Why The Law of Attraction is Morally Repugnant

Trigger warning: This article discusses a criminal case of child rape.

Here I argue that the law of attraction (LOA henceforth) is morally repugnant. I will define what I mean by the law of attraction, then, in two parts, I will make two arguments against it. The first argument is against anyone who uses the LOA for practical purposes or “for fun,” and admit they don’t believe it actually exists. The second argument is one where I show that the major core tenants of the LOA make it’s believers have to adhere to morally repugnant beliefs, such as murder victims deserving to be killed.

… the idea that positive thoughts attract positive outcomes, while negative thoughts attract negative outcomes. Some believe that this “law” can influence everything from your health to your finances to your relationships.

There are three Laws of Attraction:

1. Like attracts like
2. Nature Abhors a Vacuum
3. The Present is Always Perfect

I want to focus on the first law, as it is the one law everyone seems to be familiar with, and it’s really what the LOA is in its simplest form. According to their website,

Things, objects, or people with similar energy attract eachother. This happens every moment of every day whether you are aware of it or not… Energy shifting is when you attract similar experience, people or things to you. Positive thought, and emotion, will attract positive things or experiences.

I think there are two pretty good arguments against the law of attraction. One is based on its general impracticality, thus avoiding the objections of “I’m just using it to live a better life!” The second is a moral argument.

Against LOA’s Practicality

Despite the metaphysical and scientific nonsense of the Law of Attraction, some people are still willing to try it out “just for fun”. Of course, in turn, due to psychological factors like the placebo effect and apophenia, one may suddenly find oneself believing that the LOA works. So, instead of committing to the scientific and metaphysical claims of the LOA, they adopt the practices of LOA experts and other adherents. Sort of like how people do astrology or tarot card readings “for fun,” despite them rejecting the foundations of these habits. These are the sorts of people I like to call positivist cherry-picking pragmatists.

They are positivists in the sense that they’ll often reject the metaphysics or philosophy of an idea. Like the logical positivists of the early 20th century, most notably found in the Vienna Circle. However, these positivists aren’t as radical, since they do accept some metaphysical claims, but only if it is practical to everyday living or getting through existential angst. Hence, they are also pragmatists.

Positivist cherry-picking pragmatists are also cowards. They do not want to defend the absurd metaphysical claims of their beliefs, so they resort to the practical benefits of the belief. “Well, we have different opinions on this, but this actually helped me a lot in a tough situation. And I feel like a better person for it.” Congratulations… But the virtuous person seeks the truth. And the fact of the matter is, despite your feelings, the truth is indifferent to how well a false belief positively affected your life.

So, likewise, the person who believes in the law of attraction is likely a positivist cherry-picking pragmatist and a coward. Once a skeptic begins poking holes in their beliefs, they resort to the practical benefits of the law of attraction. “Oh, but since I started thinking positively, I got a job, got a girlfriend, and I’ve lost weight.”

Despite the practical use of the LOA, there is a huge problem with resorting to it as a means of defending it. It is generally impractical! Think about this: How much would the LOA have positively affected a Jewish person during the Holocaust? How much could it affect a starving child in Africa? Or an abused spouse? If you are fundamentally rejecting the LOA’s metaphysical commitments, then you have no reason to reject that the world will significantly weigh you down. If you get injured, thinking your way out of it won’t help.

Furthermore, the less commitments you make about LOA beliefs, the less you’re actually talking about the LOA. If you’re basically just saying, “I’m just trying to think more positively about life,” then why can’t you just reduce it to positive thinking? Instead of make believing the causal-links between mental states and external outcomes? 

Without the metaphysical underpinnings of the LOA, there is literally no reason to use it as a tool in life.

This is the demise of all positivist cherry-picking pragmatist beliefs.

The Moral Repugnancy of The Law of Attraction

Do not talk about poverty; do not investigate it or concern yourself with it. Do not spend your time in charitable work, or charity movements, all charity only tends to perpetuate the wretchedness it aims to eradicate…. Give your attention wholly to riches; ignore poverty.

Wallace Wattles, Law of Attraction expert

Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results, bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. Suffering is always the effect of wrong though in some direction.

James Allen, Law of Attraction expert

Give to him who begs from you, do not refuse him who would borrow from you.

Jesus, Matthew 5:42

When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

Jesus, Luke 14:12-14

Wattles and Allen, two LOA experts, are great examples of how the LOA leads to morally repugnant beliefs. Instead of loving your neighbor, and helping the poor, they insist that you should ignore them and focus on the rich.

Dr. Neil Farber explains these morally repugnant beliefs in his article The Truth of the Law of Attraction:

If someone rear-ends you in a car — 100% your fault. If you get breast cancer — 100% your fault (not genetics). If you get raped or abused — 100% your fault. Children getting killed by terrorists, sick babies in the intensive care unit, victims of floods, hurricanes, natural disasters, the Holocaust — yes, their fault. We all know deep inside that this is ridiculous to even suggest. However, it is a basic, fundamental premise of the LOA. You never attract something you are not thinking about.

It’s sometimes hard to really recognize how morally repugnant a view can be, especially when we live in the clouds of abstract philosophy. There are some cold-hearted bullet biters out there who will accept this absurd conclusion just to stick to their belief. So, let’s make this more real by presenting a real crime. This case is often used in the Evidential Argument from Evil against the existence of God. I thought it could serve a purpose here as well:

The Case of Sue

This is an actual event in which a five-year-old girl in Flint, Michigan, was severely beaten, raped, and then strangled to death early on New Year’s Day in 1986. The case was introduced into discourse by Bruce Russell, whose account of it, drawn from a report in the Detroit Free Press of January 3, 1986, runs as follows:

The girl’s mother was living with her boyfriend, another man who was unemployed, her two children, and her 9-month old infant fathered by the boyfriend. On New Year’s Eve all three adults were drinking at a bar near the woman’s home. The boyfriend had been taking drugs and drinking heavily. He was asked to leave the bar at 8:00 p.m. After several reappearances he finally stayed away for good at about 9:30 p.m.

