List of Topics Characterized As Pseudoscience - Religious and Spiritual Beliefs

Religious and Spiritual Beliefs

Spiritual and religious practices and beliefs, according to Carl Sagan, are normally not classified as pseudoscience. However, the following religious/spiritual items have been related to or classified as pseudoscience in some way:

• Biblical scientific foreknowledge (Judaism and Christianity) – asserts that the Bible makes accurate statements about the world that science verifies thousands of years later.

• Koranic scientific foreknowledge (Islam) – asserts that the Koran makes accurate statements about the world that science verifies hundreds of years later. This belief is a common theme in Bucailleism.

• Christian Science is considered by some to be pseudoscience and has been described as such by skeptics such as James Randi, John Thomas Sladek and Joe Nickell. The claim that Christian Science is pseudoscience has also been discussed at some length in The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience. Gale's Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics uses it as an example of a religion trying to associate itself with science. The notion of Christian Science being "real" science has also been disputed by philosopher John Searle though the term "Christian Science" as used by Mary Baker Eddy predated modern philosophical definitions of scientific method.

• Creation science – belief that the origin of everything in the universe is the result of a first cause, brought about by a creator deity, and that this thesis is supported by geological, biological, and other scientific evidence.
  • Baraminology – taxonomic system that classifies animals into groups called "created kinds" or "baramins" according to the account of creation in the book of Genesis and other parts of the Bible.
  • Flood geology – creationist form of geology that advocates most of the geologic features on Earth are explainable by a global flood.
  • Modern geocentrism – citing uniform gamma-ray bursts distribution, and other arguments of this type, as evidence that we (being in the Milky Way galaxy) are at the center of the cosmos.
  • Intelligent design – maintains that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." These features include:
    • Irreducible complexity – claim that some biological systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler systems. It is used by proponents of intelligent design to argue that evolution by natural selection alone is incomplete or flawed, and that some additional mechanism (an "Intelligent Designer") is required to explain the origins of life. Irreducible complexity is one of two main arguments intended to support intelligent design, the other being specified complexity.
    • Specified complexity – claim that when something is simultaneously complex and specified, one can infer that it was produced by an intelligent cause (i.e., that it was designed) rather than being the result of natural processes.
• Dianetics (which is involved in Scientology) – L. Ron Hubbard's pseudoscience that purports to treat a hypothetical reactive mind by means of an E-meter, a device which Hubbard was later legally forced to admit "does nothing".
• Feng shui – ancient Chinese system of mysticism and aesthetics based on astronomy, geography, and the putative flow of qi. It is widely considered a pseudoscience, and has been criticised by many organisations devoted to investigating paranormal claims. Evidence for its effectiveness is based on anecdote, and there is a lack of a plausible method of action; this leads to conflicting advice from different practitioners of feng shui. Feng shui practitioners use this as evidence of variations or different schools; critical analysts have described it thus: "Feng shui has always been based upon mere guesswork." Modern criticism differentiates between feng shui as a traditional proto-religion and the modern practice: "A naturalistic belief, it was originally used to find an auspicious dwelling place for a shrine or a tomb. However, over the centuries it... has become distorted and degraded into a gross superstition."
• Quantum mysticism – builds on a superficial similarity between certain New Age concepts and such seemingly counter-intuitive quantum mechanical concepts as the uncertainty principle, entanglement, and wave–particle duality, while generally ignoring the limitations imposed by quantum decoherence. One of the most abused ideas is Bell's theorem, which proves the nonexistence of local hidden variables in quantum mechanics. Despite this, Bell himself rejected mystical interpretations of the theory.