Chopra.
Deepak Chopra is a fraud who probably makes at least ten times my salary, who gets invited onto talk shows and news programs to spout his opinions, whose books are read by millions as if they actually provide any insight…and the guy has the brains of a turnip. It's just sad. Have you no shame, Ariana Huffington?
His latest attempt to explain himself (an effort which is to reason as cat-strangling is to art) is a poor critique of Dawkins' The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It promises to be part one. When I was in my twenties, I had a very difficult extraction of my wisdom teeth, and that promise reminded me of what the dentist said, after he he had literally knelt on the armrests of the chair, wielding a hammer and chisel against my tooth…"Well, that's the first one done." I'm sure you all know that awful sinking feeling as you complete one ugly chore, only to realize that there's more to come.
There isn't much to his argument, fortunately, so I'll just pluck out one representative piece of it. This is a familiar complaint: I call it the "Well, you can't see love in your fancy microscope, now can you, Dr Smarty Pants?" argument.
Is science the only route to knowledge? Obviously not. I know that my mother loved me all her life, as I love my own children. I feel genius in great works of art. None of this knowledge is validated by science. I have seen medical cures that science can't explain, some seemingly triggered by faith. The same is true of millions of other people. I know that I am conscious and have a self, even though Dawkins—along with many arch materialists—doesn't believe that consciousness is real or that the self is anything but a chemical illusion created in the brain. By Dawkins' reasoning a mother's love is no more real than God as neither can be empirically quantified.
Ho hum. You can sort of see the wheels turning in the poor sap's head: he's got this idea that Science is men in white lab coats with needles and instruments and computers, and he is surely convinced that they had nothing to do with his momma loving him, and of course they didn't. But then, his naive view of meddling scientism has nothing to do with what the godless and Dawkins are talking about. We're just saying that love is a natural property between human beings, no deity required. I would just ask him a few questions.
Is he, Deepak Chopra, a human being? Is he real?
Was his mother a human being? Was she real?
Can human beings feel love for one another here in the real world?
The answers, I would hope, would all be "yes" (although with a wacked-out flake like Chopra, one can never tell; he might answer "Unicorns," "Vibrations," and "Quantum" to the questions, but at least then I'll have cause to ask that he be committed.) Then I would say that all people like Dawkins are saying is that we're dealing with natural phenomena between natural agents in the natural world, so yes, we can observe it, test it, measure it, and believe it…no problem. Dawkins and I are most definitely not denying the existence of love, nor are we advancing this strange idea that other properties of the mind, like consciousness, do not exist.
It's a bad argument when you have to mischaracterize your opponents that grossly to make a point.
I would also turn his worries around. Do you think a mother's love and consciousness and art need to be validated by religion? Religion has nothing to do with those experiences; it offers nothing but unfounded, contradictory assertions that it contributes; it adds nothing to our understanding of mind or love or art. All of his complaints can be reversed right back at the superstitious nonsense of religion with far more accuracy than they can be applied to science.
Not that any of this will make the slightest impression on that turnip. He'll just go on making stuff up, selling lots of goofy books, and appearing on television. And, of course, he'll go on to inflict on us another vacuous cavil against a book he doesn't comprehend.
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According to the (almost) never-ending cycle of reincarnation oft mentioned in the Vedas, "Dr" Chopra is what those people who sexually abuse corpse-eating turtles reincarnate into.
Dawkins is a long-term threat to Deepak's income. And that money will find a better home in the RDF foundation.
I've never understood that one either. Saying that consciousness is a result of brain activity is not the same as saying that it isn't "real."
PZ, are you trying to drown us in stupidity today? I'm experiencing overload. Can't ... take ... anymore ... Stop!
I had the same argument with an ex-gal of mine, quork. It's bizarre. I don't honestly know where that comes from.
Brains are real, chemicals are real. Souls? A dualistic mind? Arguable, some would say, but definitely not proven to any degree. Whereas it's easily proven that we all have brains and neurons and neurotransmitters.
