[FoRK] The Dangers of Magical Thinking

[Jeff Bone]

Lion,

A reasonable and interesting question that you might ask would be  
"why is Jeff so hostile towards the idea of any form of  
reconciliation of science or realism and spirituality or mysticism?"   
My answer to that is this:  I believe that confusion of those things  
is invariably a bad thing.  The form of my argument in support of  
that belief, though, follows the general form of most arguments  
against that kind of syncretism.  There's been a lot written on the  
topic, by folks far more influential than me, and I'll defer to them  
at this point.  Cf. Feynman, "Cargo Cult Science" for starters:

   http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/02/CargoCult.pdf

Cf. James Randi, Michael Shermer, George Serban, Persi Diaconis,  and  
so on.  (Google.)

Also, it's worth noting:  "magical thinking" is closely associated  
with various forms of aberrant, schizotypical thought processes.   
When I talk about opening up to various "spiritual" beliefs as being  
akin to unprotected sex from a health standpoint, I'm actually being  
in some sense very literal.  I really do believe that beyond whatever  
damaging effects such thought processes may have on the ability to  
execute the "scientific" epistemological method, it seems quite  
likely that such thinking may encourage the formation of any number  
of psychological and intellectual pathologies.

$0.02,

jb