Mr. Fire Update (Part 3)

No luck with Mr. Fire or Trish. I guess they don't want to talk to poor nobody me. That's alright because I found another person advocating non-sense to introduce to you. David Dutch the author of the blog In The Footsteps of Giants is an advocate of the Secret and an author. What does David have to say about LOA (Law Of Attraction)? His opening question will reveal a lot to us.

Do you doubt the existence of the law of attraction?..........

You may have heard of the film, ‘The Secret’ even watched it but still dismiss the law of attraction as Mumbo Jumbo.

Or is there really a force in nature that will allow you to use your secret mind to succeed where you have never succeeded before simply by harnessing the power of visuailzation and using affirmations?

Let’s look around nature and see what natural laws exist. Well there is the main one that keeps us all on this small planet of ours; you know the one that has always been there but was best explained by Sir Isaac Newton and his famous apple.

It does not matter whether or not an apple actually fell on his head the law of gravity has always been there and hopefully it always will be here, as I have no fancy for drifting off into space without a spaceship..........

Is the law of gravity simple? Is the law of Chemistry simple? Is the law of physics simple? Is the law of mathematics simple? Is the law of logic simple? In as much as they are there despite you. You may not understand them but you accept them because of the evidence you have every day of their workings.

Look around at every successful person, every goal achiever they are living evidence of the law of attraction working in their lives.

The day you stop questioning the validity of the law of attraction is the day you will allow it to work in your life.

Oh where to start? What is David really saying here? Well, he is trying to convince his audience that the LOA is like any other sort of natural law, they are there whether you want to "believe" in them or not. David is trying to convince his audience that LOA essentially is a scientific principle (or should be treated like one).

What David doesn't mention is that gravity is testable along with all other theories/laws of nature, they are also tentative. While gravitational theory may never be replaced, it could be if a better explanation came along to explain what we observe. So if LOA is a theory explaining natural events then it is possible to test it. Remember, all theories/laws are subject to verification. When you posit a theory you must be able to show what would "prove" or "disprove" it (I use the word prove, but you don't ever really prove anything in the absolute sense, everything is tentative).

Gravity, we can test that easily (for the most part). If I throw a baseball and it lands on the earth 10ft in front of me (I know, it was a very poor throw) we can say that gravity is the force pulling the ball to the earth (the earth has mass as does the ball, smaller objects are attracted to larger ones, so the earth bends space-time to attract the ball). Now, the more we run that experiment and the more we get those results we can show gravity in action, in other words, we are verifying the theory of gravitation. What would falsify gravity? Using our baseball experiment, if I threw the ball and it just kept going and never landed, that would be a start. Or if we found that bodies with mass didn't attract each other. That would be trouble for gravity.

The point I am getting to here is that whether you doubt the theory of gravitation or not is not dependant on whether it works or not. David would agree with me here But he is saying that you have to believe in the LOA in order for it to work for you.

The day you stop questioning the validity of the law of attraction is the day you will allow it to work in your life.

Whether you question the validity of gravity or not, it works, it has been tested, and even if gravity is falsified there would be another testable explanation put in it's place. If LOA is a natural law (or a theory explaining nature) then what tests can we perform to verify or falsify it?
David uses this example to show that the LOA is real:

Look around at every successful person, every goal achiever they are living evidence of the law of attraction working in their lives.


Has David ever heard of Occam's Razor? In short, Occam's Razor is a philosophical principle that states the solution that makes the fewest assumptions is probably the correct one. For example: I showed up at work today. Is it more plausible that I drove my car to work or that Scotty on the Star ship Enterprise beamed me there? So are successful people successful because they believe that there is a LOA or because those who are successful typically have traits/skills such as: a positive attitude, honesty, hard working, multitasking skills, communication skills, the ability to commit to projects and so on?

How are we going to verify that it is the LOA that is allowing these people to be successful? This is where I am going to leave it to you the readers. Tell me how we can verify LOA and also how we can falsify it. I have a few ideas myself but I want to hear yours. I will post the best ones here on Skeptic Dave. And think outside of the box, be creative, and see what you come up with. If anything it will be great brain exercise.

D