Deepak Chopra. Picture from Wikipedia Commons"To say that Nature displays intelligence doesn't make you a Christian fundamentalist. Einstein said as much, and a fascinating theory called the anthropic principle has been seriously considered by Stephen Hawking, among others."
Deepak Chopra.
"The anthropic principle is NOT about nature displaying intelligence. Don't use straw man arguments on me!"
The Chapin Skeptic.
I didn't say it first. In her fantastic 2006 monologue Letting go of God , Julia Sweeney explains her disappointment when she first goes after Chopra's ramblings about conciousness and quantum mechanics and later, after studying quantum mechanics she realizes that Chopra's elucubrations are highly improbable and she yells "Deepak Chopra is full of shit!"
And I have to agree. Reading Chopra's Wikipedia entry, he is an advocate, among other things, of something he calls quantum healing which somehow relates to healing through positive thoughts and quantum mechanics is thrown into the mix for good measure... I sure understand why miss Sweeney was so disappointed...
I tried to listen to an audio version of one of his books. No, scratch that, I listened to the full fracking thing! At that time I was halfway between agnosticism and supersticion so I was interested and even then, it seemed like a lot of nonsense. Basically, he was saying that in order to achieve something you somehow have to wait for it to show up or materialize or something. There wasn't any piece of usable advice I could find. It was all about sitting back, waiting and having faith.
Well, faith just doesn't work for me. Never has, never will. I believe in the results of hard work and knowledge plus training intelligently applied.
So, I concur, Julia. He is indeed full of crap.
Crap makes you money though... I may be missing some important source of revenue. Hmmm...
Listen to Julia. She is fantastic in that monologue!
3 comments:
Oh man, Julia is fantastic. She displays genius without reaching critical "Richard Dawkins" mass.
And I do fully agree about Chopra. Just a charlatan. He makes it difficult for us that try to make amends between the general public and the modern physics.
In a way, Chopra is Carl Sagan opposite.
Thanks for your comment Arc. I enjoy your blog.
Deepak is not full if $h/t, is just that he was raised half catholic christian and in india, you know how superstitious this guys are in there. Anyway, is not all about doing nothing and sitting with faith, you must act! You must move and DO what you HAVE to do in order to achieve something, like for example: You want to win the lottery yet you wont if you dont buy the ticket first. What he is trying to tell you is that you dont need to kill yourself in the process of achieving something, you do what it has to be done, every detail, no loose ends, and then you wait. He is not completely wrong about what he is saying but he doesnt hold the truth about all the universe, at the end it just matters what do you believe: if it works, if it makes you happy then thats your truth! =)
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