The Science Delusion?

[The Edge]

The Science Delusion?
Review of Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion
(406 p., Boston: Houghton Mifflin)
by Deepak Chopra

It’s rare for a book about science to polarize the general public, but when such a book takes on religious questions, the combination is highly combustible. Richard Dawkins, already reputed as a contentious writer in the ongoing debate about evolution, has no problem striking a match. In his bestseller this fall, The God Delusion (no subtitle necessary because no quarter is given) he assaults the proposition that there is, or ever has been, any value in the idea of God.

Dawkins’ position is absolute, drawing a line in the sand between science (rational, progressive, verifiable, and tied to physical laws) and religion (archaic, primitive, irrational, and tied to little more than emotional need). If The God Delusion only existed to draw this line, it would hardly be worth notice. Science is triumphant and has been for many generations. What could be the use of a scathing attack on religion post-Darwin, post-Freud, post-Einstein? The answer (leaving aside Dawkins’ delight in a war of words) is timely: fundamentalism. In the wake of Intelligent Design as a defense of creationism and the rise of religious-inspired terrorism, in the face of the Bush administration’s thwarting of stem-cell research on religious grounds, among other benighted positions (Bush has nice words to say about Intelligent Design and dismissive ones about global warming), many scientists feel that reason itself is under siege.

The God Delusion is a reflexive counterpunch, a derisive, often entertaining polemic against unreason. It’s hard not to admire Dawkins’ skill when he compares the narrow spectrum of electromagnetic frequencies that our senses can detect to the slit in a burka worn by Muslim women. In both instances one’s vision becomes very limited. As with any good debater, Dawkins relishes unfairness in a good cause. To implicitly lump all believers into the same bag as Jerry Falwell and mullahs in Iran ignores a thousand divisions of faith. To portray God as an anthropomorphic patriarch sitting above the sky ignores thousands of years of theology and philosophy. Allah isn’t personified, neither is Yahweh in the Old Testament or Brahman in Hinduism, not to mention belief systems like Taoism and Buddhism that dispense with God but retain a transcendent dimension .

Dawkins sweeps aside some of the greatest minds in history who took God seriously (Plato, Socrates, Hegel, Kant, Aquinas, Newton) because they haven’t kept up with the latest issue of Scientific American, as he has. His book has been widely excoriated for its unfairness and its “paint everybody with the same brush” tactics. The brush has a clean side, since he also neglects to condemn the atom bomb, poison gas, biological weapons, and other diabolical creations of science as he busily condemns religion for its sins in the name of God.

But I want to be cognizant of my audience. I presume that any reader of Skeptic magazine will root for Dawkins and cheer his attack on pseudo-science, mysticism, religious superstition, and all things supernatural. Which by implication means that there is no rational rebuttal to such an argument as The God Delusion presents.

Actually, there is.

A considerable number of scientists have worked hard to merge the two worldviews of science and religion. Some do this in order to preserve a cherished notion of God, usually inherited from childhood (I once went to a university debate between an erudite philosopher and a Jesuit priest. The philosopher stood up and delivered an hour’s worth of arguments for why God didn’t exist. The Jesuit stood up and said, “My mother told me He did, and I believe her.” The audience gave him a loud round of applause). But the vast majority of physicists, systems theorists, information theorists, and biologists who remain intrigued by the God hypothesis have looked far beyond Dawkins. The slit in his burka may be wider than a jihadist’s, but it’s narrow by comparison to real forward thinkers.

In such limited space I must assume that my readers understand the basics of Darwinian evolution and its description of how life evolved. The key terms are random mutation, competition, adaptation, and survival. Once the argument became focused on genetics, Darwin’s theory was enormously bolstered, because DNA offered material evidence both for how life changes and how it remains the same. But DNA is a molecule, and that fact opened Pandora’s box, because to be truly viable, genetics has to be consistent with quantum physics, our current best theory of physical reality and the nature of the universe.

