If Oprah promotes it, it sells. That’s no secret. The real secret about The Secret, Rhonda Byrne’s best-selling self-help book, is that it’s nothing new. It is just a repackaging of New Thought metaphysics (think Christian Science without theological terminology) blended with ancient Gnosticism (think Da Vinci Code).

Selfishness and materialism are the basic motivations of this book. Whatever you want, you can get just by thinking about it. You don’t even have to worry about the “how.” It is the mother of all do-it-yourself, positive-thinking, no-hassle, get-rich-quick scams. Unfortunately, many are deceived by this false “profit.”

If you checked out the wiki link on New Thought you will observe an ironic truth. New Thought teachers advocated that sickness and disease were the effects of the mind. Guess what? They all died.

Here are some online resources that examine the outrageous claims in The Secret.

http://www.probe.org/hot-topics/responses-to-the-secret.html

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/20.71.html

http://www.johnankerberg.org/catalog/product968.html