At the risk of replowing the same field, of course intention and belief
play a role at some level. For example, people can never win at the
slots unless they have sufficient belief to actually put the coin into
the machine and push the button. If the expected belief is not
fulfilled, the conclusion is that the belief was not strong enough. If
you win, the belief was clearly justified. Educated people now know that
the belief, in this case, had no effect except to start the process.
While this is a trivial example, the same process occurs in all actions,
frequently where the relationship between belief and outcome is not so
clear. Superstition relies on this ambiguity while science attempts to
show the underlying process. Unfortunately, many people are not educated
enough to understand what is already known and enough true ignorance
remains to give support to the belief in magic. To make matters even
more confusing, while science attempts to sort out the actions in the
material world, I believe the spiritual world can always throw in a
joker to confuse the issue. This is how religion gets its power. In
addition, must people feel inadequate in their ability to control
reality using their knowledge. Instead a strong belief, which everyone
has without effort, or faith in a God, which requires no knowledge, are
used as a substitute for skill. It is sometimes difficult when exploring
this subject to separate the true reality from the substitution,
especially when the "true " reality is scary and the substitution is
entertaining and loving.
Ed
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
OrionWorks wrote:
There's a popular NewAge saying which proclaims that we create our own
reality. I suspect most who ponder the ramifications of the NA phrase
take the meaning metaphorically, perhaps in the same vein as reading
certain passages from the bible, particularly Genesis. Others are
beginning to ponder the ramifications of wondering if there might
actually be more to this NA meaning. Back in the 1970s, the pre-NewAge
author, Jane Roberts, was one of the first to explore the
ramifications in a series of alleged channeled writings - the Seth
Material comes to mind.
NewAge mumbo-jumbo set aside, I suspect aspects of these ramifications
have been explored in certain SF novels.
"Waldo" and "Magic, Inc", both by Heinlein are probably the best known.
If you've ever heard someone refer to a remote manipulator as a "waldo"
then you've heard of the first of these.
The Childe cycle of Gordon Dickson explored a chunk of the idea in
"Necromancer" but Dickson dropped it later on in the series (it makes
for a rather hard to manage world).
"The Practice Effect" explores a cute variation on it; can't recall the
author.
Many, many other books have touched on the notion that belief can make
it so.
It's an easy proof that in an infinite universe there's a world where
magic works. Sadly, it's an equally easy proof that you could never
find such a world even if you had interstellar teleportation so you
could visit lots and lots of star systems in hardly any time.
