but I don’t consider God to be supernatural.
Nothing is.
Yeah. This.
I saw her. I might order the book. It’s such a relief to see somebody finally call bullshit on that stuff.
I shouldn’t misrepresent myself here – I have not yet checked it out. The DVD is in my Netflix queue. I’m hoping not to be supremely disappointed in it.
The type of positive thinking I’m espousing is not to put on a happy face and ignore harsher realities. Quite the opposite, the best starting place is to accept reality exactly the way it is. But moving forward it’s best to have a mindset where success has the best chance of thriving. You can cite studies all you want, but I’ve seen this work in my own life again and again, so I’m going with it.
The Secret is not what it sounds like you think it is. The premise is literally supernatural. You affect things purely by thinking, not by doing.
I’m espousing is not to put on a happy face and ignore harsher realities. Quite the opposite, the best starting place is to accept reality exactly the way it is. But moving forward it’s best to have a mindset where success has the best chance of thriving. You can cite studies all you want, but I’ve seen this work in my own life again and again, so I’m going with it.
OK, if it gets into the truly supernatural in that way, the DVD may have to go back with a little scratch in it. But it was recommended to me by some very smart people who have their feet on the ground. I owe it to myself to at least try to struggle through the first 5 minutes of it.
Weird – that’s not what I posted.
I suspect you will. As **Dio **says, it is supernatural hogwash. For example, from the section on Money:
Really, check out the website. All you need to know is right there.
I voted no as to “belief”, but that doesn’t believe I rule out the possibility of things not currently understood. Many “strange phenomena” might be manifestations of sciences we just haven’t discovered yet. I also consider myself a devout agnostic – there are matters that we can’t definitively class as true or false either because we’re unlikely to ever have enough objectively gathered information (many historical mysteries) or because they’re inherently unfalsifiable (the existence of God).
Actually, I agree with most everything in that link – except when they say “universe”, I replaced it with “subconscious.” And it’s not magic, it’s just basic psychology.
Oh, and the stuff they say about illness just being the result of faulty thinking – that’s complete bullshit. Yuck.
To those who responded that they believe in God/gods but do not consider it/them supernatural/outside of nature:
I tried to be relatively specific in my definitions of the terms I was using.
Apparently you define those terms somewhat differently. Would you - and subsequent posters - be so kind as to explain their definitions of terms in the even they differ from the OP? I’m especially curious to hear how a being, a God, or a phenomena can be “real/not supernatural/not existing outside of nature” - yet incapable of explanation within our current understanding of how matter and energy behave and interact.
You believe that money is magnetic energy? A dollar bill is a magnet?
You believe that your thoughts and feelings are signals that attract all things to you? Via what mechanism, do you suppose? Surely some detectable force must be involved.
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The God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, sometimes referred to as Jehovah or Yahweh.
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The deity of Jesus of Nazareth and the miracles attributed to him.
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The existence of supernatural beings mentioned elsewhere in the Bible; that is, angels and demons.
I’m also open to the possibility of there being some kind of interaction between this stage of life and the next one; not so much ghosts, necessarily, but some form of crossover between the two realities. I don’t really know how to explain it.
HeyHomie - have you ever considered, yet rejected, supernatural things discussed in sources other than the bible? Or do you consider things like witchcraft, non-christian gods, fortune telling, etc manifestations of such things as biblical demons? Or something else.
You know what I am getting at. The Bible clearly describes some things that are not explicable by current scientific knowledge/theory. So how do you consider it okay to believe in some such things, yet to reject others?
Tho I do not believe in what you believe, I’m seriously curious and appreciate your openness.
No. That just sounds dumb to me. But I believe that wealth is a form of energy.
It’s more like thoughts and feelings allow you to see the things you want to see, and therefore you start to see opportunities.
Remember the video of kids tossing around basketballs? The viewer is directed to count how many times the kids in the white shirts pass the ball. When the video is over, the viewer is asked about the gorilla in the video. Most people respond “What gorilla?” They are then shown the video again, and sure enough, a gorilla walks into the frame, beats its chest, and walks out of the frame. A good amount of veiwers protest that they’ve been duped, that they were shown a different video the second time. But they weren’t. The thing is, they didn’t see the gorilla the first time because a gorilla was the last thing they expected to see.
Or there was the time when (sorry, no cite) some old sailing ships arrived on an island full of primitive peoples. The natives didn’t even see the ships because they had no concept of what a ship was. The ships were as good as invisible.
If a shift in perception can suddenly make gorillas and ships appear out of nowhere, is it that hard to believe that a shift in attitude can make you more open to opportunities that you might never have otherwise seen? Is it really outlandish to consider that tuning your mind to a desired outcome can make the path to that outcome clearer?
Oh, and I saw BE on TDS last week, and was a tad disappointed. I had enjoyed her previous 2 books, and hope this one was actually somewhat different than presented on the show.
I’m certainly not going to believe the kind of BS that folks seem to be attributing to The Secret (which I know nothing about.) And I agree that no one should be told to smile by strangers. But ISTM that there might well be both internal and external utility to putting on a positive appearance in any number of situations. When I force myself to smile, I find my mood improves. I understand that people act differently towards persons depending on their expressions and body language. I can even imagine that if one patient appears positive, and the other is not, that medical personnel might unconsciously find themselves paying mor attention to the pleasant/positive patient.
Dinsdale, that’s exactly the kind of stuff I’m talking about. Part of it, anyway.
I guess the only thing is that the latter are visible and demonstrative, so if they were possible, we probably would’ve seen some evidence of it by now. The afterlife (ghosts) and the recesses of the mind (“second sight”) are things we understand a lot less than more obviously physical–and more easily explanable–phenomena. I’m not saying I believe they exist, but I’m not as likely to unilaterally negate the possibility that they do (though I still lean towards the skeptical). YMMV, of course.
I voted “I do not believe in anything supernatural”.
There’s really three types of “supernatural”. 1) Things that don’t follow the laws of nature in a way we can explain, but we expect that they actually do. 2) Things that don’t follow the laws of nature as we currently understand them. 3) And things that don’t follow the laws of nature as they truly are. I don’t believe that anything of the third type exists, but I do believe in the first and second (which shouldn’t be controversial, since finding such things is how we extend our scientific understanding, after all). However, distinguishing between types 2 and 3 is difficult because our knowledge of the laws of nature is only a series of approximations.
I am Christian and I do believe in God, but that he obeys the laws of nature (which are his own laws). Apparent contradictions are due to our ignorance of the universe and/or God. My belief is irrational in the sense that there is no scientific evidence to support this believe.