Chopra vs. Dawkins

[pchams]

Thank you Brown, for this excellent analysis.
Dawkins "The God Delusion" has been on my wish list for a while.
I think it's time to order.

 

[Thinktoomuch]

This paragraph by Chopra you quote, Brown,

Unfortunately, the Theory of Everything has hit a brick wall. Quantum physics lacks the power to cross the border into the invisible world that lies beyond subatomic particles, the so-called virtual domain. Not only is this the realm of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'--mysterious shadows of the matter and energy we see around us--but all possible universes also lie across the same boundary, as well as the "zero point" where space and time are born.

Genetics seems to be riding higher, but behind the display of public triumph, biology has not solved the existence of mind, and therefore the same obstacle faces both fields. An invisible world lies sealed off from investigation, leaving us to trace its footprints and echoes.

makes me think that he has realised that he has been pushing too much crap uphill and is starting to look for a backstop position. This said, though, and I might be searching too optimistically for pearls in the mud, I do not have any objection to the other paragraph, taken in isolation:

Dawkins is absolutely right to declare a requiem service over the God of organized religion and to warn us about the dangers of superstition, dogma, and pseudo-science. ... But what Dawkins tragically misses holds far more optimism for the future than he ever could: the universe is renewing itself through us. Science is God explaining God to God using a human nervous system.

What is your objection to this?

 

[Brown]

What is your objection to this?

I'm not sure if I would call what I'm about to say an "objection," or even a "criticism." I'll just call it a "remark."

Dawkins and Chopra have very diverse views about what it means to search for scientific truth. Dawkins's view is the more conventional one, the one more widely held among scientists: Knowledge acquired through science must be based upon empirical data, must be examined, must be tested, must be published, and must be open to inquiry and critical analysis. Discoveries at odds with existing models are not automatically wrong, but are automatically suspect; such discoveries cannot gain acceptance unless they satisfy a burden of proof. Models that are fanciful and that are untestable (they provide no data, make no predictions, cannot be examined and are not subject to any form of critical analysis) do not contribute to scientific knowledge.

Chopra's view, it seems to me, is to be somewhat less rigorous in what can be considered scientific knowledge. Ideas that have a firm scientific basis--such as wave-particle duality--can lead to other ideas by inference--such as omnipresence of those particles in a universal consciousness. We must not be limited in our thinking to conventional models, Chopra seems to say. His principal complaint about Dawkins, as I see it, is that Dawkins is choosing to adopt a blinkered view that inhibits his ability to perceive some scientific knowledge in general, and that inhibits his ability to perceive God in particular.

Now, there is a sense in which I agree with Chopra. Science must not be blinkered (and certainly not closed-minded!) in pursuit of knowledge. A degree of imagination is useful, if not essential, to scientific advance. Although I don't believe he originated the notion, Gene Roddenberry had said that he thought it would be very unlikely that faster-than-light travel would ever be discovered by someone who had already decided that faster-than-light travel was impossible.

To this extent, I expect many scientists would agree. Perhaps Dawkins would agree as well. Science should not be blinkered.

Nevertheless, science cannot abandon its "burden of proof" rule. Someone who wishes to advocate a principle that disturbs or expands (or even overturns) current models has the obligation to prove it. And if the advocate cannot do so, or cannot frame any experiment that can do so, then it is perfectly proper to say that the principle in question is not known, and therefore there is no good reason to believe it.

There are many examples of startling principles that have been advocated: the gravity of the sun can bend light; energy can be readily tapped from the fusion of water-borne hydrogen at room temperature; the planet's continents used to be closer to each other, but have been drifting from one another; the planet's seas originated in comets; the elements exhibit periodicity in properties; element 118 with the proper number of neutrons is stable and does not decay; the galaxies in the heavens are (in general) rushing away from one another as space expands; and so on. Some of these principles have been integrated into current scientific models, but only because they were supported by a great weight of evidence. Others have failed to be supported by evidence, the evidence actually supporting a contrary conclusion. Still others are indeterminate, with the evidence neither strongly supporting nor decisively undercutting the principle. (Do not be surprised if there is strong evidence supporting the element 118 hypothesis within the next five years.)

