A few years ago I had the good fortune to be speaking on a panel with Sean Carroll — the cosmologist, not the paleontologist — at a conference in Chicago. After being quoted in an MSNBC article, someone at the Catholic Answers Forum called him a “servant of Satan.” But here’s my favorite comment, from someone else in response:
Not to worry. The thing is, he’s looking from his own scientific perspective. He’s missing what’s going on in other parts of science that are actually providing very good evidence for afterlife, for non-local and non-temporal existence. For things that are – well – God stuff.
Quantum physics is quite close to explaining how the Eucharist works. We just have to not get all disappointed if some of the mystery is de-mysteriousized. Eternity as a state of being, as the main state of being ( this physical reality being a sort of fringe of the True Reality) is real. Sooner or later were were going to figure it out in a lot of ways we can understand. Miracles aren’t magic, they are hyper-quantum physics. Conciousness is not generated by or confined to the body.
Even Deepok Chopra would chuckle at that one, I think.
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equisetum
September 23, 2012 at 10:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I pictured Chopra nodding his head and saying, “Exactly!”.
F
September 23, 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, fuck yeah. I can’t wait!
Randomfactor
September 23, 2012 at 10:55 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Quantum physics already explains how the eucharist works.
It doesn’t.
DaveL
September 23, 2012 at 10:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Will this hyper-quantum physics explain why the church doesn’t accept used tissues in the collection basket as having the true essence and substance of $50 bills?
Modusoperandi
September 23, 2012 at 11:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Shorter quote: “It is magic that leads to God. And also it isn’t magic.”
anteprepro
September 23, 2012 at 11:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Schrodinger’s Cracker: The Eucharist is both Jesus flesh and a cracker, and only when you observe it will the wave function collapse and become either Jesus flesh OR a cracker. It is a Quantum Mystery why, every time that this happens, it always winds up in the cracker state and never in the Jesus flesh state. Quantum works in mysterious ways!
dingojack
September 23, 2012 at 11:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“de-mysteriousized”? – I think the word you’re looking for, moron, is ‘demystify’.
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Dingo
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PS: No doubt the holy cracker is tied to the ‘three days in one’ time-cube thingy.
glodson
September 23, 2012 at 11:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Quantum physics is quite close to explaining how the Eucharist works.”
Oh just fuck me. That the hell is this? I’m way too hungover for this level of stupid.
Chiroptera
September 23, 2012 at 11:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Miracles aren’t magic, they are hyper-quantum physics.
Is the commenter Catholic? ‘Cause I think he just claimed that neither God nor Jesus are supernatural beings.
Tâlib Alttaawiil (طالب التاويل)
September 23, 2012 at 1:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Quantum physics is quite close to explaining how the Eucharist works.”
what next? modal logic is quite close to explaining the loaves and fishes?
generative syntax is quite close to explaining the parting of the red sea?
dingojack
September 23, 2012 at 1:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Clearly it’s a ball of ‘wibbley-wobbley, timey-wimely stuff‘…
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Dingo
dingojack
September 23, 2012 at 2:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Try this.
Dingo
dingojack
September 23, 2012 at 2:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh for fuck’s stakes. this.
dingo
alanjc
September 23, 2012 at 2:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
OK, Ed, just to be pedantic, Sean M. Carroll is the cosmologist as you say, but Sean B. Carroll is not a paleontologist, but rather a developmental biologist. He’s written great books such as “Endless Forms, Most Beautiful” and “The Making of the Fittest”.
But yeah, this guy’s comments are about as Deepak as can be. Why do these people grasp their bizarre misunderstanding of QM to think that science supports their beliefs? (Never mind, that question answers itself!)
Michael Heath
September 23, 2012 at 2:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
alanjc writtes:
I also greatly enjoyed Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species; here’s my review of that book: http://goo.gl/1q6Mw
grumpyoldfart
September 23, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks dingojack. It was worth waiting for.
DrewN
September 23, 2012 at 3:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As far as I can tell, religious & new age people use the Terry Pratchet definition of quantum.
Noadi
September 23, 2012 at 5:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Considering there are two biologists names Sean Carroll plus a physicist, maybe there’s a paleontologist too.
Trickster Goddess
September 23, 2012 at 5:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have some questions about the Eucharist.
Does it taste like a cracker or does it taste like meat? (Raw or cooked?)
Also, if the cracker is actually Jesus’ flesh, given the billions of crackers served over the centuries, just how big was Jesus’ body to begin with? Or is God cloning flesh samples in celestial petri dishes?
And how does Jesus feel about all those people nibbling away at his body like billions of rats and drinking his blood like vampires?
Modusoperandi
September 23, 2012 at 6:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Trickster Goddess “Does it taste like a cracker or does it taste like meat? (Raw or cooked?)”
It tastes like a cracker, but it is Jesus.
Much like a cowboy hat and a baseball cap are different things, but both contain “hatness”, the Eucharist is a cracker with its “foodness” swapped out for “Jesusness”. (Excuse me if I’ve explained badly or wrongly, as it’s been a while since I learned about it)
Shorter version: Blame the Greeks
“Also, if the cracker is actually Jesus’ flesh, given the billions of crackers served over the centuries, just how big was Jesus’ body to begin with? Or is God cloning flesh samples in celestial petri dishes?”
Oral Roberts saw a 900ft Jesus, so there’s still plenty of Him to go around. This also leads to the disturbing notion that First Century Jesus, being unconsumed, must’ve been even enormouser than the 1980 version.
“And how does Jesus feel about all those people nibbling away at his body like billions of rats and drinking his blood like vampires?”
Does the Blue Whale chafe at the little fishies nibbling its skin?
Mal Adapted
September 23, 2012 at 7:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Tastes like chicken.
Thomas Holtz
September 23, 2012 at 9:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There is a vertebrate paleontologist Bob Carroll (Robert T. Carroll), major worker on Paleozoic amphibians and author of some classic paleo textbooks.
billyeager
September 24, 2012 at 1:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Sean Carroll: Servant of Satan”
Oh that is *so* business-card worthy!
BTW, some of the writing on the CA thread is, ironically, god-awful.
“The focus on a godless materialism is an artifact of Western culture from the 19th century onwards. ”
Atheism is an ‘artefact’? Umm, isn’t that theism?
savagemutt
September 24, 2012 at 6:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Cracker goes in, poop comes out. You can’t explain that!
Christoph Burschka
September 24, 2012 at 11:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Damn, I can’t help hearing that line in Sarah Michelle Gellar’s voice when I read it.
niam_krawt
September 24, 2012 at 1:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Anyone want to take bets on how long before Deepak Chopra plagiarizes that nonsense in one of his seminars or books? I say it will show up in a seminar with a year, a book within three.
robb
September 24, 2012 at 8:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
wait, who wrote Jabberwocky?