Everything about Energy Spirituality totally explained
Energy in
spirituality refers to a putative all-pervasive spirit that's associated with positive and negative outcomes, similar to the traditional Chinese concept of
qi. Spiritual energy is generally said to permeate and interpenetrate the universe and to be
vital to life, though the specific attributes of each proposed energy may vary. Many
complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practices are predicated on its existence, its purported ability to affect human health and well-being, and the ability of practitioners to see, feel, and effect changes in it.
The proposed properties of spiritual energy are not those of physical
energy; there's no
scientific evidence for its existence.
Claims related to energy therapies are most often
anecdotal, rather than being based on repeatable
empirical evidence. The history of such claims about spiritual energy (most often dubbed as pseudoscientific) is long. Many people have attempted to gain credibility by associating with forms of energy that were poorly understood by scientists. In the 1800s, electricity and magnetism were in the "borderlands" of science and the subject of considerable
electrical quackery. In the 2000s,
quantum mechanics and
grand unification theory provide similar opportunities for empirical claims of spiritual energy being physically manifest.
"Spiritual energy" is often equated with empirically understood forces. For example, some believers in the "aura" equate it with
electromagnetism, claims that have not been supported by
experiment or theory. Believers support their claims by arguing that electromagnetic fields are used in standard medical procedures, such as
radiation therapy,
electroconvulsive therapy,
transcranial magnetic stimulation and
magnetic resonance imaging. However, these techniques involve the use of large electrical and electronic devices to manipulate
electric and
magnetic fields and the physiological mechanisms by which these techniques affect the body are well-understood, quantified and have been supported by repeated
experimentation. Scientists therefore dispute the claim that the body's electromagnetic fields can be affected by touch or psychic intervention in any clinically useful sense.
Where scientists and energy therapists come into conflict is with the idea that some energies are not measurable and can be manipulated psychically or unaided by technology. In order to distinguish between the energy used in techniques such as
MRI and
TMS (
electromagnetism) and other unquantifiable "energy," the NIH has proposed the distinction between
veritable (measurable) and
putative (unmeasurable) energy.
Followers of
scientology believe spiritual energy can be quantified using an
e-meter; the legitimacy of such a claim is disputed outside of the church. The e-meter in fact measures the well-understood
Galvanic skin response. Other proposed treatments, such as
magnet therapy are considered ineffective until it's demonstrated that they beat the
placebo effect (
see Franz Mesmer).
The
James Randi Educational Foundation has for many years (as of 2008) offered one million US dollars to any person capable of repeatably detecting psychic energy fields. No one has demonstrated this ability in a controlled situation.
Further Information
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