Dawkins gives a passing nod to physics, largely as a rhetorical flourish about the ‘wonder’ of the universe and how little we still comprehend it. But his main aim is much simpler, to decry the notion of a Creator God, to support a materialist explanation for life, and to assure everyone that bit by bit the fields of genetics and neurology will explain such age-old mysteries as mind, consciousness, and intelligence. It’s to these enigmas that we must look. The point isn’t that religion is right, but that arch materialism isn’t, either.

What we observe once we get over the superstition of materialism (a superstition Dawkins defends to the last degree) is that random chance is one of the worst ways to explain how the universe evolved.

--The various constants in nature, such as gravity and the speed of light, are too precisely fitted with each other for this to happen by chance.
--If any one of six constants had been off by less than a millionth of 1 percent, the material universe couldn't exist.
--Events at opposite ends of the universe are paired with each other, so that a change in the spin of one electron immediately produces a twin effect in another electron. This ability to communicate instantly across millions of light years cannot be explained by materialism. It defies all notions of cause and effect. it defies chance.
--Every electron in the universe exists as a wave function that is everywhere at once. When this wave function collapses, we observe a specific isolated electron. Before the wave collapses, however, matter is non-local.

The ability of objects and events to be everywhere at once seems like an attribute of God--omnipresence. The ability of electrons separated by millions of light years to 'talk' to each other seems like another attribute of God--omniscience. This doesn't mean that God explains the universe. It means that there may be governing forces at work which allow the existence of universal consciousness. The self-aware universe is a plausible theory. Many writers have described it, although Dawkins disdains such theories. If the universe is self-aware, it would explain the formation of a self-replicating molecule like DNA far more elegantly than the clumsy, crude mechanism of random chance. (Dawkins argues vociferously that natural selection isn’t random–the better adapted species is the one that survives–but he is equally vociferous that genetic mutation is random, not to mention the underlying interaction of atoms and molecules.)

One can say that two broad rivers of human experience have run into each other. One river carries science and objective observation of the world. The other river carries subjective experience and our craving for meaning, beauty, love, and truth. There is no reason why these two rivers need to be separated, and what we are seeing---despite Dawkins' hysterical defense of materialism---is a merging. With a generation there will be accepted theories that integrate the world 'out there' with the world 'in here.’

Dawkins argues, as any arch materialist must, that the universe isn’t conscious. He holds that humans are conscious because chemicals complexly collide in the brain to produce a phantom we ignorantly call the mind. This is a fashionable view, held without equivocation among evolutionary biologists and neurologists alike, and in fact is the logical outcome of materialism. Where else could mind come from if not molecules, assuming that molecules are the basis of the brain and therefore of reality itself? Common sense finds it hard to take this argument seriously, however, because it leads to nonsense. The brain contains an enormous amount of water and salt. Are we to assume that water is intelligent, or salt is conscious? If they aren't, then we must assume that throwing water and salt together--along with about six other basic building blocks of organic chemicals--suddenly makes them intelligent. The bald fact is that Dawkins defends an absurd position because he can't make the leap to a different set of assumptions.

--Consciousness is part of existence. It wasn't created by molecules.
--Intelligence is an aspect of consciousness.
--Intelligence grows as life grows. Both evolve from within.
--The universe evolved along intelligent lines.

I realize that I've dropped a bomb into the discussion. The instant the word 'intelligent' comes up, skeptics rush in to shout that one is defending Intelligent Design, which is a stalking horse for creationism, which is a stalking horse for fundamentalist Christianity, which is a stalking horse for Jesus as the one and only Son of God. Such is the heated climate of debate at the moment, and Dawkins takes full (often unfair) advantage of it. Only Jesus freaks, one would surmise, could possibly believe in an intelligent universe.

However, if consciousness is innate in the universe, so is intelligence. This hypothesis has nothing to do with God sitting on a throne in heaven creating Adam and Eve. If we remain sane and clear-headed, the reason to assume that consciousness exists is simple. There's no other way to account for it. Without a doubt there is enormous design, complexity, organization, and interc-onnectedness everywhere in Nature. You can either say "I see it, let me explain it" or you can say "Ignore it, it's just a byproduct of randomness." Consciousness isn't just plausible as part of Nature, it's totally necessary. Not just to keep God around but to keep science around.

