I see where you are coming from, but if we lived in a world that literally had no scammers, grifters, or corruption, those people might find a hobby that actually helps society as a whole rather than spinning in place.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. Once someone believes one thing without evidence, they are likely to believe more things without evidence and people act on their beliefs. That’s the fundamental problem, believing things without evidence. Once you are comfortable with having that door open, it doesn’t stop at one thing and nothing else.
Then you might as well write off anyone with any religious beliefs at all. Which is fine by me, but I think it important to note that there’s no fundamental difference between the energy working “spiritual” folks and any other belief in the unprovable.
And, by that metric, I agree that such thinking opens the door to other forms of non empiric beliefs and practices, including the scammy ones. Religious folks will buy into whatever line of bunkum that’s linked to their religion of choice, same as the crystal power and herbs-are-magic crowd.
If anything, the woowoo spiritual folks tend to be way less invasive with their snake oil, so I mind them less by this criteria.
Not that everyone professing to only rely on empirical evidence for their decisions actually does. There’s plenty of faith about “science” as some kind of immutable thing that can be taken at face value. Doesn’t much matter what the information is, if the person just accepts something as truth because it is a published paper saying so, it’s the same end result, just with a lower chance of the information being completely imaginary as opposed to just wrong.
I see where you are coming from, but if we lived in a world that literally had no scammers, grifters, or corruption, those people might find a hobby that actually helps society as a whole rather than spinning in place.
I’m talking only about the folks that have a belief in “energy work”, nothing else.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. Once someone believes one thing without evidence, they are likely to believe more things without evidence and people act on their beliefs. That’s the fundamental problem, believing things without evidence. Once you are comfortable with having that door open, it doesn’t stop at one thing and nothing else.
Then you might as well write off anyone with any religious beliefs at all. Which is fine by me, but I think it important to note that there’s no fundamental difference between the energy working “spiritual” folks and any other belief in the unprovable.
And, by that metric, I agree that such thinking opens the door to other forms of non empiric beliefs and practices, including the scammy ones. Religious folks will buy into whatever line of bunkum that’s linked to their religion of choice, same as the crystal power and herbs-are-magic crowd.
If anything, the woowoo spiritual folks tend to be way less invasive with their snake oil, so I mind them less by this criteria.
Not that everyone professing to only rely on empirical evidence for their decisions actually does. There’s plenty of faith about “science” as some kind of immutable thing that can be taken at face value. Doesn’t much matter what the information is, if the person just accepts something as truth because it is a published paper saying so, it’s the same end result, just with a lower chance of the information being completely imaginary as opposed to just wrong.