Wat means?

 

What the fuck does this even mean?  

Pokémon Go stop removed from Epstein Island following outrage

Epstein Island Pokéstop

Doreen Virtue forever

 

Doreen Virtue on Jeffrey Epstein. Apparently, Deepak Chopra is in the files. Virtue toured the world with him during her New Age period and therefore decided to comment the situation. So yes, we´re back in the Epstein swamp! Note Virtue´s comment that the elites would often hobnob with popular New Age teachers, that many in Hollywood are into occultism, et cetera. 

A remarkably moderate comment for a fundamentalist Christian, tbh. 

Quantum stupidity

 

Professor Dave sounds less unhinged than usual in this 4 year old clip, in which he attacks "quantum mysticism" or the misuse of quantum physics (or rather the pop version of it) to promote New Age spirituality, New Thought-like self-help and alternative medicine. 

Deepak Chopra is prominently featured and so are the ubiqutuous crystals. Somewhat surprisingly, the budding cult leader Leo is still around on YouTube. I assumed he would be too uncharismatic to become the honcho of anything! Maybe a quantum effect of some kind? 

If Dave had always been like this, I might even start to like him, but alas, I suppose the pitbull style was more lucrative...  

The busted atheist

I assumed it was Deepak Chopra who said that atoms are sentient, while Richard Dawkins denied it. Yet, atheists use the atom (or rather an abstract representation of a so-called atom) as their symbol. Hmmm...

Perhaps atoms are sentient, after all. Let's at least hope they're less selfish than our genes, LOL.

A false positive

After attacking Jehovah (yes, *that* Jehovah) in his "The Root of All Evil", atheist top dog takes on a far more difficult (and moving?) target in "Enemies of Reason". Yes, it's Dick vs. the New Age, old school version, in a two-episode showdown with the Absolute. Weekly horoscopes, homeopathic medicine and your friendly neighborhood dowser next door gets slammed by the Intellectual Muscle Movement. The indefatigable Darwin, er, Dawkins also interviews people (or selfish gene machines) who claim that chakras are mini-black holes, that the rockness of a rock is a spiritual quality, that quantum physics prove faith healing works, and that Dawkins doesn't have an angel gently hovering above him. He never wrestles with the serpent power, but then, Mr Dawkins have never met U.G. Krishnamurti! And yes, I love the man's colorful language, as when he calls Satish Kumar a representative of the "sandal-wearing end of the Green movement".

:D

OK, jokes aside, but this was weaker than I expected. But sure, my worldview is very different from that of Dawkins, a rather strict reductionist and materialist. For starters, I thought Deepak Chopra's statements actually made some kind of sense. So did the statements by Satish Kumar about "rockness" and "treeness". Often, Dawkins attacks the lower end of various alternative claims: weekly sun sign horoscopes rather than, say, Gauquelin or Jung, amateur dowsers trying to find a hidden bottle during a double-blind test, rather than people doing research on "ley lines", etc. While I understand Dawkins' anger at obviously frivolous claims (a bunch of colored lamps can supposedly re-energize your chakras), he never really tries to understand the spiritual worldviews he is attacking, most of the time simply assuming that they just *can't* be correct, since he doesn't immediately grasp their method or terminology. It's all "metaphor" or "poetry", and that's that. In his reductionist worldview, everything above B F Skinner and double-blind tests of vaccines is just subjective mumbo jumbo. He never ask why "placebo" would work at all, if our minds aren't somehow capable of influencing our bodies. As for "anecdotal evidence", why are experiences of spirits "anecdotal", while the observation of animal behavior in the wild isn't? (Well, very often it *is* seen as anecdotal, making the behavior of lab rats more scientifically significant than what's going on in the real world.)

Dawkins points out that the ancient world knew less about medical science than we do, but does that mean they didn't get anything right? The Ten Commandments come from "the Bronze Age document" known as the Bible (which also implies that the world is flat and standing still in the center of the universe), the idea of universal human rights is based on Stoicism and Christianity and was codified in 16th century Spain at a time when Copernicus was still seen as controversial, and abolitionism grew politically strong when evolutionary biologists like Haeckel claimed that certain races were inferior. Besides, the ancient world might have known more about that accursed "placebo effect" than we do, precisely because they didn't have access to modern medicine. I think Dawkins would admit that progress is uneven, but how can a materialist *really* believe that morality is progressing, if it lacks an objective basis?