How is some weird Cartesian "mind" more real than that?
Is he, Deepak Chopra, a human being? Is he real?
Yeah, if you call failed wannabe politicians real. He lives in Monte Sereno, a tiny suburb of the tony town of Los Gatos near me, and ran for local office in '02:
Los Gatos Weekly-Times | 0245 | November 6, 2002
Chopra had 484 of Monte Sereno voters ( 17.1 percent ) supporting him . " I think it was a great race , " Chopra said . " I wish all three of the winners ...
Since Los Gatos is home of the "Pet Rock", it seems local standards have improved since then.
Y'know what would be weird now? If South Park did a show portraying Deepak Chopra as an obtuse pervert.
I've never understood why there has to be some sort of invisible stuff associated with consciousness, rather than having consciousness just be a phenomenon of certain complex assemblages of ordinary matter. The Chopras of the world seem to add a lot of unnecessary mechanisms without an iota of proof that they even exist. The existence of the brain isn't in doubt, last I checked, nor is there any evidence that it is insufficient for the support of consciousness. Of course, one can load the latter concept up with a whole load of flim-flam, much of which comes down to wishful thinking for life after death.
PZ, sit down. Gently close your eyes and take a slow, calming breath. Feel the stress leave when you exhale; feel the cool peace come in with each refreshing new lungful of air.
Ok, that was parody. But this isn't: according to Slate, Chopra's pulling in $15m a year.
Huh. I would hazard a guess that that's a little more than ten times what you make, PZ.
Eep. Submitted too soon. Stupid Tab button.
Addendum:
Kind of sickening, isn't it.
Urk. That's like 300 times what I make.
But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I'm not an idiot like Chopra. That counts for something, doesn't it? Doesn't it? Tell me it's all worth it.
Telling people what they want to hear is far more profitable unfortunately than trying to figure out real stuff about the universe (that isn't always comforting!) and solving real problems.
$15M/year. I bet his aura is doing great.
I'm going to bet that, materially speaking, you're fairly well off, and therefore not desperate to escape grinding poverty. So, the question becomes: would you accept mental derangement and loss of your ability to think coherently in exchange for $15 million dollars per year?
I know I wouldn't, and I suspect you wouldn't either.
I'm posting negative reviews on iTunes.
Utter Crap [1 star]
Not much more to say. Don't be conned by this con artist. He makes 15 million a year - that's 41K a day - off morons like you who click on that buy button. Resist!
I wonder if they will be accepted...
Caledonian asks, "Would you accept mental derangement and loss of your ability to think coherently in exchange for $15 million dollars per year?"
Hmmmm. What if I just faked that derangement for a year?
As I said in the other thread, one thing you can say about ID is that even though it's untestable, it sort of at least does give you some sense of how it answers the questions it claims science can't answer. At least I can picture a designer sitting down with a pen and paper and a DNA sequencer and figuring out how to construct a platypus. It may not be science, and it may end up just creating even bigger problems, but at least there is some logical story you can tell there.
But Chopra? Where are his explanations for love, consciousness, and all the rest? If he claims that they can't be explained by natural phenomenon (and forget the problem of how he knows this, since knowing it would require knowing everything about all natural phenomenon), then what ARE the explanations that he can give if we let him take off the burdensome rules of natural laws.
I mean really: have at it Chopra. Anything you can imagine: any process, any crazy concept: please just go crazy. Can you explain love? Consciousness?
No?
THEN WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU BABBLING ABOUT BUSHY BROWS?????
Quantum Unicorns!
Im sorry I just had to say it :p
Wait, do they have wave/particle duality too?
Probalistic Quantum Unicorns?
Of course quantum unicorns don't have wave particle duality. That's overy clinical for unicorns of any kind, let alone the thoroughbred quantum breed.
*Quantum* unicorns live a life of peace and plenty, with dead/alive cats in boxes and prime ministers undergoing rebirthing.
It's just sad. Have you no shame, Ariana Huffington?