Chopra, it seems to me, seeks an exemption from the burden of proof rule. God exists as a scientific fact, Chopra urges, but it's not the God that most of the world talks about when they use that term. Chopra has no proof that there is universal consciousness, he has no proof of an otherwise undetectable intelligence, he has no proof of the universal model that he advocates. He has no evidence, only unsupported inferences. He proposes no way in which his model could be tested or examined, relying instead upon his own assertions that this is the way things might be.

Yet he thinks he has a right to have his model taken as serious science.

I disagree. Science must be rooted in the real world (or more accurately, the real cosmos). Propositions that are untestable do not contribute to scientific knowledge, and may be properly set aside as unscientific because they exist only in the mind of the advocate, not necessarily in reality. In other words, they are delusions.

 

[Thinktoomuch]

Thank you Brown, your "remark" appears to me very balanced and useful. And pleasing because both authors seem to be relaxed about a spirituality based on a non-anthropomorphic "god" concept.

I'm not so sure, however, about your statement that Chopra

"thinks he has a right to have his model taken as serious science".

It appears to me that Chopra quotes and misquotes scientific principles to support his theology (buffalo the audience, in your words), but is quite open about it being just that: theology. More specifically, ancient Veda theology being shoehorned into modern thinking.

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

The God Delusion? Part 3 is now available, and part 4 will apparently be forthcoming.

Hold onto your hats, the bulls*** flies at pretty high speed. In fact, Chopra's essay is so packed with nonsense and distortion that it is reminiscent of a person who tries to persuade his audience by trying to buffalo his audience. The goal appears to be to create the notion in the minds of the audience, "Well, he certainly sounds like he knows what he's talking about, so maybe he's right!"

To make his points, good ol' Deepak plunges into the intricacies of quantum physics. It was Chopra's misunderstanding of this precise subject matter that caused Julia Sweeney to conclude: "Deepak Chopra is full of s#!+!" Those who have actually studied the subject will likely conclude that Ms. Sweeney nailed it.This "total overthrow" must certainly come as a surprise to the many well-educated teachers of Physics (as well as other sciences) out there. Shall we conclude that because there really are no solid objects, disciplines such as Thermodynamics, Statics and Astronomy are bunk? After all, each of these disciplines is concerned with solid matter. The invalidity of a broad range of sciences seems to be the logical conclusion of Chopra's argument.

Giving Chopra the benefit of the doubt, he tries to restrict his "total overthrow" to the scale of the very, very small:I have read this argument many times and as best I can tell, what follows is a fair summary of the argument:

1. Atoms are mostly empty space and electrons have no fixed position.

2. Therefore, two (or more) atoms cannot collide.

3. Therefore, solid objects cannot randomly collide to haphazardly form more and more complex objects.

4. Therefore, DNA, which is very complex, cannot exist.

5. Since propositions 2, 3, 4, and 5 are demonstrably wrong, there is a mystery. (Chopra impliedly dismisses the notion that propositions 2, 3, 4, and 5 do not follow from proposition 1 in the first place, and he also impliedly dismisses the notion that the real "mystery" is how he got his head so far up his own butt.)

6. Therefore, God exists. QED.

"God," as used by Chopra, is not a "personal God or a mythic one or any God with a human face." If that is what God is not, then what--in Chopra's view--is God? Apparently his view is that one of the attributes of God is non-randomness, since "random chance is one of the worst ways to explain how the universe evolved."

Once again we sigh and point out that evolution--both from a inorganic material standpoint and from a biological standpoint--is not a purely random process. This point never seems to stick with the uninformed or with the willfully ignorant, but we must point it out anyway, I suppose.

Chopra seems to think that evolution is a totally random process. Chopra cites astronomer Fred Hoyle to the effect that the probability that random chance created life is roughly the same as the probability that a hurricane could blow through a junkyard and create a Boeing 707. Well, Hoyle's analogy stinks, and it has been demolished in the literature. Yet Chopra foolishly tosses it out as valid.