The woman and the unemployed man remained at the bar until 2:00 a.m. at which time the woman went home and the man to a party at a neighbor’s home. Perhaps out of jealousy, the boyfriend attacked the woman when she walked into the house. Her brother was there and broke up the fight by hitting the boyfriend who was passed out and slumped over a table when the brother left. Later the boyfriend attacked the woman again, and this time she knocked him unconscious. After checking the children, she went to bed.

Later the woman’s 5-year old girl went downstairs to go to the bathroom. The unemployed man returned from the party at 3:45 a.m. and found the 5-year old dead. She had been raped, severely beaten over most of her body and strangled to death by the boyfriend.

So, tell me: Did that 5-year-old, who was only wanting to use the bathroom, deserve that? Can you seriously concede that her death was well-deserved just so you can hold to the idea that “like attracts like”? Did the mother deserve it for “associating” with that guy in the first place?

We have more reason to believe that Sue did not deserve to be raped, beaten, and murdered. She was just a child. No mother deserves to have their child die in such a heartless and cruel way. Yet stuff like this, and sometimes even worse, happens every day!

If we want to make this moral argument technical and simultaneously end the LOA once and for all at a philosophical level, the argument goes as follows:

Notice we can apply this same argument to a lot of innocent children who didn’t deserve to die horrible deaths. Thousands of children die every week due to starvation. Thousands of children die from cancer every year. Thousands are raped and/or murdered each year. The repugnant conclusion of all this is to say that it was the result of their negative thinking or negative habits.

The moral repugnancy comes in when we realize that if the LOA advocate is going to remain logically consistent, they must defend premise 5 and argue against premise 6. Since premise 5 is a logical consequence of (3) and (4), and (4) is obviously true, then it follows that (3) must be defended.

(3) is a consequence of (1) and (2), two major tenants of the LOA. (1) is the principle that our thoughts control our environment and experiences. (2) is a consequence of the idea that “like attracts like.” Since (3) is a consequence of these two principles, and (4) and (6) are obviously true, and (5) is obviously false, then it follows that (3) is false, thus, either (1) or (2) or both are false. If either (1) or (2) is false, then it follows that the LOA is false, since a necessary condition of it’s definition is false.

Possible Responses

Objection: Premise 2 is straw manning the LOA. LOA does not hold that people are fully responsible for positive and negative outcomes.

Reply: Then this goes back to my critique of the impracticality of the LOA. If we begin removing metaphysical commitments, then we simply are not talking about the LOA anymore, but some other thing that is useful to some people.

Let’s concede, for the sake of argument, that people are only partially responsible for positive and negative outcomes. This creates an epistemic problem of praise and blameworthiness of particular thoughts, and whether good or bad outcomes can be properly attributed to adhering to the principles of the LOA. For example, suppose I win the lottery tomorrow because I started thinking about winning millions. If I am only partially responsible for winning the lottery through my thinking richly, then the act of thinking about the millions itself cannot be reasonably praised as the reason for the win; since there is no way to determine whether it was through thinking richly or through dumb luck. Unless, of course, we were to admit that people are fully responsible for positive and negative outcomes for their thoughts.

By admitting there is only partial responsibility, this ought to give serious doubt to the vast amount of anecdotal evidence presented by LOA advocates. For example, The Mindset Mentor attributed getting a job in Florida to the LOA. He told his mother that her skepticism was unwarranted because he “knew” he was getting a job, never once doubting it. Lo and behold, he got the job. If his thoughts are the reason he got the job, then The Mindset Mentor is worthy of the praise for the job since his thoughts affected the outcome. But if he is only partially responsible, then it follows that other external factors played more of a role in getting the job. Thus, he could not attribute the positive thoughts to getting the job. It was merely another practical set of tools that helped in other areas of his life, like his anxiety. But there’s no substance to his, or any, anecdotal evidence for the LOA if we are only partially responsible.

Objection 2: Perhaps people are partially responsible, but only in the sense that their positive thoughts increase the probability of positive outcomes, and negative thoughts increase the probability of negative outcomes. We can reasonably discern that Sue didn’t deserve her negative outcome, but by a very low probability, she got an outcome that was more negative than she deserved. This not only takes away Sue’s full responsibility, but also partial responsibility as well.

Reply: If we take this route, then the principle that “like attracts like” is either false or redundant. Evil acts like murder, rape, abuse, and torture happen every day. If like really attracted like, then evil attracts evil. Since evil occurs at such a large scale, then either this happens because the negative thoughts of those who are suffering attract suffering (which all adds up into large-scale suffering), or suffering is largely the result of external factors – void of the individual attracting their own suffering. If most people who suffer are not getting what they deserve through their thoughts, then again, what is the point of thinking positively?

Works Cited

Farber, Nell. “The Truth about the Law of Attraction | Psychology Today Canada.” Www.psychologytoday.com, 15 May 2024, http://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-blame-game/201609/the-truth-about-the-law-of-attraction.

“Getting Started.” The Law of Attraction, thelawofattraction.com/.

Scott, Elizabeth. “Understanding and Using the Law of Attraction in Your Life.” Verywell Mind, 30 Jan. 2024, http://www.verywellmind.com/understanding-and-using-the-law-of-attraction-3144808.

Trakakis, Nick. “Evidential Problem of Evil, the | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Utm.edu, 2025, iep.utm.edu/evil-evi/#SSH2c.i.