No, I'm afraid she doesn't. Deepak Chopra's nonsense if a perfect illustration of why I stopped reading PuffHo's website. There's the occasional piece of interesting writing, but all in all it's The New Republic in blog form. It seems to be by and large a bunch of self-important authors handling contemporary issues with their usual elegance (similar to that a prison rape).
R.J. Eskow was a similar case a few weeks ago, beating his chest over Dawkins and Harris and generally making an asshole out of himself.
The one thing all of these religious/spiritual progressives have against Dawkins is that he calls the bluff. As Harris himself often points out, there is an assumption on the part of religious/spiritual progressives about religion and spirituality that seems to mirror similarly naive ideas about human nature: that it is basically good, but corrupted after the fact by power-mongering politicians. When Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, etc., show that the Osama bin Ladens and Fred Phelps of the world are following very plausible forms of their respective religions, and the John Shelby Spongs of the world are the one doing the manipulating and rationalizing, that's offensive and politically incorrect.
Quantum unicorn vibrators! ^.^ :P
PZ try reading some of the better arguments of the other side you tired old blowhard :)
PZ why are you so scared of philosophical questions and critical reflection? Your tired half-baked brand of scientism and logical positivism is risible and asinine. What next PZ perhaps a defence by you of the most spectacularly naïve version of the correspondence theory of truth eh?
I hate dumb arguments for theism and I also hate dumb arguments against theism.
Ok folks suggested reading but I have the feeling that you lot aren't at all open-minded or intellectually serious in any way, so it's a little like the rather bad mixing of pearls with swine (after all PZ and his chums know the Truth with a capital T with a certainty of 1, i.e. it is not open to revision - quite an odd attitude for 'scientists' really). Anyway try these:
"The Nature of Necessity" by Alvin Plantinga
http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Necessity-Clarendon-Library-Philosophy/dp/…
"Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality" by Alvin Plantinga
http://www.amazon.com/Essays-Metaphysics-Modality-Alvin-Plantinga/dp/01…
"Eternal God: A Study of God without Time" by Paul Helm
http://www.amazon.com/Eternal-God-Study-without-Time/dp/0198237251/ref=…
"Transcendence: Critical Realism and God" by Margaret Archer et al.
http://www.amazon.com/Transcendence-Margaret-Archer/dp/0415336171/sr=1-…
"Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Leibniz and the Monadology" by Anthony Savile
http://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Philosophy-Guidebook-Monadology-Guidebo…
Of course I think that the probability of a transcendental/divine aspect to reality is very low - asymptotically approaching zero, but I can't claim that I know for certain that it cannot be an aspect of reality. I guess for the 'thought crime' of even thinking that there might be an interesting question to be asked makes me part of mass of intellectually subnormal class of Untermensch to be destroyed by 'rationalists' like PZ and Caledonian and everyone's favorite dogmatist Sam Harris (the pro-torture liberal and cheerleader for science to 'destroy' religion - perhaps by using gas chambers to destroy the religious along with agnostics, deists et al.?)
Polluting Knowledge, A Poem
Science, God and Dingbats
the guru claims himself to be
a doctor and a scientist,
but from what he writes
and speaks it's clear he never
understood any science or medicine.
perhaps he crammed
some facts and regurgitated
them sometime somewhere
to get his licence
to practice medicine -
that he no longer has.
the main problem is,
he's irrational and has no
logic - he can't see how basic
entities can interact together
and make complex structures,
like massive replicating
molecules that can give
rise to life with its inherent
uniqueness.
his view of the world is
religious - Vedas, Upanishads, souls
Yamas, moon gods, sun gods and God -
and not scientific as he lacks
logic and understanding of science.
if given a test, he would fail
the 101 course in logic,
he would fail high school
physics, biology and mathematics.
he understands really
nothing, it is now so clear,
from what he writes or speaks
he misinterprets everything.
how shameful it is,
he goes on misguiding
the unfortunate folks who
never had a chance in
life for learning basic
facts of science.
the more he talks,
the more he writes,
the more in his
stupidity he's trapped,
and then more he
fights to trash science.
poor dingbat guru of the moon-bats!
for the insane there are
in hospitals special wards.
but what choice do we have
for the irrational, illogical
new age gurus who go on
polluting knowledge with
their bizarre nonsense?
perhaps it's the fault of the
scientists who spend lives making
their discoveries and ignore
explaining science to simple folks.
whitewings.sulekha.com
But c'mon, it's been handy, hasn't it?
