It used to annoy me to be called the king of woo woo. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, “woo woo” is a derogatory reference to almost any form of unconventional thinking, aimed by professional skeptics who are self-appointed vigilantes dedicated to the suppression of curiosity. I get labeled much worse things as regularly as clockwork whenever I disagree with big fry like Richard Dawkins or smaller fry like Michael Shermer, the Scientific American columnist and editor of Skeptic magazine. The latest barrage of name-calling occurred after the two of us had a spirited exchange on Larry King Live last week. . Maybe you saw it. I was the one rolling my eyes as Shermer spoke. Sorry about that, a spontaneous reflex of the involuntary nervous system.
Afterwards, however, I had an unpredictable reaction. I realized that I would much rather expound woo woo than the kind of bad science Shermer stands behind. He has made skepticism his personal brand, more or less, sitting by the side of the road to denigrate “those people who believe in spirituality, ghosts, and so on,” as he says on a YouTube video. No matter that this broad brush would tar not just the Pope, Mahatma Gandhi, St. Teresa of Avila, Buddha, and countless scientists who happen to recognize a reality that transcends space and time. All are deemed irrational by the skeptical crowd. You would think that skeptics as a class have made significant contributions to science or the quality of life in their own right. Uh oh. No, they haven’t. Their principal job is to reinforce the great ideas of yesterday while suppressing the great ideas of tomorrow.
Let me clear the slate with Shermer and forget the several times he has wiggled out of a public debate he was supposedly eager to have with me. I will ignore his recent blog in which his rebuttal of my position was relegated to a long letter from someone who obviously didn’t possess English as a first language (would Shermer like to write a defense of his position in Hindi? It would read just as ludicrously if Hindi isn’t his first language).
With the slate clear, I’d like to see if Shermer will accept the offer to debate me at length on such profound questions as the following:
• Is there evidence for creativity and intelligence in the cosmos?
• What is consciousness?
• Do we have a core identity beyond our biology, mind, and ego?
• Is there life after death? Does this identity outlive the molecules through which it expresses itself?
The rules will be simple. He can argue from any basis he chooses, and I will confine myself entirely to science. For we have reached the state where Shermer’s tired, out-of-date, utterly mediocre science is far in arrears of the best, most open scientific thinkers — actually, we reached that point sixty years ago when eminent physicists like Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger applied quantum theory to deep spiritual questions. The arrogance of skeptics is both high-handed and rusty. It is high-handed because they lump brilliant speculative thinkers into one black box known as woo woo. It is rusty because Shermer doesn’t even bother to keep up with the latest findings in neuroscience, medicine, genetics, physics, and evolutionary biology. All of these fields have opened fascinating new ground for speculation and imagination. But the king of pooh-pooh is too busy chasing down imaginary woo woo.
Skeptics feel that they have won the high ground in matters concerning consciousness, mind, the origins of life, evolutionary theory, and brain science. This is far from the case. What they cling to is nineteenth- century materialism, packaged with a screeching hysteria about God and religion that is so passé it has become quaint. To suggest that Darwinian theory is incomplete and full of unproven hypotheses, causes Shermer, who takes Darwin as purely as a fundamentalist takes scripture, to see God everywhere in the enemy camp.
How silly. Shermer is a former Christian fundamentalist who is now a fundamentalist about materialism; fundamentalists must have an absolute to believe in. Thus he forces himself into a corner, declaring that all spirituality is bogus, that the sense of self is an illusion, that the soul is ipso facto a fraud, that mind has no existence except in the brain, that intelligence emerged only when evolution, guided by random mutations, developed the cerebral cortex, that nothing invisible can be real compared to solid objects, and that any thought which ventures beyond the five senses for evidence must be dismissed without question.
I won’t go into detail about the absurdity of such rigid thinking. However, the impulse behind dogmatic materialism seems intended to flatten one’s opponents so thoroughly that through scorn and arrogance they must admit defeat, conceding that science is the complete refutation of all preceding religion, spirituality, psychology, myth, and philosophy — in other words, any mode of gaining knowledge that arch materialism doesn’t countenance.
I’ve baited this post with a few barbs to see if Shermer can be goaded into an actual public debate. I have avoided his and his follower’s underhanded methods, whereby an opponent is attacked ad hominem as an idiot, moron, and other choice epithets that in his world are the mainstays of rational argument. And the point of such a debate? To further public knowledge about the actual frontiers of science, which has always depended on wonder, awe, imagination, and speculation. Petty science of the Shermer brand scorns such things, but the greatest discoveries have been anchored on them.
If you are tempted to think that I have taken the weaker side and that materialism long ago won this debate, let me end with a piece of utterly nonsensical woo woo:
“Nobody understands how decisions are made or how imagination is set free. What consciousness consists of, or how it should be defined, is equally puzzling. Despite the marvelous success of neuroscience in the past century, we seem as far from understanding cognitive processes as we were a century ago.”
