I try not to be into bashing others here on SmartPastor.  (Other than the folks from The Slice/Christian Research Network.)  So don’t take this as bashing one of America’s most beloved celebrities, Oprah.  But she is, arguably, America’s foremost philosopher and when she is espousing something it deserves attention.

I am becoming more and more concerned with this whole movement towards the so called "law of attraction" and the popularity it is taking on.  I think it is a mindset that sets people up for failure and then leads them to not believe in any sort of God.

Salon.com has a good piece up on The Secret and Oprah’s promotion of it.  So do not read these quotes as letting her have it, but sharing words of caution about the philosophy behind it.  Please note that some of the text I have copied over contains profanity.  So if that bothers you, don’t read any further.

The main idea of "The Secret" is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it — and the book certainly has
created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her
partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it — the enlisting of
that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional
pyramid scheme — is brilliant. But what really makes "The Secret" more
than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey,
who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that
prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam.

Worse than "The Secret’s" blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced
bullshitting. The titular "secret" of the book is something the authors
call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed
by the principle that "like attracts like" and that our thoughts are
like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative
thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the
opposite — positively charged magnets attract negatively charged
particles — and the rest of "The Secret" has a similar relationship to
the truth.

and

The promises of Oprah culture can seem irresistible, and its hallmarks
are becoming ubiquitous. Believers may be separated into tribes
according to what they believe, but they do it in pretty
much the same way, relying on a "Secret"-style conception of
"intuition" — which seems to amount to the sneaking suspicion that
they’re always right — to arrive at their tenets. Instead of the world
as it is, constantly changing and full of contradiction, they see a
fixed and fantastical place, where good things come to those who
believe, whether it’s belief in a diet, a God, or a Habit of Successful
People. These believers may believe in the healing power of homeopathy,
or Scripture or organizational skills — in intelligent design,
astrology or privatization. They all trust that their devotion will be
rewarded with money and boyfriends and job promotions, with hockey
championships and apartments. And most of all they believe — they
really, really believe — in themselves.

And in conclusion…

Not that any of this is new. Aimee Semple McPherson, "The Power of
Positive Thinking," Father Coughlin, est, James Van Praagh — pick your
influential snake-oil salesman or snake oil. They were all cut from the
same cloth as Oprah and "The Secret." The big, big difference is, well,
the bigness. The infinitely bigger reach of the Oprah empire and its
emissaries. They make their predecessors look like kids with lemonade
stands. It would be stupidly dangerous to dismiss Oprah and "The
Secret" as silly, or ultimately meaningless. They’re reaching more
people than Harry Potter, for God-force’s sake. That’s why what Oprah
does matters, and stinks. If you reach more people than Bill O’Reilly,
if you have better name recognition than Nelson Mandela, if the books
you endorse sell more than Stephen King’s, you should take some
responsibility for your effect on the culture. The most powerful woman
in the world is taking advantage of people who are desperate for
meaning, by passionately championing a product that mocks the very idea
of a meaningful life.

I recommend the whole article.  You can find it here: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/03/05/the_secret/

Also, Check out my previous post on The Secret.