Information request
Posted on June 20, 2007 by Skeptigator
I’d be interested if anybody out there has ever head of the following item and had any good skeptical information regarding them. I haven’t yet found any comprehensive source. Anyway here goes
Somebody by the name of R.W. Wetherill put forth a theory on Nature’s Social Laws/Right Action, Richard W. Wetherill has since died but his legacy/name/philosophy lives on through alphapub.com by one E. Marie Bothe.
Filed under: Skeptic
Richard Wetherill was my grandfather’s brother. He pressured his brothers and sisters and their families to join his “religion” or cut off contact. Most of them chose the latter.
I think the problem that arises in Wetherill’s premise is that the creator endowed us with free will, which even the creator does not interfere with.
If one says to analyze the facts and make a “right” decision, by what standard do we suppose “right” and test against for wrong, as even morality comes down to an opinion, swimming in free-will?
I haven’t spent much time on this lately but this philosophy doesn’t seem to have many adherents and for good reason.
Mike you make a good point here and that is, What is “right”? I mean, this guys philosophy is everyone’s philosophy without any substance. It’s not like when I’m faced with the obvious right answer I still choose the wrong one. The question in a world of “grey” is, What guiding philosophy do you use to determine the best course of action?
There is merit in Wetherill’s idea I think, iff one can determine what nature’s demand or expectation is. For many years the scientific world foretold doom, if the rain forests continued to be depleted. I don’t argue that depletion of a nearly finite resource should be considered wrong just from common sense. However, it wasn’t until we had depleted the resource to less than 2% of it’s global presence that we learned it is not the rain forest which renews our oxygen, but rather the most basic and pervasive natural resource… Molds and Fungus. Still much more has been lost in that resource’s depletion. My point is that we cannot ever fully know what nature’s design, strength and limits are and therefore we cannot impose controls on it we can define as a reliable guide.
I think the right and wrong that draws my greatest attention is if Wetherill abandoned his family for not believing his premise, he himself, did not believe in it, since love, like fungus, is foundational in human development.
I tripped across your thread while researching Wetherill. It looks to me like he was a product of his times, perhaps nice to people, but perhaps gruff and W.A.S.P.Y. and influenced by the likes of the early Positive Mental Attitude crowd; Andrew Carnegie, Napoleon Hill etc. From a psychologists’ point of view his ideas sound like a reframing of the Cognitive/Behavioral school of therapy which asks folks to catch their negative and irrational thoughts, a la Aaron Beck.
However, the language that is used, with the creator talk and the “absolutes” gives it that tinge of religiosity that makes many of us skeptical. Most of the ads for his stuff look as though they are written by one person (Marie Bothe?) who may not understand that this kind of terminology is going to freak people out a little, like door-to-door cultists do. Nevertheless, it is probably like anything in the Self-Help genre, It will work for SOME, depending on how they choose to frame it and what boundaries they set for themselves in investigating the material.
That’s pretty much the conclusion I’ve come to. This is empty self help infused with a sort of new-agey religious-ness. Although I think with a charismatic enough leader this could end up being a cult.
All you need is a list of “right actions” (preferrably divinely revealed). Something I’ll have to add to my To-Do list.
my name is richard wetherill V and i would like to know where jen got her information becuse that is not true in any whay shape or form please reply
Not sure what you want me to reply to, you should ask your cousin(?) what she meant.
Sounds like craziness to me. I saw an add for this guy in the Smithsonian magazine. My BS detector went off so I did some googling. There’s surprisingly little out there. Sounds like a less than successful cult to me. I don’t see falsifiable testable theories. We all know where that leads.