Ok *cracks knuckles* I'll try and make this short (I do have a tendency to be long winded)
Midichlorines... yes, everybody has mitochondria. it's a scientific fact. But,uh.. what's so mystical spiritual or religious about that? Don't you feel that the inclusion of "midichlorines" watered down the force, changing what was a mystical thing into bad Sci-Fi pseudo science better suited to star trek?
Uri Geller and telekinesis and seeing the future...
http://home.xnet.com/~blatura/skep_2.html
Also there's a rather infamous incident with Uri Geller that I don't remember reading there. Years ago Uri Geller went on the tonight show, and Johnny Carson (a skeptic) replaced uri's spoons with other spoons. Oddly enough Uri found himself unable to preform any of his tricks. Psychic impotence if you will
I think that Lucas didn't do any reasearch into myths to create specific force ability as much as he just chose some rather common "superpowers" that were "neat"
And as far as getting off topic... hey, I tried to talk about lightsabers and skins and whatnot