You see an acquaintance or coworker earnestly reading a book by Chopra, and you realize that the whole job of determining whether or not that person is a complete idiot has been done for you.
15 mil a year is cheap for providing such a foolproof idiot detection system.
"Of course I think that the probability of a transcendental/divine aspect to reality is very low - asymptotically approaching zero, but I can't claim that I know for certain that it cannot be an aspect of reality."
Have you ever, in your life, stated that the Earth was round as a fact? There is an incredibly small chance, verging on impossible, that Cthulhlu just tricked us into thinking it was round. Any evidence against this theory was planted by Cthulhlu to cover his tracks. Or do you always object to those who claim the Earth is round, saying they are neo-nazis who are planning to gas all the people who have discovered Cthulhlu's evil plot? Would you sit there with a smug look on your face, knowing you are undecided on the shape of the Earth?
And of course, if you answered "no" to any of the above, you were OBVIOUSLY trying to say yes, but was subjugated by the will of Cthulhlu as he made sure nobody discovered the conspiracy.
MOMUS: Are you high?
But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I'm not an idiot like Chopra. That counts for something, doesn't it? Doesn't it? Tell me it's all worth it.
Well, I think it's worth quite a lot not to be a charlatan who's an idiot, deceiving even more idiotic people for money. I'm sure you do, too.
I wonder how many times his loving mother accidentally dropped him on his head when he was a infant.
I guess for the 'thought crime' of even thinking that there might be an interesting question to be asked
Thought crime is one thing, but Chopra is certainly not guilty of thought crime. Nice strawman, by the way. Lovely links, too.
This Deepak Chopra guy is obvious big in the USA.
( Is that his real name by the way - are you sure he hasn't changed his name from something like David Chorley?)
Not hear of over her - I'm glad to say.
Though we have brain-stuffed kooks like Theo Hobson ... see:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/theo_hobson/2006/11/atheism_is_a_fa…
Perhaps PZ and the rest of you would like to try this idiot's inanities?
BTW, how do you enable a title to hyperlink in these boxes?
Tingey:
Entire the link in the "URL" box when you post and it'll do that.
And I second the "are you high" to MOMUS. Even if there was a single valid assertion in your entire post, if you were right about us planning to gas people who disagree with our position, why on earth would you come here and harrass us? Seriously; if you're suicidal there are more effective ways to accomplish it (since the success rate of "getting the mean nasty atheists to gas one" is going to be zero, unless you tie a few up and force-feed them chili). If you're dead set on putting yourself out of the world's misery, I recommend jumping from a high building; given the ignorant arrogance oozing from your statements, the "pride goeth before a fall" cracks that would inevitably result would have people rolling in the aisles...
"...the guy has the brains of a turnip."
I take offence to that.
Write that book, PZ. We'd all buy it.
$15 million? Damn. Maybe our quantum nature does explain spirituality...
About Caledonian's dilemma:
I, for one, would definitely take the $15m/year.
The great thing about being totally deranged is that you don't (can't?) realize that you're deranged.
Show me the money!
I love the guys who come in and babble about their masturbation fantasies of being persecuted by atheists. Show me an atheist book-burning, much less a gas chamber.
Well, I'm impressed PZ went to the trouble of taking this guy apart. It was past my threshold level of excessive vapidity, sadly. That being the point at which my brain sez: 'going to the trouble of actually finding an argument here coherent enough to refute will be excessively painful, and we will still be uncertain this was even what the dumb schmuck meant, even assuming the dumb schmuck knows what he means; thus: I want breakfast.'
