Dr Caroline Leaf and her Genesis moment

Posted on February 19, 2017 by cedwardpitt

Dr Leaf, communication pathologist and self-titled cognitive neuroscientist, had this to say on social media earlier today: “You are constantly creating matter out of mind … so you are always in a Genesis moment.”

Wow! Just wow! She may not have crossed the line into heresy, but she is pretty much right on top of it.

Because again, she has claimed that we can do with our minds what only God can do. We can not create matter. The only being that has every created matter is God himself, in Genesis. In adding her little “Genesis moment” comment, she’s essentially equating our mind with God’s.

She might as well just come out and say, “We create matter with our minds, so we are like God”.

There’s a real Genesis moment where people thought they were like God: “‘You will not certainly die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” We all know how that eventually turned out.

Ultimately it begs the question, where are the church leaders? I don’t hear anyone denouncing Dr Leaf’s comparison of our mind to God’s. How much is too much? When will they say, “Enough’s enough”?

It should have been said already, but sadly, with every unscientific, unscriptural meme that Dr Leaf publishes, the impotence and inaction of the church to becomes more and more painfully obvious.

Please church leadership, please take a stand, before it’s too late.

Dr Caroline Leaf – Mind creates matter

Posted on February 3, 2017 by cedwardpitt

Another day, another factoid. Dr Leaf, communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist, says that we create matter with our minds.

screen-shot-2017-02-04-at-8-53-34-am

I’d like her to demonstrate that sometime … Wait, what’s that you say, she can’t do it? Of course she can’t. We cannot create matter with our minds. We can’t just think something and watch it appear.

Dr Leaf should know better. She is a PhD level scientist after all, and the law of conservation of matter is high school level science.

If Dr Leaf can’t get the most fundamental of facts straight, then she should not be on any pulpit as a scientist, because all she’s doing is embarrassing the church, destroying the church’s credibility with anyone with a shred of scientific knowledge.

The church deserves better than half-baked pseudoscience being passed off as the real deal. Step up Dr Leaf, or step off.

The Secret Teaching of Dr Caroline Leaf

Posted on October 19, 2016 by cedwardpitt

Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the decade, “The Secret” is no secret. We’ve all heard of the book or the movie, or the countless gurus that promote how they’ve made millions of dollars and found untold happiness by unlocking the power of the Law of Attraction. You can have that same success too if you buy their book or attend their seminar, or sign up to be part of their network marketing scheme.

Let’s be honest, we’ve probably all, at some point, indulged someone telling us that we just need to think positive or visualise our goal and it will be ours. It’s even something that many preachers over the years have sold to us in various guises, like hyper-faith, name it and claim it, sowing your seed.

The Secret claims that if we understand we’re all energy, one with the universe and its power, then we can leverage that power to create or receive anything we want with our thoughts. We just need to think positively and visualise it. It’s a repackaging of the human potential movement, new age philosophy and cosmic consciousness, all of which is a repackaging of pantheism and Eastern religious teaching.

The author, Rhonda Byrne, (who I’m embarrassed to say is Australian) wrote, “If you’re feeling good, it is because you are thinking good thoughts.” Ok, but what about when you’re thinking good thoughts and you still feel bad? What exactly are ‘good thoughts’ anyway?

She also wrote, “Remember that your thoughts are the primary cause of everything.” So the rise of ISIS is because of my thoughts. Donald Trump might be President … my thoughts. An oceanic tectonic shift cuts the undersea trunk line taking out the internet for half the eastern seaboard … Sorry, my bad, I was having negative thoughts again.