There are many philosophical ways to cast doubt on materialism and it’s a priori assumption that the material world exists, when in fact the universe we must come to terms with is “a radically ambiguous, ceaselessly flowing quantum soup,” to quote physicist Nick Herbert. Since science believes in experiments over philosophy, however, here is one. It's a thought experiment. Einstein came up with the theory of relativity through a thought experiment, so it's completely valid to do experiments in your head.

Think of a yellow flower. Can you see it? Are you sure of the color and the fact that it's a flower and not a fish? If so, then the experiment has been successful. You have made a major strike at the root of materialism. When you see a flower in your mind, there is no flower inside your brain. That seems simple enough. But where is the flower? There's no picture of it in your cerebrum, because your brain contains no light. How about the color yellow? Is there a patch of yellow inside your brain's gray matter? Obviously not.

Yet you assume--as do all who fall for the superstition of materialism--that flowers and the color yellow exist 'out there' in the world and are photographically reproduced by the brain, acting as a camera made of organic tissue. But here is the eminent Australian neurologist and Nobel laureate Sir John Eccles: “I want you to realize that there is no color in the natural world and no sounds–nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent.”

In fact, the existence of a flower shifts mysteriously once it is closely examined. The experience of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell is created in consciousness. Molecules don't assemble in your head to make the sound of a trumpet blaring in a brass band, for example. The brain is silent. So where does the world of sights and sounds come from?

Materialists cannot offer any reasonable explanation. The fact is that an enormous gap exists between any physical, measurable event and our perception. If I talk to you, all I am doing is vibrating air with my vocal cords. Every aspect of that event can be seen and measured, but turning those vibrating air molecules into meaningful words has never been seen or measured. It can't be. That's why Dawkins will never find God. He's looking in the wrong place.

Materialism can't deliver God, not because God doesn't exist, but because the solid, physical world is an illusion--as quantum physics proved long ago. Religion to my mind has one undeniable truth on its side: one must look inside consciousness itself to find God. If God is a universal intelligence, that will turn out to be a fact but of a strange kind that we aren’t yet used to.

When you get to the primal state of the universe, what is it? A universal field that encloses all matter and energy. This field is everywhere, but it also localizes itself. A molecule in the brain is one expression of the field, so is a thought. If a molecule isn't an object but a collapsed quantum wave, then that holds true for the whole brain. The field turns out to be the common ground of both the inner and outer world. When Einstein said that he wanted to know the mind of God, he was pointing us toward the field, which quantum physics continues to explore. Crude skeptics like Dawkins lag far behind.

My time is up. There are countless ramifications to these lines of inquiry. Fortunately, as the two worlds of inner and outer begin to merge, we won't be plagued by either the superstition of religion or the superstition of materialism. New concepts will explain how the color yellow exists in our brain as the same phenomenon as a yellow flower in the meadow. Both are experiences in consciousness.

Contrary to what Dawkins thinks, design in the universe isn't a blueprint set down by a fictitious God. It's a vital, ever-evolving, imaginative, dramatic process. Strangely enough, so is human existence. The similarity isn't a coincidence--there is nothing we call human that isn't, quite literally, transcendent. Beyond the physical world lies the womb of creation, and whether we call it God is irrelevant. We came from a source, we are forever in contact with our source, and we are constantly returning to our source. This is the real mystery of existence that Dawkins trivializes with his over-heated skepticism. Far more profound are the words of T.S. Eliot:

And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled.

[Lusiphur]

F sake .. can we have less of your prosletyzing ?

We know you dream of Deepak violating you repeatedly every night but the rest of the rational population considers him an irrelevance. At best.

[The Edge]

Originally Posted by Lusiphur

F sake .. can we have less of your prosletyzing ?

