In pondering self exploration I seem to be coming across an ever growing world of people who believe in things which cannot be proved. I had thought this concept was mostly confined to those who believed in religions but not so.
I’ve also recently spent some time with a friend who buys into the idea that water has memory while at the same time – at the other end of the scale – I’ve watched such things as Richard Dawkins ‘Enemies of Reason’ work.
Dawkins is a strict scientist and generally mystified, perhaps frustrated, that people believe in things which cannot be proved. The fact that such people exist is no big deal, I think it is that others then go on to make bundles of cash exploiting those ideas, or persuading them to kill or injure others or others, or don’t seek proper medical help when needed that is damaging.
But what gives? And is this anything new anyway?
Ignoring reason has been going on since the beginning of time. Christian based religions were always about getting cash out of people either to enrich the church or sometimes (in the case of evangelicals particularly) an individual person.
The Crusades were all about trying to get rid of people who didn’t believe what they did and it was all done in the name of a Christian God.
But it seems now that believing in things which have no proof, not just religion, is on the rise and these are my thoughts as to why.
Waxing and waning from reason
Humans have always had a need to explain things. To be able to say why certain things happen. When we don’t know we make it up.
The ancient Egyptians thought that after the sun went down it was placed in a boat and sailed under the earth. This explained why it would disappear in the West and then, after a while, pop up in the East.
Despite absolutely no proof that this was true an entire society bought into it.
The last 1,000 years saw the gradual erosion of such ideas. In the West this has mainly been a gradual understanding that most of what the Christian faith claimed wasn’t really true after all – the earth was much older, man evolved, etc.
From about 1700 AD this gathered pace and reached a pinnacle in the mid 1900s. Belief in Christianity rapidly declined as people turned to ‘science’. Science had explained so much, perhaps it would explain everything.
The plague did not spread by demons you sneezed out, if you climbed up into the sky you didn’t find angles hanging around on clouds playing harps, and so on.
If science had answered so many questions and sorted out so much (such as curing diseases) surely it was just a matter of time before it would explain everything.
Then it seems things went into reverse. Dawkins claims Christianity is on the rise in North America while the internet is bulging with ideas like Water Memory, Astral Traveling and Witchcraft.
There is even a small but growing body that believe the World is as we originally thought – flat.
Reason is definitely on the retreat, why should that be?
Science fails … or at least its delivery does
Bill Bryson, in his book A Short History of Everything, talks about how some of the things he was taught at school turned out to be untrue – specifically tectonic plates. The problem was that the thinking of the day was presented as scientific fact, not ‘the current leading theory’.
Schooling in the late 1900s was very much along these lines – an over enthusiastic endorsement of theories as scientifically proven and indisputable realities.
So it is not entirely surprising that this generation feels a little disillusioned by science. To be fair to science itself, scientists never claimed to have the facts, only arguments and supporting evidence for theories which could be overturned by greater evidence to the contrary.
What I mean is that it wasn’t the scientists en-masse that mis-sold science but society somehow managed to get a bit carried away with itself.
Corruption brings questions
At the same time as science appeared to know, or be on the verge of knowing, everything some uncomfortable truths were coming to light. Watergate and the Vietnam war were showing how society’s leaders could be outright liars.
Delays in research, or the publication of research, proving that smoking is harmful showed that big companies could hush things up. And if sometimes they could only do it for a while, who is to say others have not been more successful longer term?
Since those days Hollywood and others have sent us a steady drip of films, in cinemas and on TV, all based on the idea of corruption at the top being fought by those at the bottom. Whether it is Three days of the Condor or Prison Break, the message is the same.
Authors too love this lucrative market that basically says – if you have a conspiracy theory you might be right … just look at history to find examples of those who were laughed at turning out to be those who were owners of the truth.
Science becomes a blocker
In order to work out what is true and what isn’t true humans created clever methods of testing things. In the world of medication the pinnacle was the double-blinded test where neither patient nor doctor new who was getting the real drug and who was getting a sugar tablet.
To make such tests valid the study needs to contain a large number of people and a broad cross section of society. This seemed to produce accurate results but it had a downside – it was a very costly and time consuming system.
Investing money in proving something only then made sense if you were going to get a lot of money out of doing so. That meant disproving something, such as ‘Snake Oil Cure Number 3’, made no financial sense.
It also meant that proving something natural, such as Aloe Vera’s medical benefits, wasn’t going to even cover its costs because the system didn’t allow things which existed naturally to be patented.
Systems that were meant to stop snake oil salesmen became systems that stopped natural remedies and instead promoted synthetic alternatives, sometimes for no good reason.