Yes, 'I want breakfast' doesn't directly follow from the premise, here. But it makes about as much sense as anything Chopra's ever put together.
Oh, and speaking of breakfast, please don't put the words 'Deepak Chopra' and 'love god' together in a sentence, ever again. That's just wrong.
MOMUS wrote:
******************************
http://www.godchecker.com/
******************************
"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." (Stephen F. Roberts)
Have a nice day!
I wonder how many times his loving mother accidentally dropped him on his head when he was a infant.
Several times too many, and one time too few.
God Exists
PROOFS OF GOD'S EXISTENCE
the guru is getting mucho
desperate. his illogical
logic to prove the existence of
god now carries no weight.
he still has some illiterate
followers - the dingbats like
him, or the followers with some
old diplomas gotten sometime
somewhere regurgitating
at exams one or the other thing,
like him.
so to prove the existence of
god one wonders if
one day he'd put at display
the statues of gods
reincarnated as:
Shiva who drank his own urine
Ganesha, the elephant headed his son
Krishna who wooed 100 women
Rama who asked Sita, his woman
to walk through hot burning fires
to prove her kidnapper-lover-king did
not make love to her and
finally Rama anyway kicked
her out of his home.
If the non-believers still do not
believe in the proofs of his god --
he cannnot order his believer
followers to kill all heathens
or ask for huge ransoms like
the prophet's followers did --
he might lay bare open in
public his vedas and upnishadas
that tell everything about
god, ghosts, souls, spirits,
heaven, hell and the flat Earth.
what will he do if
people still do not believe him?
write another book in
gobbledygook
to recruit illiterates like
him?
whitewings.sulekha.com
http://whitewings.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/11/proofs-of-god-s-existen…
Not just Dawkins et. al. About a billion Buddhists are every bit as certain of exactly the same thing. No self, just an illusion, a myth of apparent immutable continuity that evaporates the moment it's studied.
Seems Shallopwpaq Chopra's out of touch with a hell of a lot more than he realizes.
Intellectually Bankrupt, a poem
WOULD YOU
would you go to
tundra to discuss plantain
plantations with Eskimos
living there?
would you plant
plantains there?
would you go
discussing paintings of
Picasso with a man born
blind?
would you go asking
ants how heavy weigh
the elephants?
would you go pleading
with lions to be on a
diet that is meatless?
would you go
convincing bible
blabbers that
immaculate conception
of Mary was a figment
of imagination?
if you do,
then discuss with an
intellectually bankrupt guru
the logic of his irrational
thoughts on physics, biology
medicine or on the
evolution of man or
on the existence of God.
if you don't,
leave him alone.
he is an ignorant
unashamed, incorrigible
corrupter of human
intelligence.
his followers are simple
folks with pure hearts
who unfortunately has
no grasp of science,
like him.
with time he will
fade and so will
his followers.
whitewings.sulekha.com
http://whitewings.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/11/would-you.htm
Well, on the plus side, I just realized that I have a succinct way of describing my increasing antipathy for Dean Koontz: "he writes like some hideous hybrid of Stephen King and Deepak Chopra".
Azkyroth: Those would at least have a legitimate use ...
MOMUS: Perhaps you should read other philosophy books, ones that will tell you quite clearly that PZ is not a positivist. As for your laundry list, Leibniz and Plantinga's views are probably incompatible. What are you wanting us to get out of them?
(What is it with this "concern trolls" and others who claim to have all this high-falutin' knowledge of philosophy and yet have no grasp whatsoever of the philosophy of science?)
Warren: Thus showing idealism doesn't do quite all the work in Chopra's "thinking".
Hi...
I work for a law firm. We represented Deepak Chopra. Our attorney who handled his case was given death threats by Chopra, because believed his case would lose and hence the attorney had to be on security watch. Yes, we hired security guards for the firm, the hallways leading up to the firm, even with high security access had to be watched. I was a believer in Chopra, sadly as the masses, until I witnessed what his actions did for the firm. It's amazing what talk of auras and bullshit can do to make money.