So The Secret really doesn’t make a lot of objective sense. I could go on, but it’s been taken down well enough by a number of commentators and critics over the last decade or so (https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4096; http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/20.71.html), so I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. But suffice to say, The Secret fundamentally sells the power of thought to shape our reality … wait, that sounds oddly familiar. Dr Leaf said the same thing at TD Jakes’ church, the Potter’s House, only this week.

leaf-the-secret

@bishopjakes proudly shared this Instagram post which Dr Leaf duly forwarded to her adoring fans. “You can shape your reality by the way you think” was even the title of her message. (She followed it up with an e-mail to her subscribers saying the exact same thing …)

Dr Leaf’s teaching is eerily similar to The Secret in many other ways. That quote from before: “Remember that your thoughts are the primary cause of everything” sounds remarkably similar to “Thoughts influence every decision, word, action and physical reaction we make.” (Who Switched Off My Brain, p13)

There are lots of others. From The Secret:

“Everything else you see and experience in this world is effect, and that includes your feelings. The cause is always your thoughts.”

“Every thought of yours is a real thing – a force.”

“Everything else you see and experience in this world is effect, and that includes your feelings. The cause is always your thoughts.”

“Food cannot cause you to put on weight, unless you think it can.” (This one made me giggle more than the others … yep, those three bottles of Coke I just drank have absolutely no effect on my waistline because I believe that excessive soda consumption is slimming …)

“Your imagination is an extremely powerful tool.”

“Quantum physicists tell us that the entire universe emerged from thought!”

“Quantum physics … says that you can’t have a universe without mind entering into it, and that the mind is actually shaping the very thing that is perceived.”

“The amazing work and discoveries of the quantum physicists over the last eighty years has brought us a greater understanding of the unfathomable power of the human mind to create.”

“Thoughts are magnetic, and thoughts have a frequency. As you think thoughts, they are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency. Everything sent out returns to the source – you.”

“There are no limits to what you can create for you, because your ability to think is unlimited!”

Compare that to just a small sample of Dr Leaf’s work:

“Our mind is designed to control the body, not the other way around. Matter does not control us; we control matter through our thinking and choosing.” (Switch On Your Brain, p33)

“Research shows that 75 to 98 percent of mental, physical and behavioral illness comes from ones thought life.” (Switch On Your Brain, p33)

“DNA actually changes shape according to our thoughts.” (Switch On Your Brain, p35)

“Whatever you are thinking about affects every cell in your body.” (Switch On Your Brain, p94)

“Everything you do and say is first a thought in your physical brain. You think, then you do, which cycles back to the original thought, changing it and the thoughts connected to it in a dynamic interrelationship. If your thinking is off … then your communication though what you do and say is off, and vice versa.” (Switch On Your Brain, pp98-99)

“Quantum theory converts science’s conception of humans from being mere cogs in a gigantic, mechanical machine to being freethinking agents whose conscious, free choices affect the physical world.” (Switch On Your Brain: p120-1)

“Thought signals seem to move faster than the speed of light and in ways that classical physics cannot explain. This means our mind controls matter, and is therefore a creative force.” (Switch On Your Brain, p121)

“These statistics show that the mindset behind the meal – the thinking behind the meal – plays a dominant role in the process of food-related health issues …” (Think and Eat Yourself Smart, p84)

The only difference between The Secret and Dr Leaf’s ministry is Dr Leaf’s claim that science and scripture support it, though lexical contortions of scripture, and cherry-picked pseudoscience does not qualify as supporting evidence.

In the last ten years since The Secret was published, many critics have lined up to pull it apart, some prominent Christians included. So they should, because The Secret is an abhorrent, unscientific concoction of new age humanism, or as one critic astutely put it, “spiritual narcissism”.

I’ve dissected Dr Leaf’s teaching over the last three-and-a-bit years and shown that her science is wanting, and her scripture is tenuous. As this week’s sermon aptly demonstrates, Dr Leaf’s teaching appears to be a lukewarm re-serving of The Secret, sprinkled with some scripture and pseudoscience to try and make it more palatable for the Christian church. Despite the shared narratives of self-obsession and magical thinking, the Christian church still fawns over Dr Leaf. It’s embarrassing to see the same Christian leaders and media outlets lambaste The Secret but unquestioningly accept the same message woven through Dr Leaf’s teaching. Dr Leaf’s teaching is so close to The Secret I’m surprised Rhonda Byrne hasn’t asked for royalties.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. The same goes for ignorance—the only thing necessary for the triumph of ignorance is for smart men (and women) to do nothing. We also need consistency. Rejecting The Secret but accepting the same teaching from Dr Leaf creates a cultural cognitive dissonance amongst the Church that’s unhealthy.