We know you dream of Deepak violating you repeatedly every night but the rest of the rational population considers him an irrelevance. At best.

Charming. Did you actually read the article or are you just here to bash? If you did read it, what do you agree/disagree with?

[Screamfeeder]

Originally Posted by Deepak Chopra

Dawkins argues, as any arch materialist must, that the universe isn’t conscious. He holds that humans are conscious because chemicals complexly collide in the brain to produce a phantom we ignorantly call the mind. This is a fashionable view, held without equivocation among evolutionary biologists and neurologists alike, and in fact is the logical outcome of materialism. Where else could mind come from if not molecules, assuming that molecules are the basis of the brain and therefore of reality itself? Common sense finds it hard to take this argument seriously, however, because it leads to nonsense. The brain contains an enormous amount of water and salt. Are we to assume that water is intelligent, or salt is conscious? If they aren't, then we must assume that throwing water and salt together--along with about six other basic building blocks of organic chemicals--suddenly makes them intelligent. The bald fact is that Dawkins defends an absurd position because he can't make the leap to a different set of assumptions.

This right here sums up Deepak Chopra.

He doesn't understand biology so it must not be the way the world works. He is trying to use the same argument that the Peanut Butter contains life guy did. It is too bad that Mr. Chopra cannot take the time to understand how the brain actually works.

This entire article contains no actual substance. It sounds like the bellyaching of a poor sport that that got his ass kicked in a debate and returns home to write a big story on why he should have won.

How much more of this "I feel a certain way so science must be fake" bullshit are we going to have to put up from you and Deepak The Edge?

[Tea on tuesday]

Originally Posted by Screamfeeder

This right here sums up Deepak Chopra.

He doesn't understand biology so it must not be the way the world works. He is trying to use the same argument that the Peanut Butter contains life guy did. It is too bad that Mr. Chopra cannot take the time to understand how the brain actually works.

It's funny that so much of his argument boils down to a logical fallacy laid out by the Greeks over two millennia ago.

Solid.

[Schatze]

Edit: HAHA the stupid motherfucker tries to claim that sense and perception are little understood, a gap in materialism. This boyo just stepped into my ring, will tackle his bullshit at the end.

Oh boy, the anthropic principal! Like that's not been tackled 1 million billion times!

Plato, Socrates, Hegel, Kant, Aquinas, Newton

I guess Deepak thinks the philosophical/Deist God (e.g. first or starting force, uninvolved) is the same as the all knowing all seeing man in the sky god? Cause he lumps the two together.

--Events at opposite ends of the universe are paired with each other, so that a change in the spin of one electron immediately produces a twin effect in another electron. This ability to communicate instantly across millions of light years cannot be explained by materialism. It defies all notions of cause and effect. it defies chance.
--Every electron in the universe exists as a wave function that is everywhere at once. When this wave function collapses, we observe a specific isolated electron. Before the wave collapses, however, matter is non-local.

LOL. Quantum entanglement is not communication. No information is transfered. And it does not defy all notions of cause and effect, especially considering that our understanding of time on the macro scale is very different than that on the sub-atomic. His consequent claim that objects are everywhere at once is lol.

Oh goody, now I can break out my sense and perception knowledge.

There are many philosophical ways to cast doubt on materialism and it’s a priori assumption that the material world exists, when in fact the universe we must come to terms with is “a radically ambiguous, ceaselessly flowing quantum soup,” to quote physicist Nick Herbert. Since science believes in experiments over philosophy, however, here is one. It's a thought experiment. Einstein came up with the theory of relativity through a thought experiment, so it's completely valid to do experiments in your head.

Think of a yellow flower. Can you see it? Are you sure of the color and the fact that it's a flower and not a fish? If so, then the experiment has been successful. You have made a major strike at the root of materialism. When you see a flower in your mind, there is no flower inside your brain. That seems simple enough. But where is the flower? There's no picture of it in your cerebrum, because your brain contains no light. How about the color yellow? Is there a patch of yellow inside your brain's gray matter? Obviously not.