Chopra trots out the anthropic principle as well as other counter-intuitive aspects of quantum physics such as particle wave functions (which are "everywhere at once"), quantum entanglement and positional uncertainty of very small particles. From these observations comes a tremendous leap:This leap of illogic is staggering. I find myself saying, "BraVO, sir! You seem to have conjured a self-aware universe out of ... your own butt!"

Leaving aside the absurd notion that wave functions and entanglement somehow establish "universal consciousness," there are a few other odd aspects to Chopra's arguments. For one thing, in what sense would a self-aware universe "explain the formation of a self-replicating molecule like DNA?" As best I can tell, self-awareness would explain nothing of the sort.

And maybe I am crazy, but Chopra seems to contradict himself, big time: On the one hand, he asserts that atoms are mostly empty space, but he later asserts that electrons are "everywhere." He means this latter assertion literally: every electron is everywhere (to one degree or another) in the entire universe at the same time. If electrons are everywhere, then atoms can't be mostly empty space, can they? In fact, empty space can't exist, can it?

(As I wrote this, I received a delivery from Amazon.com. Over the next few weeks, I shall read what Dawkins wrote.)

Soderqvist1: Chopra probably got the little he knows about quantum physics from Amit Goswami, because he has reviewed his second book: The Visionary Window! Here is an Interview with Goswami!

A professor of physics at the University of Oregon and a member of its Institute of Theoretical Science.
The author of The Self-Aware Universe, How Consciousness Creates the material world!
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/goswintro.htm

 

[stamenflicker]

This reveals the inherent feeling of superiority that mars the truly superstitious. They think they have reached such a high state of illumination and universal wisdom that they are capable of determining the "truth" about anything. If they believe they are right about medical cures, they must be right about art. If they believe they are right about talking to dead people, they must be right about music.

What they like must be the "truth". It's megalomania run amok.

I'm not sure if this is what Chopra is saying. I think the tendency is to categorize this argument in this manner however. Another author describes the subjective world as "the thread on which the beads hang."

I'm no Chopra fan, one book was quite enough for me to stay away forevermore. But I don't think emphasis on the subjective automatically assumes megalomania. If anything it engenders a scientific megalomania that grows infuriated by the question.

 

[Brown]

I bump this thread because I came across it while looking for another thread and DAMN is it a good one.

 

[rain]

@Brown

There are some things I really don't like about Chopra, but I still don't think you judged him very fairly. You made a lot of assumptions about his belief system, and I think a lot of what you considered "fast and loose" was due more to your misinterpretation of Chopra than any devious behavior in his behalf. As for your claim that most people who use God don't mean it in the abstract sense that Chopra does, how can you be so sure? I've heard many Asians use the term God in the same transpersonal transcendent sense that Chopra meant. In Hinduism, this concept is known as Brahman. Last time I checked, there are a heck of a lot of Indians on this planet and a significant percentage would probably agree with Chopra.

Personally, I think Brahman is very close to, if not almost exactly, the same concept as what some of the brightest physicists mean when they mention the possibility of God.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

The unfairness of this argument is that it squeezes God into a corner. Dawkins makes it an us-versus-them issue. Either you are for science (that is, reason, progress, modernism, optimism about the future) or you are for religion (that is, unreason, reactionary resistance to progress, clinging to mysteries that only God can solve).

Good. So he does admit that Religious is (among other things) about unreason, reactionary resistance to progress and clinging to mysteries?

So? What the hell is his argument then?


That's like a criminal saying: Police officers put crime into a corner. Either you are in for justice and peace, or you're in for corruption and theft

Well, whoopity-goddamn-doo. That's one hell of a strong argument
Like all woos, he's got a lot of rhetoric, but no actual argument

 

[rain]

@ Ron

You are misinterpreting Chopra. In his statement he is describing the views of Dawkins, not his own. I think the main point of Chopra is that Dawkins is unreasonably biased against the idea of God.

 

[Brown]

I have never met Deepak Chopra, and I cannot say I have read any of his books. I know only some of his appearances on television and the written essays to which I explicitly referred.

I evaluate only by what I see. If his essays were rife with illogic or double-talk--and I maintain that they were--then I said so. But I kept open the possibility that Chopra might have explained himself better in his other works.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that (1) Chopra should have read Dawkins's work before criticizing it, though his essays suggest that he did not; (2) to the extent that Chopra DID read Dawkins's work, Chopra should have demonstrated enough honor to report Dawkins's position correctly, which he did not; and (3) the essays were a seven-part series that should have stood on their own without reliance upon any other works.