Church, it’s time to stand against mistruth no matter what the source.

Bibliography

Byrne, R., The Secret, Atria Books, New York. 2006 ISBN 978-1-58270-170-7

Leaf C., Who Switched Off My Brain? Controlling toxic thoughts and emotions. 2nd ed. Southlake, TX, USA: Inprov, Ltd, 2009.

Leaf C.M., Switch On Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2013.

Leaf C.M., Think and Eat Yourself Smart. USA: Baker Books, 2016.

Dr Caroline Leaf and those three little words

Posted on September 22, 2016 by cedwardpitt

Dr Caroline Leaf, communication pathologist and self-titled cognitive neuroscientist, broke the most fundamental rules of both science and Christian teaching in her social media post today.

“Mind creates matter! Read James 1:2”

Dr Leaf’s statement not only violates the laws of physics, but it also contradicts the Bible by elevating the human mind to the level of God himself.

In our physical universe, matter, like energy, is conserved. It can not be created or destroyed. The amount of matter that goes in to a chemical reaction is the same amount at the end of a chemical reaction. Suggesting that our mind ‘creates’ matter violates this basic law known by every high school chemistry student.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S6e11NBwiw
There are only two explanations for the creation of matter – the Big Bang or God’s creation. Most Christians believe the second explanation, that God was the only being to create matter which he did during the six days of creation. By saying that our minds create matter, Dr Leaf is saying that our minds have the same amount of power that God does, a suggestion that’s incongruent with basic Biblical truth.

So much for being a scientific and Biblical expert. In just three little words, Dr Leaf manages to violate the most basic principles of science and Christianity.

To add salt to the wound, Dr Leaf tries to justify her unscientific heresy by referencing James 1:2, as if tagging a scripture will somehow vindicate her. Except James 1:2 says, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials”. Well, that’s awkward … James 1:2 has nothing to do with matter or the mind.

Her meme is just as irrelevant and unscientific.

“When we ‘rejoice despite the circumstances’, the brain responds by secreting neurotransitters that help us cope.”

Ummm … the brain does everything by releasing neurotransmitters. That’s how the brain works. It releases neurotransmitters when awake or asleep, active or resting. There are no specific neurotransmitters just for coping, or for when we ‘rejoice despite the circumstances’. Her statement is meaningless.

There would many in Dr Leaf’s camp that would try and defend her statement by claiming that it was a poor choice of words perhaps, or that it was meant to be taken metaphorically not literally. Sure, if that’s how you want to continue to delude yourself, then be my guest, but really there isn’t much wriggle room here. How else can you interpret the words ‘create’ and ‘matter’? You can’t really misrepresent it as matters of fact, or matters of law, or a state of affairs. Dr Leaf meant it as the mass noun form of the word, “physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass”. And the word ‘create’ … we all know the meaning of that word, “to bring (something) into existence”. It wouldn’t make any sense to say that the mind causes matter to happen as a result of one’s actions, or that the mind invests matter with a title of nobility. It might be common to metaphorically say, “mind over matter” but there’s no metaphorical meaning for “mind creates matter”.

And so with just three little words, Dr Leaf contradicts the most basic of all principles of science and Christianity, and aptly demonstrates the irreconcilable deviation of her teaching from reality. She has shown how willing she is to take an irrelevant scripture and try to use it to justify a misguided pseudoscientific proclamation. Today’s meme calls her claim as a Biblical and scientific expert into serious question.

Dr Caroline Leaf and the matter of mind over genes

Posted on November 7, 2014 by cedwardpitt

I think I might have to throw away my genetics textbook.

