Vortex
Member
As I said in my personal introduction on the new Skeptiko forum, I have an education of a lawyer. One of my most vivid and interesting memories about it is the criminal law lesson describing the attempts to commit crime and its prosecution. In Russian law, attempt can be prosecuted if the crime was stopped not because of perpetrator’s voluntary decision, but because of his or mistake in the methods and implements; for example, if you tried to shoot someone but had bought a bad gun that broke in your hand instead of shooting, your will still be charged with a murderous attempt.
But, according to our criminal law professor, there was one type of method of crime commitment which was not prosecutable at all, not even as attempt; it was the so-called “superstitious method”. Well, as you might have guessed already, it meant trying to harm someone with one’s psychic abilities, or some mystical/magickal techniques. According to our professor, if we try to prosecute someone for the attempt to harm others using the forces which are forbidden to exist by our dominant materialistic worldview, we will undermine this worldview and will “fall back to the Dark Ages and witch-hunts”. We should instead show that the state (and societal elite which rule it) consider such attempts to be so hopelessly “superstitious” that they do not deserve attention at all.
(Interestingly, at the very same time our materialistic legislation recognized the free will, holding the person responsible for his or her actions, as long as one can “control one’s actions”. But how a biological robot – and we were persuaded during our lessons of forensic psychiatry that people are biological robots, nothing more – control its actions? Its actions are fully determined by its neurology, which, in turn, is totally determined by the heredity and physical environment. None of our professors was able to give an answer if asked; they just quickly moved to another topic.)
Recently, I visited an interesting energy healing blog “Bioenergy and cancer”, and read the blog post "Some interesting research on the placebo effect" there. Judith, the author of the blog, said:
I looked at the book by Larry Dossey she mentioned. He describes the means of spiritual harming – the “dark side” of spiritual healing – there, such as negative prayer, cursing and hexing…
A thought appeared in my mind: when psi and spirituality will be recognized by a society, how will we deal with deliberate psychic attacks? Should we treat them as “psychic crimes”, and perceive them as a form of intentional assault? Would we evaluate the “psychic violence” – the intentional attempts to harm someone with bio-PK abilities, or spiritual practices of negative prayer, cursing and hexing (not all spiritual practice is benevolent!) as akin to physical violence? Would we change our law accordingly to such recognition and evaluation?
What do you think?
But, according to our criminal law professor, there was one type of method of crime commitment which was not prosecutable at all, not even as attempt; it was the so-called “superstitious method”. Well, as you might have guessed already, it meant trying to harm someone with one’s psychic abilities, or some mystical/magickal techniques. According to our professor, if we try to prosecute someone for the attempt to harm others using the forces which are forbidden to exist by our dominant materialistic worldview, we will undermine this worldview and will “fall back to the Dark Ages and witch-hunts”. We should instead show that the state (and societal elite which rule it) consider such attempts to be so hopelessly “superstitious” that they do not deserve attention at all.
(Interestingly, at the very same time our materialistic legislation recognized the free will, holding the person responsible for his or her actions, as long as one can “control one’s actions”. But how a biological robot – and we were persuaded during our lessons of forensic psychiatry that people are biological robots, nothing more – control its actions? Its actions are fully determined by its neurology, which, in turn, is totally determined by the heredity and physical environment. None of our professors was able to give an answer if asked; they just quickly moved to another topic.)
Recently, I visited an interesting energy healing blog “Bioenergy and cancer”, and read the blog post "Some interesting research on the placebo effect" there. Judith, the author of the blog, said:
Placebo is an important consideration in energy work. I have been told by many people skeptical about energy healing that all our successes are due to the placebo effect. Consider, then, how powerful the placebo effect might be, when a patient dying from stage-4 pancreatic cancer stops taking morphine after receiving a few sessions of energy healing, sees his jaundice reverse and his blood values return to near normal, is discharged from the hospital and lives ten more weeks, able to walk, to go the mall, to go to the cottage, even to cook dinner. If that is placebo, then we must acknowledge that the mind is powerful beyond belief, and that what medicine should concentrate on, above everything else, is the awakening of this incredible ability of the mind to heal the body.
Yet medicine does the exact opposite. Recently I saw a TVO special about the incredible work being done by brain surgeons and after a while I just had to turn it off. I watched a mother being told that her child had brain cancer, and the surgeon, who I am sure was a kind and compassionate man, explained at great length to the viewers that the mother had to be made to understand the reality of the situation, which was that her child had a kind of cancer that nothing much could be done about and would most likely die. When doctors tell a patient (as I've seen one do) that she had a 10 per cent chance of survival with chemotherapy and 0 per cent without, they believe they are being merely realistic, but in fact what they are doing is activating the nocebo effect. Dr. Larry Dossey wrote an entire book about this entitled Be Careful What You Pray For; it is well worth reading.
I looked at the book by Larry Dossey she mentioned. He describes the means of spiritual harming – the “dark side” of spiritual healing – there, such as negative prayer, cursing and hexing…
A thought appeared in my mind: when psi and spirituality will be recognized by a society, how will we deal with deliberate psychic attacks? Should we treat them as “psychic crimes”, and perceive them as a form of intentional assault? Would we evaluate the “psychic violence” – the intentional attempts to harm someone with bio-PK abilities, or spiritual practices of negative prayer, cursing and hexing (not all spiritual practice is benevolent!) as akin to physical violence? Would we change our law accordingly to such recognition and evaluation?
What do you think?