 

[rain]

@ Brown

It's quite possible that Chopra didn't read Dawkins' books, but then again, I doubt that Dawkins' read Chopra's books when he featured him on video and basically portrayed him as a charlatan. I'm not sure whether the written series you mentioned was written before or after Chopra's video appearance, but if it was after, Chopra was probably defending his beliefs in short summary against the incredibly brief and obviously highly edited video clip. If this is the true context, the response by Chopra might be understandable.

I think they are both interesting and yet very unreasonable people. Almost like two sides of a coin. They mix in science, or rather science as fits their worldview, with their own extreme views of the world. Chopra believes in quantum healing whereas Dawkins has publicly stated his interest in cloning his own daughter. Both positions seem pretty crazy to me.

 

[Saintgasoline]

I largely agree with what you've written in the original post, but unfortunately I have this habit of playing devil's advocate (or God's advocate in this case, I suppose).

When Chopra says that science is not the only route to knowledge, you rightly criticize his own justifications, as Chopra is not known for his skill in defending himself reasonably. But is it true that Chopra is "flatly wrong" about science not being the only route to knowledge? For instance, how do you have the knowledge that science is the only route to knowledge? If you assert that scientific thinking provides this knowledge, then that seems dangerously circular. But if scientific thinking doesn't provide this knowledge, then obviously it isn't the only route to knowledge.

Yes, I am using a variant of Hume's old "you can't use induction to prove induction" argument. Hume always comes back to haunt everyone. I'm interested what your potential responses might be.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

@ Ron

You are misinterpreting Chopra. In his statement he is describing the views of Dawkins, not his own.

I know he is. Obviously you're the one who didn't understand what I said

I think the main point of Chopra is that Dawkins is unreasonably biased against the idea of God.

I know that's what he said. And I've just explained the fault in his argument

 

[rain]

I know he is. Obviously you're the one who didn't understand what I said

Apparently.

 

[Brown]

Bumped because of the new Chopra on Skeptics thread.

I re-read this thread and again I say DAMN it is a good one. We see many of the same elements in Chopra's essays as we saw in that pissy, childish column he recently published.

 

[Maia]

I really should start a review thread about John Shelby Spong's latest book... what made me think of it is that Chopra wrote a laudatory quote for the back cover, although I'm convinced that he didn't actually READ the book. (Eternal Life: A New Vision, Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell.

One would be hard pressed to find any Christian church in the West World today in which the gnostic "Jesus was not a real person" view is being taught.

Ha! Unitarians! Oh... well, you did say a Christian church...

After accusing Dawkins of a false dichotomy, Chopra offers one of his own, and it's a gem:This false dichotomy--that the universe is either random or intelligently designed--is perhaps the greatest source of eye-rolling for Dawkins. How many times must it be explained that non-randomness can (and does) come about by purely physical laws with no intelligent intervention? How many times must it be pointed out that the existence of design does not necessarily imply the existence of an intelligent designer?

It appears that, in the end, Chopra argues for a deity that is at odds with the Western majority: perhaps it is a "God of the gaps," perhaps it is pantheism, perhaps it is deism, perhaps it is merely agnosticism. These views arguably preserve the notion of some sort of deity while at the same time preserving science. But it is important to note that these views are minority views and--I suspect--not the principal targets of Dawkins's book in any event.

I really think that Chopra didn't read JSS's book, because Spong would not agree with him here at all. In fact, Chapter 2 of Eternal Life: A New Vision is called "Life Is Accidental."

Well, anyway, this is a very good review. And I'm glad the thread got bumped, because I never would have had the chance to read it otherwise.

 

[Brown]

Ah, Deepak, at it again. Here's a link to Richard Dawkins Takes the Magic Out of Reality. I found this piece very hard to read, and not because I have a love for Dawkins or a loathing for Chopra. I find any composition hard to read when it is laden with emotion and illogic (which rarely mix in a way to create useful or satisfying results), as this one is.