Yet you assume--as do all who fall for the superstition of materialism--that flowers and the color yellow exist 'out there' in the world and are photographically reproduced by the brain, acting as a camera made of organic tissue. But here is the eminent Australian neurologist and Nobel laureate Sir John Eccles: “I want you to realize that there is no color in the natural world and no sounds–nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent.”

Ugh John Eccles needs to punch this fucker in the face. What Eccles meant is that color, sound, texture, pattenr, scent, are all psychological percepts. But these psychological percepts are created by very real material phenomenon. Color is electromagnetic spectrum, sound pressure waves, texture phsical pressure, scent is chemicals. But through sense and perception we construct these percepts in a wholly materialistic manner.

Let's take the flower.

Yellow corresponds to a specific band of the electromagnetic wavelength. Humans, being what we are, have the ability to perceive certain external stimulus. In this case, the light passes into the eye and when the photon of that specific section of the visible spectrum strikes a small sack of pigment that is tuned to that relevant section of the spectrum, the pigment bleaches. This, in turn, causes a graded potential to move across the neuron associated with said pigment sack, and if the stimulus persists for long enough, causes an action potential. This action potential spreads down the dendrites of the nerve to the terminal button where neurotransmitters are released, which mate with receptors in the axons of the connectings nerves, which continue down the optic nerve to the V1 area. Of course, parallel to this, there are other neurons firing in response to different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum reflected by the flower, neurons that inhibit/excite neighboring neurons that determine shape as the pattern of light strikes the retina.

These parallel streams of spreading neural activation travel down the optic nerve to the V1 area at the back of the brain. There, the various parallel streams of action potential trigger specific areas in the V1, which then will farm off further processing of the visual image to the other areas of the visual system specialized for processing shape motion or colour etc, once the parallel processing streams have gone through their wondrous route of traveling action potentials, the various streams are fed back to be processed and synthesized into a singular whole. The color is an arbitrary attribution to the specific wavelength of light that activated a specific cone attached to a specific neuron. So yes, outside the percept of yellow, yellow does not exist. But the specific wavelength of visible light that our brain represents as yellow does. The shape of the flower is determined by activation/inhibition in the neural strata of the eye that are specifically tuned to response to color gradients, thus giving shape. When this information converges and is synthesized into one coherent "image" we see some oddly shaped thing that is reflecting the wavelength of light that our brain has arbitrarily assigned to yellow. We then, through basic cognitive facilities, realize that that yellow object of that specific shape with those specific properties are what our socialization/teaching has determined be labeled a flower.

This is not an argument against materialism, but an argument FOR materialism. A percept may be a psychological construct, but the process by which it is transformed from electromagnetic radiation of a given wavelength in the visual band to the aforementioned percept of a yellow flower is completely materialistic and extremely well understood. There is no ---> and then something magical happens step in the process.

Deepak just tried to suggest that psychophysics and psycho neurophysics is a mystery and a huge hole for science. Whereas, especially the visual system, it's perhaps one of the best understood areas of the human brain and its functioning. I tried to keep things non-technical as sense and perception almost had my brain melting even with an active knowledge base. If anyone is interested I could bust out one of my texts and explain the exact process.

In fact, the existence of a flower shifts mysteriously once it is closely examined. The experience of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell is created in consciousness. Molecules don't assemble in your head to make the sound of a trumpet blaring in a brass band, for example. The brain is silent. So where does the world of sights and sounds come from?

Materialists cannot offer any reasonable explanation. The fact is that an enormous gap exists between any physical, measurable event and our perception. If I talk to you, all I am doing is vibrating air with my vocal cords. Every aspect of that event can be seen and measured, but turning those vibrating air molecules into meaningful words has never been seen or measured. It can't be. That's why Dawkins will never find God. He's looking in the wrong place.

Funny, if materialists can't explain this, how come I just fucking did? And turning those vibrating molecules of air has been seen, has been measured, has been empirically verified. So what the fuck does this have to do with God?


edit: dug up some notes from the very first day of my SP class years ago. Of course I spent months on the optical system, but here's a rough sketch of wtf goes on.

