My dad has spent almost all of his free time, for the last 40-50 yrs, as an amateur pseudo-scientist, including spiritism and syncretism, practicing a good sub

My dad has spent almost all of his free time, for the last 40-50 yrs, as an amateur pseudo-scientist, including spiritism and syncretism, practicing a good subset of beliefs and rituals spliced from Christian, African and Asian religions. He has been a part of different communities or groups at times (kardecists, candomblé and buddhists to name a few), as a teacher and practitioner (ie. "medium" and "doctor") but never did any of it for money (or power), afaik, but as a spiritually fulfilling hobby. Besides practicing things like issuing homeopathic treatments to the sick, having a very lively shrine at our different homes, reading and teaching at study sessions, and a hack-load of strange rituals, he also did plenty of charity and fundraisers for the needy in our different communities. Now he's semi-retired and focus mostly on Reiki. I grew up believing our home-equivalent of a "religion" (my mom is also a believer) to be the absolute and undeniable truth. It took me years to unlearn and today I'm quite the unattached, worldly person I've become. After watching dozens of people benefit or suffer under these rituals, is that there IS more good in it than bad. In the case of Reiki specifically, it's the "science" of comfort. The amazing feeling of human proximity, human touch and humane social interaction is very energizing and therapeutical. Reiki is different from mindfulness and meditation (which my dad taught me when I was 7) but not unlike them, is tied to healing activities practiced since ancient times and has many psychological, or even evolutionary, explanations on where its benefits come from. But its science is not linked in any way to quantum physics or energy as such. There's just no way my dad is actually sending me Reiki from 8000 miles away! He does try, though. Today I accept their beliefs, as I accept Reiki, and my only gripe is how my parents judgement was, at times, completely impaired by their faith, as they use it as a substitute (not a complement) to real science, in particular, as a proxy for a visit to a doctor. Or an "Earth doctor" like my dad used to say. As they've aged, they've also tuned down their rhetoric as only "Earth doctors" can install pacemakers. And that's the real damage Reiki, as many other treatments, inflicts: it can easily become a proxy therapy to real medicine and science, out of fear, money, conspiracies or plain dumbness. Maybe the way forward would be for (Western) science to embrace the study of spiritual therapies, so it can be understood and applied by the medical profession, which would help hinder obscurity and quackery. But I guess that's just what makes them appealing to so many people.