That isn’t a quote from “one of those people who believe in spirituality, ghosts, and so on.” It’s from Sir John Maddox, former editor-in-chief of the renowned scientific journal Nature, writing in 1999. I can’t wait for Shermer to call him an idiot and a moron. Don’t worry, he won’t. He’ll find an artful way of slithering to higher ground where all the other skeptics are huddled.
For more information go to deepakchopra.com
Follow Deepak on Twitter
Beliefnet
Advertisement
posted December 27, 2009 at 2:13 pm
There’s a lot of good science and good questions that one has to ignore to continue to be a strict materialist. The non local properties of mind have been extensively documented. (See “Entangled Minds”, Radin)The “observer effect” in quantum mechanics is still a question to be explained. (John Wheeler, Andre Linde) How creativity can exist in a deterministic brain is another. (Goswami)Why are scientists that are curious about these very interesting issues branded as “kooks” by the skeptics? Could it be that the skeptics don’t like to have their beliefs threatened, just like fundamentalists? I find it amusing that a leading skeptic journal is called “Free Inquiry.”
posted December 27, 2009 at 2:59 pm
loved this! made me laugh…thanks Deepak!
posted December 27, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Mr. Chopra,
Is there evidence for intelligence in the cosmos? What is that evidence?
What is consciousness? Do you have reproducible evidence that it exists outside of physiology?
What do you think the core identity is?
Do you have reproducible proof of life after death?
posted December 27, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Wonderful read and I wholeheartedly agree. My final year of university is on me.. and I am writing my dissertation on consciousness, or more specifically the Cheshire cat effect (I wasn’t allowed to start hitting at a definition of the great mystery), but a huge amount of my background material and thinking comes from People such as Gary Schwartz, yourself, Parnia, D’Souza and others who would be branded as ‘woo woo’.
I have to sympathise that upon the commencing of my reading I felt cornered by dogmatic sceptics who preach science, yet they prevent themselves from truly embracing the whole point of such a discipline. After all, is the point of science not to learn, investigate and explore? Or should these so called ‘free thinkers’ continue to act like the very thing they seem to hate so much – religion. I have seen the church evolve to be more accepting of contemporary ideas, the ball is in the sceptics end now. I say it’s very well to hold onto respectable doubt… but this volatile and demeaning approach by some of them is concerning as these people are meant to be leading our species forward!
posted January 6, 2010 at 2:19 am
I can’t wait for such a public debate to take place. Should be really very interesting!
But maybe it would better be in the form of a dialogue at first, to prevent it from becoming to polorised. No matter how interesting that is, I think that would be a pitty.
posted January 6, 2010 at 5:54 am
Anyone wanting to understand how consciousness works should develop an appreciation for schizophrenia. People given this dubious label are like cosmic radio transmitters who are slightly off-station. My journey into healing my son (and my “self” in the bargain) has taken us through some incredible therapies, most of which use the common thread of molecular vibration as a healing modality. Fundamentalist scientists are so stone age when it comes to the insight that creative types and ancient and indigenous peoples have into the nature of consciousness.
posted January 6, 2010 at 8:19 am
Skepticism (the movement, not the critical way of thinking) began like Christianity: optimistic, without dogma. But of course all great ideas can get hijacked. Some say that Greenpeace fell into this trap, too.
I see no point in having spitting contests. The skeptics, as you will notice if you stop to pay attention, claim that the more aggressive the so-called ‘woo’ crowd gets, the less substance it has.
The best you can do is to take on board what skeptics say and find a way to either accept it or rebut it. Simple.
Now, scientists (or any professional, really) can do their jobs better by applying skepticism. But science is not skepticism. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone that.
posted January 9, 2010 at 11:08 am
It is sad to live in a world of black and white, with no middle ground for ideas and concepts to ferment and grow. True science knows we’ve barely tapped into the mysteries of our existence, but fear keeps many from seeing those mysteries clearly.
posted January 9, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Thanks for a wonderfully forceful essay.
Skepticism seems so stale… folks like Shermer rarely cite any new research in support of their claims. Or, if the do, it’s usually misrepresented/misinterpreted beyond recognition.