I was always taught that genes were the main driver behind health and disease, and I always thought it was a pretty good theory.

But not according to Dr Caroline Leaf, communication pathologist and self-titled cognitive neuroscientist, who said on her social media feeds today, “Our health is not controlled by genetics – our health is controlled by our mind.”

Taking her statement at face value, she appears to be saying that genes have nothing to do with our health. Dr Leaf has made some asinine statements in the past, but to suggest that genes are irrelevant to human health seemed so stupid that no one in their right mind would suggest such a thing.

Perhaps I was taking her statement the wrong way? I wanted to make sure I didn’t jump to any rash conclusions about Dr Leaf’s statement, so I pondered it at length. Could she be referring to ‘control’ in the absolute sense? How much control do genes have on our health? What about the mind?

After deliberating for a while, I still came to the conclusion that Dr Leaf’s statement was nonsense.

Unfortunately, Dr Leaf’s statement is, like so many of her previous Facebook memes, so vague as to be misleading. The meaning of ‘health’ and ‘controlled’ could be taken so many ways … which part of our health? How much regulation constitutes ‘control’? What about genetics?

Looking at her statement in more depth, it becomes clear that no matter which way Dr Leaf meant it, it’s still wrong. For example, all of human health is controlled, in part, by genetics. That’s because life itself is controlled by genetics. The human genome provides a blueprint for the construction of all of the proteins in all of the cells in our entire body. The expression of those genes determines exactly how our body will run. If the genes are wrong, if the translation of the gene code into a protein is wrong, or if too much or too little of a protein is made, all determines whether our body is functioning at its optimum level or not.

The stimulus for the expression of our genes is influenced by the environment in which we live. If I go out into the sun a lot, the UV light triggers my skin cells to make the protein melanin, which makes my skin go darker and helps to provide some protection against the damaging effects of the UV light.

While the environment plays a part of the expression of some genes, it’s wrong to say that genetics doesn’t control the process. If I go into the sun too much, I risk developing a melanoma, because the sun damages the genes in some of my skin cells, causing them to grow without control.

Genes are still responsible for the disease itself. Sometimes the trigger is from the environment, sometimes it’s not. There are some people with genes for melanoma who don’t need an environmental trigger, because they develop melanoma on skin that’s exposed to very little UV light, like the genital skin.

So fundamentally, even taking the environment into account, our health is controlled by our genetics.

The other part of Dr Leaf’s meme is also wrong. Our health is not controlled by our mind. Our genes are influenced by “the environment”, which according to the seminal paper by Ottman, “The environmental risk factor can be an exposure, either physical (e.g., radiation, temperature), chemical (e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), or biological (e.g., a virus); a behavior pattern (e.g., late age at first pregnancy); or a “life event” (e.g., job loss, injury). This is not intended as an exhaustive taxonomy of risk factors, but indicates as broad a definition as possible of environmental exposures.” [1]

Even if one considers the mind as part of the sub classification of “a behavior pattern”, it’s still pretty clear that most of the factors that make up our environment are not related to our mind at all but are related to the external world, of which we have minimal or no control over. Sure, we make choices, but our choices aren’t truly free. They’re constrained by the environment in which we find ourselves. In the same way, our mind may have some tiny influence on our health, but only insofar as our environment and our genes will allow.

When it all boils down, this meme of Dr Leaf’s is rested on her foundational presumption that our mind can control matter, a very strong theme throughout her most recent book [2], but which is still preposterous. Our thoughts are simply a function of our brain, which is in turn determined by the function of our nerve cells, which is in turn a function of our genes and their expression.

Our mind doesn’t control matter. Matter controls our mind.

I can keep my genetics textbooks after all.

References

Ottman, R., Gene-environment interaction: definitions and study designs. Prev Med, 1996. 25(6): 764-70 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8936580
Leaf, C.M., Switch On Your Brain : The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health. 2013, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan:

Dr C. Edward Pitt

Faith, Hope, Love, Science.

Tag Archives: matter