What’s more society in general was beginning to understand this flaw. ‘Unproven’ things were sometimes turning out to be perfectly valid so perhaps other ‘unproven’ things were true as well.
Science gets mis-sold
I mentioned earlier the issue that much of scientific thinking tended to get presented as scientific fact in the 1900s. But it also got mis-sold in another way, particularly in the field of medicine.
If a full double-blind scientific study is carried out to test Drug A in the treatment of Ailment B the study may find Drug A is effective 20% of the time. It is scientifically proven to work better than not taking it.
There is nothing wrong with the statement ‘scientifically proven’ except that most people don’t understand what that means. If something is ‘scientifically proven’ that does not mean that it will always work, the statement needs to be finished: ‘scientifically proven to work in 20% of cases’.
There is a slight add on here that a scientific test will admit a margin of error like 20% plus or minus 3%. This is because they didn’t test their drug on everybody, just a sample of society. But this is the point where people’s eyes really start to glass over!
Unfortunately this is the critical point because very little in science is proved categorically. It is only proved to a certain degree – e.g. “After carrying out a study using method X we are 80% confident that A causes B” … which means there is a good chance that it doesn’t.
So now we have the situation where large companies are telling us they have created drugs which are ‘scientifically proven’ only discover later that a) this doesn’t mean they are better than other options and b) they may not be that effective at what they do.
I could add c) they cause side effects that require other drugs which sometimes happen to be made and sold by the same company and so create fuel for conspiracy theories.
Science becomes bizarre
Entering this fray comes Quantum Physics. Mathematically sound science that just sounds odd. In Quantum Physics something can spin in two directions at the same time and its absolutely fine.
That is so weird but totally acceptable in the scientific community that it lends legitimacy to anthing weird.
The great disillusionment of science
So a number of things have come together. To summarise
- Science hasn’t explained everything yet
- Science was often presented as fact and then turned out to be wrong which makes ‘science’ look unreliable
- Science can sometimes block progress because it costs money
- The majority of people still don’t understand what ‘scientifically proven’ actually means
- Quantum Physics has allowed what sounds weird to be scientific.
- Our systems of government have been shown as weak in managing their own corruption and the corruption of big companies that use ‘science’.
If we take those who are middle aged today they are the ones who have lived through this roller coaster and they are the ones who now struggle with the question “Who can you trust?” and “What is true?”
Perhaps this generation was prepared to put answer machines like religion to one side because science seemed to be forging ahead but now that it is stalling what should they do?
The believing vacuum
I said at the beginning that most humans need things to be explained and when they can’t be a story is made up. My feeling is that this need was shelved over the last 50 years in the expectation that scientific answers would come.
Now that they have not arrived a great vacuum has been left. Sometimes that vacuum is being filled by a resurgence in traditional religions so strong that things which really are scientifically proven (such as how old the world is) are thrown out the window.
If science can only answer some questions but a religion can answer all of them, why not jump whole heartedly into the religion. Science appears weaker. This would explain Dawkens findings that Christianity is increasing in popularity in some parts of the Western world.
But for others rewinding to religion cannot make sense. To much about what it preached turned out to be untrue. It has been discredited beyond repair. So where to turn?
For this I’m going to use Water Memory as an example of how rational people can rationalize something on many levels
The Water Memory thinking example
If you haven’t heard about Water Memory a quick read on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory ) will give you the gist. The idea is that water remembers things it has been in contact with and changes its structure accordingly.
This does not only include what it has physically been in contact with but, some claim, it changes when exposed to certain types of music or emotions.
Now lets consider a few of things:
- Has Water Memory been ‘scientifically proven’? Yes.
- Has Water Memory been ‘scientifically dis-proven’? Yes.
- If Water Memory was true would this be bad news for some very large companies that would stand to lose a lot of money? Yes.
- Does society have a bad track record when it comes to big companies influencing law makers? Yes.
OK. If you want to believe in Water Memory: it has been scientifically proven but the reason it isn’t in widespread use is because of corruption and cover ups.
But what about the bit where if has been scientifically dis-proven? Well all scientific studies have flaws. The one by Dr. Jacques Benveniste in 1988 that proved it had flaws and the one that dis-proved it (later that year and also involving Dr. Jacques Benveniste ) had flaws.
As I also mentioned earlier scientific studies only claim what they have found to a percentage of confidence. “We are 80% confident our findings are correct”.
A subsequent study using different methods my come to a different conclusion – that’s how scientific research works. All the two studies can then conclude is that more studies are necessary. Incidentaly as of 2015 there have been over 200 studies on Water Memory that conflict in this way although the majority come down on the side of “It’s not real”.