I also find dishonesty distasteful, and hypocrisy equally so. So when Chopra is dishonest and accuses others of dishonesty, then the result is distaste ... squared.

The best that I can say about Deepak's column is that it is intellectually empty. Search the column for any way in which spirituality produces any valid, testable, reliable knowledge, and you will find none. If you really want to rebut Dawkins, THIS is where the battle is. Chopra misses it.

Take the benzene story. How do we know that benzene has a ring-shape? To hear Chopra, it's because a scientist had a dream of a snake eating a tail. The story is true enough, and you will even find it in chemistry texts, but I doubt that there is a single chemistry text that would say that KNOWLEDGE about the structure of benzene came from a dream. INSPIRATION for a new model came from a dream, but if that model was tested and failed, then the model would have to be discarded or revised. And if the model held up, then there was no more validity to it merely because it was inspired by a dream.

In other words, doesn't the benzene story ACTUALLY support Dawkins's position?

By the way, the benzene story is far from unique. Many scientists have spoken of bizarre inspirations--some of them dreams--that led to new models of molecules, quantum theories, models of space and spacetime, and so forth. I'm currently in the middle of "The Black Hole War" by Leonard Susskind, and there are stories of similar inspiration in almost every chapter ... some of which turn out to hold water and some of which don't ... and some of which hold water for a little while. One of the lessons of "The Black Hole War" is that thought experiments are more than simply sitting around and thinking about stuff; to be valid, they must be consistent with observable results and supported by rigorous--and often fiendishly complicated--mathematics. I find it curious that those who advocate spirituality as a path to [what they think is] knowledge have an aversion to scientific observation and mathematics. ESPECIALLY the mathematics.

 

[Megalodon]

In a much less significant example, I cracked the solution of the data analysis for my MSc thesis in a dream, that I wrote down in the middle of the night.

However, I wrote down many dreams in the middle of the night that, in the morning, turned out to have absolutely rubbish solutions for my academic problems. One benzene molecule in no way indicates how many drunk monkeys, flying pigs or mutated hippopotamuses found their way to the paper bin the following morning...

 

[Leumas]

In a much less significant example, I cracked the solution of the data analysis for my MSc thesis in a dream, that I wrote down in the middle of the night.

However, I wrote down many dreams in the middle of the night that, in the morning, turned out to have absolutely rubbish solutions for my academic problems. One benzene molecule in no way indicates how many drunk monkeys, flying pigs or mutated hippopotamuses found their way to the paper bin the following morning...

Unfortunately for woos there is nothing spiritual or mysterious about inspirations through dreams.

The brain can continue to think during dreaming. If a person is occupied with a conundrum through work or life or whatever other aspects of conscious activity, then during the subconscious activity the brain can continue to think about it.

If a solution is happened upon during dreaming, it is only a manifestation of the brain. There is nothing extra-cranial about it.

Another thing about dreams is that the brain can be freed to mingle and jumble information about that the conscious brain is restricted from doing due to requirements of actually managing the active body. Balancing, hearing, seeing, feeling smelling recording, recalling, talking, making sense of it all.

During dreaming, the body is shut down and the brain is freed to assign more computing power to the brain itself. This can result in all sorts of bizarre imagery and that is why most of it is forgotten by the morning.

However, when the brain has been OVERLY occupied with a certain track of thinking then the brain during sleep can actually spend more effective time sorting out the problem and perhaps bring in OTHER PARTS of the brain that during consciousness could not be brought to bear due to being busy with other activity.

Of course due to the nature of dreaming, sometimes the solutions are mangled with other imagery and thoughts that the brain tries to make sense of with a coherent overall story. That is why a bizarre turn of events sometimes appears to be the case.

The brain is a very complicated and little understood mechanism. Its ability to continue to think about problems that occupy us during our waking hours is not a mystery. That is what the brain does....THINK...and it does it all the time.

There is absolutely nothing mysterious or supernatural or spiritual about it. It is part of what the brain does. And just as there are people who are MORE able to think during waking hours, so are there people who are more able to think during sleep. People who are good thinkers during sleep tend to dream more useful things, like poems and novels and solutions to computing or math or chemical formulas.