If true (can the Dutch have gone quite so crazy?), this is the story (via the Daily Telegraph) of a scheme so loopy that Orrin Hatch could probably be persuaded to use taxpayer dollars to fund it over here:
Dutch prisons are using psychics to give jailed criminals guidance by putting them in touch with their dead relatives. Paul van Bree, a self-styled “paragnost” or clairvoyant, has been hired by the Dutch prison service to teach prisoners how to “love themselves”.
“I tell them that dead relatives are doing well and that they love them. That brings them peace. Big strong men burst into tears,” he said…
… The Dutch employment service has also looked beyond the normal to use “regression therapy” and tarot cards to help the jobless.
Uncooperative welfare claimants have been told they will lose benefits unless they accept the guidance of a regression therapist to help them get in touch with their past lives.
In 2007, 42,500 Dutch people signed up to state funded spiritually-based “personal development programmes”.
Here’s where “secular” and “right” don’t seem to fit comfortably together. Secularists would be expected to oppose state employment of psychics, of course. But rightists would be expected to support any program that makes convicts cry.
To paraphrase Chesterton, the collapse of traditional religious culture in a society doesn’t result in people believing in nothing, but rather it results in them believing anything.
This stuff’s no sillier than most modern psychology and probably less harmful.
OT for this thread, but climate acolyte James Hansen sez:
“Religions[sic] across the spectrum — Catholics, Jews, Mainline Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Evangelicals — are united in seeing climate change as a moral and ethical challenge. The Religious Coalition on Creation Care is working with the Citizen’s Climate Lobby…blah blah”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/obamas-second-chance-on-c_b_525567.html
If they want to put criminals in touch with their dead relatives then what is wrong with the electric chair?
They probably don’t want to get in touch with them THAT badly, Ross.
http://www.neatorama.com/2010/04/11/dutch-prisons-use-psychics-to-help-prisoners-contact-the-dead/comment-page-1/#comment-1930217
Read the comments.