1.) Reception - activation by physical energy in the environment, e.g. visual reception = retinal absorption of photons (individual cells specialized to pick up a particular wave length of light): receipt
2.) Transduction - conversion of physical energy into neurological, e.g. electrochemical patterns across cell membranes, e.g. graded potential or action potential
3.)Coding - establishing a relationship between patterns of the physical stimulus and patterns of neural signals
a.) encoding- intitial coding phase (temporal pattern), timing aspect to the stimulus; when event is happening, when it stops, stimulus onset and offset
b.) Representation- neural representation of the stimulus attributes, anatomical coding, functional specificity; either going to have an impulse or not; binary functioning exists in all nervous cells: how do we psychologically construct color, and the shape of an object, when they both follow the same pathway and signal; anatomical location of the specific neuron and its connection/relationship to the pathway, where it leads, that allows us to distinguish between these. Parallel processing within one modality, visual processing takes place in many areas, different parallel processing streams (e.g. color, shape, movement), everythign is routed to V1, where various areas respond to different streams, where they are farmed off to either the ventral route for colour or form, or to the dorsal route for location and motion
c.) interpretation- actual assignment of perceptual properties like colour, after the disparate streams have been integrated and synthesized and emerge in the conscious realm, e.g. red

No, a wizard did it!

Deepak is one stupid motherfucker. Is he the loon who thinks rocks are alive?

[TKarrde]

Quite simply, Deepak Chopra is guilty of the very same argument he leverages against others - and more so than they are, by far.

The Edge, I really question if you actually intend to bring anything to the table when you're posting various articles of Chopra's, or if you're simply here to pick a fight. You know you're not going to change your mind, even after actual evidence has been posted, as we've seen previously in threads of yours.

Largely, the sum of your existence on these boards regarding Chopra is taking an article that has no scientific backing (And as people with knowledge in the subject will tell you is flat out wrong), acting as if it is holy writ, and then complaining about how people don't actually take him serious/haven't read all of his works and as such cannot comment on him, etc.

[Lusiphur]

Looky, looky. That only took a few hours for the posting to be thoroughly debunked

And he accused me of taking it lightly. Or not responding with substance.

I tell you what The Edge, when Deepak actually makes an utterance of substance, I will give it the due consideration it deserves.

We will all be dust long before that happens ...

[Schatze]

He takes shit that he thinks he sort of understands, and that other people think they sort of understand, but really don't, and spins it to create this new age spiritual image.

For instance, the visual system is complicated. People don't know how that photon becomes that flower. So he adds in "God/spirits/juju of the mountain does it, therefore materialism is wrong!". Now, most people won't know better. They'll assume, hey, maybe that really is a failing in materialism.

But then if you look at the actual body of knowledge between sense and perception, you'll find that it's an entirely materialistic, causal chain of events with no breaks in the link of understanding. Sure, it's fucking complicated, but it's well understood. Stimulus activates sensor of some sort (chemo receptor in nose), that stimulus is transduced into a form that begins the neuron ion flow through protein channels, which causes a graded potential across the neuron, if the stimulus persists the graded potential will become an action potential, the electrical impulse travels down the dendrites to the terminal button where neurotransmitters are released, which causes spreading action along the neural pathway. These action potentials follow specific streams, e.g. while bullshit is a combination of many chemicals, the chemoreceptors for "bullshit" fire and follow specific paths through the olfactory nerves that would only be used by those "bullshit" neurons, etc. etc.

It's entirely material, but he has to insert magic into it, because he doesn't understand it and others don't either. But Sense and Perception is only, generally, a 3rd year psych course. So you can just imagine how much information out there he can distort to fit his bullshit theories with which the typical person will have no way to call him out on.

edit: someone better not tell him that the mantis shrimp has the most complicated system of cones in the eye, and that what we see as a yellow flower... like, won't be yellow to a mantis shrimp. Like WOAH dude!