I doubt we’ll ever get rid of this kind of dogmatism (in science or religion), but thanks to articles like this we might be able to push it to the radical fringe.
posted January 28, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Having viewed several “debates” including Mr. Shermer, I understand the sentiment expressed in this essay. However, I cannot help but comment about the fact that it is useless to engage this man in debate because a debate requires “common ground” and what I call “mutual respect for the pursuit of truth” on both sides. Shermer is interested in neither and in fact has built quite the livelihood as the polemical skeptic. Fair enough. But the way to deal with such a man is not to engage him, but ignore him. If he wishes to believe he is a composite of meaningless matter stitched together by blind, undirected mechanisms of neo-Darwinian evolution, so be it. Might as well treat him as such and shrug his presence of our backs.
posted July 26, 2010 at 8:30 pm
blog.beliefnet.com is great! Advance Payday Loans Help in Minor Emergencies If it is broken down and funds are needed fast to get the worker back on the road payday loans could be an answer
posted September 8, 2010 at 3:56 am
Finally, an issue that I’m passionate about. I have looked for information of this caliber for the last several hours. Your online site is greatly appreciated. hviqjqxjfehfaylraveepmuxeetpqubjmur
Mr. Payday Easy Loans Inc.
posted September 22, 2010 at 12:16 am
Excellent read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on that. And he actually bought me lunch because I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!
posted September 22, 2010 at 11:00 pm
This article gives the light in which we can observe the reality. This is quite nice one and gives in-depth information. Thanks for this nice article dokjvzsxesc
posted September 25, 2010 at 11:11 pm
This site is a complete internet resource for this. You’ll find all you wanted or needed to know, here.
posted September 26, 2010 at 8:56 am
Usually I do not write on blogs, but I would like to say that this article really convinced me to do so! Congratulations, very nice post.
posted September 26, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Greetings everyone, This webpage is excellent and so is how the matter was expanded. I like some of the comments as well although I would prefer we all keep it on topic in order add value to the subject. It will be
posted September 27, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Wow! Thank you! I always wanted to write in my webpage something like that. Can I take part of your submit to my blog?
posted September 28, 2010 at 12:53 pm
This article gives the light in which we can observe the reality. This is pretty nice one and gives in-depth information. Thanks for this nice article.
posted September 28, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Good quality publish. Thank for sharing.
posted September 30, 2010 at 1:03 am
Thanks for decent news! Your webpage is exceptionally useful for me. I bookmarked your web-site!
posted October 2, 2010 at 8:40 am
I am doing some thing of the same interest and will be taking note on this .Thanks.
posted October 3, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Hi buddy, particularly informative publish. Please maintain them coming.
posted October 4, 2010 at 6:33 am
I must say that overall I am rather taken with this online site. It is apparent that you know you subject matter and you are passionate about it. I wish I had got your ability to write. I have bookmarked your web-site and look forward to more updates.
posted October 6, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Wow! Thank you! I always wanted to write in my webpage something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?
posted December 18, 2010 at 3:59 am
This website is the most helpful web-site. hvfusqcf
posted December 18, 2010 at 11:06 pm
This website is the finest internet sites. mdlvfamr
posted December 22, 2010 at 10:53 am
This website is the finest web portal. qvavngxn
posted December 23, 2010 at 2:09 am
What a wonderful site! So enlightening and educational!
But allow me to make one point:
A skeptic, you characterise as one who doesn’t contribute anything to science, and who only defends the “ideas of today” and blocks “the great(er) ideas of tomorrow”.
The reason why science advances at all is precisely because skepticism is an ingrained into the scientific method.
Not all skeptics are scientists, and you would be correct to say a James Randi or Michael Shermer are not practising scientists themselves.
But all certified scientists work from a skeptic stance, as it is inbuilt into the scientific method itself.
It’s this same scientific method that so far has found no valid evidence for the type of “Quantum spirituality” that WooWoo peddlers such as Deepak specialise in.
Science might find valid reasons tomorrow, mind you! But after over a century’s worth of scientific inquiry into spiritual matters, the current validity of these soul-based ideas within serious science is very very low. There is something to be said for the soothing and comforting qualities of these spiritual ideas, but what is soothing is not necessarily true.
The “great ideas of tomorrow” of the type that Deepak promotes actually contribute no-thing at all to our current scientific understanding, and they seem to serve a different purpose altogether.
People find his ideas soothing and appealing for its feel-good qualities. Who would not like to believe in eternal life in a happier place? Of meeting your loved ones in the hereafter?
There is a reason Deepak is more revered in Madonna’s house than among boring, materialistic minded men and women of science.
The reason is Deepak abused whatever credentials he may have had by mass-marketing Quantum Bull instead of proper science.
posted December 24, 2010 at 6:09 pm
I am looking for fantasy football online for kids. How can I find it?
posted May 16, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Hi Chip well you have some interesting facts but the one thing that concerns me is the fact that you think we are woo woo peddlers. Interesting statement. I was wondering why kind of spiritual involvement you have in your life? Are you christian or perhaps involved in something else. Have you ever meditated and found yourself more spiritually in tune with your surroundings? I find that those who discredit the woo woo or even the other natural healing processes are those who are usually scared to try them. In a intelligent mind one would be curious to see if possibly any of these things have an actual meaning in THEIR LIFE. May I suggest to all those NON WOO WOO people to try it and try it with a honest heart and spirit, you just might tap into something. By the way the christian things isnt personal as I am one also.