Skeptical Review of Modern Mysticism

By nature I am a skeptical person. This is not to say that I am not open to new ideas, but rather I am of the school of thought that does not accept anything without proof. I have been at times equally skeptical of the claims made by renowned scientists about prions (I changed my mind when presented with an actual body of research) and those made by various believers in the mystical.

So far in research into theories ranging from Kirlian photography to therapeutic touch show no unexplainable phenomena.

Acupuncture, Shiatsu, etc.- Both attention and actual physical contact with a person have actual beneficial results. This is due to the fact that humans are social animals and so they stimulate positive emotions and help with chemical imbalances in the nervous system. With the addition of the placebo effect it makes for an effective therapy, but the same results can be obtained through massage. (Provided the person believes it will have a beneficial effect.)

Astral Projection, Out of Body Experience, OBE, near death experience, remote viewing- Various studies have been attempted. However there is currently no evidence what so ever that people are actually able to project their souls from their bodies. Indeed US Army reasearch into the subject from the 1970s-1990s concluded that there was no demonstratable reality to remote viewing. As did the CIA report on the same conducted by outside experts.

Auras, Color Theory, etc.- While it is probably true that certain colors are helpful to mood and thus healing there is no connection to the aura or other supernatural phenomena. The fact that colors mean different things in different cultures (White is death in China while it is life or purity in European tradition) that there is no objective reality to what colors mean.

Creationism, "Creation Science"- The evidence of plate tectonics and paleontology is enormously clear that the earth is much older than 6,000 years as claimed by a few Biblical Inerreant.

Crop Circles- Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, residents of England, created the first ones in the 1970s using simple techniques. Imitators soon followed using progressively more sophisticated geometrical patterns and methods. Several of these later groups have demonstrated how they did it for television crews. No evidence to the contrary has surfaced to date.

Kirlian photography- Claimed to be auras in the 1970s. A visual or photographic image of a corona discharge in a gas, in most cases the ambient air, from the high-voltage, high-frequency electrical discharge used in the technique.

Psychic Surgery- Slight of hand as conclusively shown by the investigations of James Randi and other professional magicians. Also the fact that many of the patients with real ailments die is fairly conclusive.

Therapeutic Touch- As with acupuncture the attention and the idea that something helpful is being done encourages the subject thus causing more rapid healing. Tests by Ms. Emily Rosa, a 9 year old girl, for a science fair project in 1996 showed absolutely no ability to actual sense energy fields by therapeutic touch practitioners. So methodical were her results that they have been published in the science journal Nature.