[Screamfeeder]

Originally Posted by Schatze

He takes shit that he thinks he sort of understands, and that other people think they sort of understand, but really don't, and spins it to create this new age spiritual image.

Remember you are talking about a guy who thinks gene replication has never been explained.

[TKarrde]

Originally Posted by Screamfeeder

Remember you are talking about a guy who thinks gene replication has never been explained.

The absolutely insanity involved in all of this is amazing. Chopra followers are ultimately following an ostrich - sticking their heads in the sand on his command to avoid hearing what they don't want to hear, and seeing what they don't want to see.

[Brutul Tarew Marr]

What the fuck does this garbage have to do with books? Maybe we need a "douche bags debating things that they can't even begin to comprehend" forum, but this forum is a total sham.

[Schatze]

Head in sand is right, it's fun to believe in comforting fictions. But I'd be inclined to say that they're also lazy, ignorant, and delusional.

Delusional because they deeply want to believe in some universal overmind, some omnipresent Godhead that each and every element in the universe, including ourselves, belongs to. It's a comforting thing, isn't it? I mean, if this were true, it'd be great.

Ignorant, because they don't understand the actual processes he talks about and tries to foist off as evidence for this universal godhead. I don't understand quantum physics, but I know a bit about it. And I know a bit about what it isn't. His followers don't. So when some anti-intuitive bizarre quantum behavior is brought up, his followers try to anthropomorphosize and intuitively understand something that is fundamentally anti-intuitive.

Same with psychology. Psychology is about as anti-intuitive as you can get. Your perceptual experience is wholly constructed by your mind, by processes that are hidden in either the unconscious mind or in the processes that your neural substrate automagically handle for you. You may see the world, through your eyes, as analogous to a camera. But it isn't. You may think you are doing something because of x, but really why you're doing it (in many if not most cases) is below the conscious level and you're just using hindsight rationalization to explain, justify, or decide against doing whatever it is your mind is telling you to. But take what is maybe the most anti-intuitive science, throw out a few bizarre facts, then try to interpret it through an intuitive, spiritual, lense, and you can draw some pretty bizarre fucking conclusions.

Lazy, in that his followers are too lazy to check out his claims. For instance, the quote from the psychophysicist (or whatever his psychological area of expertise is), is totally out of context, and it leads you to believe one thing when it means another. Fuck, I got the same basic quote first day of sense and perception, but then the professor went along to explain what it actually meant. If anyone wanted to find out what the quote really means, all they need to do is wiki or google psychophysics or psychoneurophysics.

[Screamfeeder]

Originally Posted by Brutul Tarew Marr

What the fuck does this garbage have to do with books? Maybe we need a "douche bags debating things that they can't even begin to comprehend" forum, but this forum is a total sham.

FYI, since the first Deepak Chopra thread The Edge made was moved into this forum out of general by Millie, I think this is obviously the place for this discussion.

This entire conversation is no different than a 50 page thread debating on whether or not Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen are going to do the double scissor.

[The Edge]

Originally Posted by Screamfeeder

This right here sums up Deepak Chopra.

He doesn't understand biology so it must not be the way the world works. He is trying to use the same argument that the Peanut Butter contains life guy did. It is too bad that Mr. Chopra cannot take the time to understand how the brain actually works.

This entire article contains no actual substance. It sounds like the bellyaching of a poor sport that that got his ass kicked in a debate and returns home to write a big story on why he should have won.

How much more of this "I feel a certain way so science must be fake" bullshit are we going to have to put up from you and Deepak The Edge?

I'm short on time before I have to head out, so I'll make this brief. What about that quote makes you think he doesn't understand biology? Maybe you took a different biology and philosophy class than I did, but last I checked, the mind/consciousness origin discussion has not been solved and is still open for debate. Too many threads here dissolve into a Christian vs. Atheist argument, that I thought it would be nice to see an alternative view. Deepak is not the origin of this information either, he's just the most recent to say it.