Here is an error-filled post about evolution by Deepak Chopra, frequent poster to the lefty blog, Huffington Post. I don't have time to point out the many ways in which Chopra mangles his description of biology, but PZ Myers has. Clear evidence that scientific illiteracy does not respect political boundaries.
More like this
Orac is currently hiding from the Federation in an undisclosed location (somewhere warm and out of the country, the better to avoid election news after having cast an absentee ballot), where he is charging his Tarial cells, the better to return fully recharged and ready to dive back into the mass
I realize that this has been posted by a lot of people on Facebook and around the blogosphere, but I can't resist.
Last week, everyone's favorite woo-meister, the man whose woo is so strong that I even coined a term for it way back in the early mists of time (at least as far as this blog is concerned), was
I have the same feeling. I am too tired to point the jet plane analogy is wrong, for I have encountered it too many times...
Depak Chopra is a crazy right winger, not a liberal.
It's not even that the jet plane analogy is wrong in some subtle way, such that you could present a counter argument. It's just completely contentless. It's the same as saying, "Evolution is really unlikely! How unlikely you ask? As unlikely as me getting a date with Madonna! Take that!"
<3
Carl,
This sort of misinformation from Deepak is the norm for the creationists. PZ refers to Deepak as stupid, I worry that this characterization is dangerous. Deepak's comments are carefully designed to sway some portion of public opinion - sadly. These are careful ploys the rely on the ignorance of people to decieve them and spoken by someone they believe ought to know.
This is why I am so disappointed in the NYT articles on evolution, they failed to carefully articulate the truth from a position credibility. It is a shame that you did not write those articles.
I agree. The fact is, proving something with analogy can't be a scientific way.
Uniquely, deeply, deepakly depressing.
The good news is that the comments on the bad doctor's pseudoscience often roundly debunked his phony "questions." And it was good to see links to TalkOrigins.
Is it any real wonder that a person who spews utter nonsense on other aspects of reality would get biology wrong as well, though?
I haven't read the piece by Chopra, but he has done the same kind of thing in trying to use quantum physics as an argument to support his New Ageish ideas. (For that matter, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi claims to have degrees in physics.)
His latest gets better. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/rescuing-intelligent-desi_b_6164.html
When I turn off a lightbulb, am I killing a conscious being?