The scientific community in general agrees that the original 1988 study on Water Memory which proved its existence had far more flaws and followed a poorer methodology than the next study that disproved it … but they would say that wouldn’t they because of the corruption thing?
So you can say, and it would be absolutely true, that Water Memory has been ‘scientifically proven’. In fact if you take a run at YouTube with ‘Water Memory’ as your search you will find no end of films which point out at the beginning that it is ‘scientifically proven’.
What they don’t do is mentioned the bit about dis-proven or mucky stuff about weighing up the relative merits and flaws of all the various studies. When this is occasionally discussed the corruption card of big pharmas can be played to explain away any disproving proof. Even if big business wasn’t directly involved there has got to be a shadowy influence there because they have so much to lose.
And go full circle to close the argument ‘here is an historical example of when big companies were a shadowy influence’ – e.g. cancer and smoking – ‘so this is probably what is going on with Water Memory’. Thus there is only ‘scientific’ proof for Water Memory is you follow this line of thinking.
Multiplying the proof
Are you on board yet with Water Memory? Just like any other belief system once you believe you can then find the proof you need in multiple places.
With Water Memory a scientific trial was carried out which proved the concept. The results of that trial were reported in numerous places. These then becomes numerous pieces of proof to cite even though there was only ever one supporting item.
Or as some politicians do – they will make up something up and some people will believe them because it sounds like it could be true. Say something like ‘Our health system would work better if there were less immigrants’. Those people repeat the idea.
Some of them might be well known personalities, jouranlists or host TV shows.
The politician then uses those people to prove the thing they made up is true because ‘they all say so as well so there must be something in it’.
So just like taking on a religion we can see what we want to see, disprove what we don’t want to agree with and find plenty to back up our belief.
Where is the harm?
None of this, by the way, is me saying Water Memory isn’t true (I say that somewhere else!). It is to show how easy it is to say things are ‘scientifically proven’ which is enough for many people to come on board.
Remember to many people ‘scientifically proven’ means fact. For a large part of that population later studies which disprove the original are corrupted in some way or another.
Now in many cases the bigger question is ‘Where is the harm?’ and in so many situations the answer is ‘None at all’. If you think you will feel better after drinking a glass of water that you believe has a different structure due to being in contact with positive emotions then you will – so why not just let those people feel better?
Retreating from reason
From my point of view it is the big picture that suffers. If we start retreating from reason and going back to making things up to explain the world around us then we’re going to stop making progress in actually discovering how things really work.
Water Memory is a small part of that. The list of new things which explain stuff is longer than my arm whether it be past life hypnosis or the vibrations of Witchcraft.
Perhaps then we might start to move down the road of deciding that what really is proven (I think we have tectonic plates sorted now) isn’t so. Perhaps continents shift because of our collective consciousnesses effecting the planets internal liquid core?
Perhaps if we all thought in a different way earthquakes could be stopped?
Beliefs to explain things now layered on top of science in an ever spiralling circle that requires no investigation or where investigation is made impossible by the concept itself. You cannot prove that there isn’t a God, can you prove that we cannot stop earthquakes by using our minds collectively?
If a concept sounds bizarre, well just wheel out Quantum Physics. That sounds bizarre but no one in the scientific community is arguing with that.
In Summary
So my thoughts go like this. Society began to shake off mainstream religion when science appeared to be discrediting it. But science failed to come up with all of the answers so some retreated back to religion. Others who looked for a place to retreat could not stomach that path and it created a hot bed of opportunity for new concepts (such as German New Medicine) to arise or older ones (like Witchcraft) to resurrect.
With the arrival of Quantum Physics bizarre no longer has to mean weird or unbelievable and has opened the door to pretty much anything.
Until society understands and accepts what ‘scientifically proven’ actually means however, I don’t see much change on the horizon.
Or perhaps this is just what collective insanity looks like ….
A small point about Homeopathy and Water Memory
I’ve talked a lot about Water Memory here and it is often lumped together with Homoeopathy. That’s not entirely correct – there are large parts of the Homoeopathic community that believe their cures work for reasons other than Water Memory.
For other homoeopaths the idea that water has memory is central to their explanation of why they believe it works. Don’t expect to find any consistency in the industry on this matter but do expect some Homoeopaths to be upset if you suggest Water Memory has something to do with their work.
Still others claim the active part in Homoeopathic medicines is held in tiny air bubbles. Basically the jury is very much out on this among Homoeopaths but you will find the media at large generally lumps Homoeopaths and Water Memory believers together.