Lurking in the background is Dawkins' philosophical supposition that the universe is meaningless, which would make Dawkins' own rationality meaningless too, except as a base survival strategy (but then, if placebo or belief in rockness helps your selfish genes survive, why not embrace them instead?). And where does the feeling of meaning even come from, if the universe is meaningless? Dawkins often uses the "poetry of reality" as an argument against (!) religion and spirituality, claiming that the real world is more wondrous than the metaphors of witch-doctors, but how is this even relevant if meaning, awe and poetry are purely subjective? Then we might as well team up with Deepak Chopra and get our kicks from metaphors about quantum leaps! The moral revulsion of Dawkins against quacks is also obvious, but where does this morality come from? It seems to go beyond the (admittedly important) issue of which remedies might save our precious genes and memes from polio or small pox!

Of course, not everything is wrong with "Enemies of Reason". As Patrick Moore once quipped: "It's impossible to always be wrong, unless you are a psychiatrist". The anti-vaxxers really are a bizarre example of what can happen when people turn away from scientific reason (or even anecdotal common sense). And yes, many of the people Dawkins interviews are hilarious (as usual). Yet, I've come to the conclusion that it's immensely reasonable to believe in something above and beyond matter, some of which might affect us, and some of it which cannot be grasped with Skinner's "robust" terminology, but only with "metaphors" and "poetry"...

I declare neutrality

"War of the Worldviews" contains a debate on science and spirituality between Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow. Chopra is a neo-Hindu/New Age self-help writer with at least one foot in Hollywood. Mlodinow is a quantum physicist who co-authored several books with Stephen Hawking. Subjects covered in the book include Darwinism, the mind-body problem and the future of religious belief.

Despite all the hype (both Larry King and the Dalai Lama recommends the book), "War of the worldviews" is incredibly boring. Both Deepak and Leonard - they use their first names throughout - pull a few verbal punches, but these sound contrived in the extreme. War? What war? At bottom, both writers agree that somehow science and spirituality can or should be harmonized, and both reject creationism or the hard line ID position. This, of course, narrows the battlefield considerably. Besides, Chopra and Mlodinow apparently worked together on their book, making the war metaphor even more contrived. If you want a real war, let Richard Dawkins argue with Ted Haggard or Yousef al-Khattab!

Personally, I wish to declare neutrality in this war. I suppose I "should" support Deepak, but many of his concrete arguments are quite bad. Thus, I'm sceptical to the idea that quantum physics "prove" spirituality. At best, it suggests that a certain kind of crude materialism simply can't be the whole picture. However, I fail to see how a wave function is spiritual? Chopra's arguments against Neo-Darwinism also miss the mark (and no, I don't consider myself Neo-Darwinist). Thus, he doesn't make a clear distinction between genetic and reciprocal altruism, which Neo-Darwinism can explain, and "real" altruism, which it arguably cannot. It's also unclear why Chopra sees the intelligence of Border Collies as mysterious? Another problem is that Chopra constantly attempts to portray his teachings as an ancient Indian philosophy confirmed by modern science, when it's really a very modern self-help technique not yet confirmed by science.

But Mlodinow also stumbles rather badly. In fact, he is forced to concede that things such as meaning, love, ethics and even "spirituality" are immensely important, but he can't explain why this is the case, since his fundamental worldview is based on reductionist materialism. At one point, he comes close to denying the existence of free will, although he admits that we can't live without assuming that we really are free: "I admit it feels strange to think of myself as a biological machine governed by the same laws that govern Pluto. But understanding my essence doesn't diminish my appreciation for the gift of being alive; it makes me appreciate it even more. That's not a scientific principle. It's just the way I feel". Since Mlodinow believes that science tells us have the world *really* works, he is essentially suggesting that our human dignity is simply an irrational feeling, but since we can't let it go, we might as well stay with it. Why not accept religion, then? It too is "irrational" but seems to be working. At one point Mlodinow actually comes very close to conceding this (see ppg. 284-285). He constantly rejects metaphysics as unreliable, but his own anti-metaphysical position turns out to be a strange form of dualism, with the "real" world in one compartment and everything that really matters in quite another.

Incidentally, I'm sceptical to Chopra's strictly impersonalist view of the Divine, but I can hardly fault him from defending his own metaphysics...

"War of the Worldviews", then, is a major disappointment. Boring, bland, bad arguments and constant concessions from the guy supposed to be the Robocop of materialism redux. Still, it's fascinating that so many people seem to like this book... What did they see, which I did not?