Deepak Chopra sent this to me, and to a number of other people, thanking us for “inspiring” it. The only way I could have inspired it is if Chopra were remote viewing the contents of my toilet this morning.
It’s nonsense through and through, with Chopra babbling about “akashic fields” and “quantum” and psychic powers, but what I thought was interesting was his overall claim.
William Lane Craig abuses physics to claim that because physics has demonstrated the Big Bang, and that our universe has a beginning, it has confirmed the truth of the Bible, which states right up front that there was an “In the beginning…” (it’s a real leap from modern cosmology to a bland statement in an old book). Here, Chopra is claiming that the universe — or it’s progenitor state — is eternal, as claimed by physicists, thereby confirming his newagey beliefs.
I don’t think any physicist should waste their time explaining the reality of cosmological theories to these guys, but it would be wonderful to just put them in a room and have them blather at each other. Where the rest of us can ignore them.
I wonder what his thoughts are on the evolution of fly tied fish hooks. :)
Oh, oh! Steel Cage match!
I would pay a bundle to see that.
So, who else got this spam?
Oh man, I’d love to see that. The cranks get highly irritable when they disagree only on the details, it’s far superior to watching them go at someone who is their polar opposite.
I’m thinking that, if you analyzed the content of the verbiage flowing from their bloviating blowholes, you could probably come up with some fascinating conclusions about information content in sentences as it approaches zero.
Especially for Chopra. His normal speaking techniques appears to be so close to zero-information that it can effectively be recreated by randomizing his twitter feed, as we’ve seen online before.
It’s like the god-rock question: Could William Craig twist and debate his way past an argument that had ALSO had no merit? Could Chopra find something so vacuous that even he could not agree?
…fascinating questions that deserve answers. I demand to see this. I say we start nudging Craig by pointing out that Chopra’s not the right kind of religious.
If WL Craig and Deepak Chopra were to appear together in a public forum I very much doubt they’d talk about cosmology. Although one represents “Religion” and the other “Spirituality,” my guess is they’d focus on a topic they could both plunge into with gleeful delight: how emotionally and morally bankrupt the atheists are. They have the same enemy and when push comes to shove getting rid of secular naturalism and the skeptical mindset is going to come before the need to haggle over details of the supernatural. You’d likely no more see them debating each other than you’d see a homeopath debating a reiki master.
What is the “Akashic field?” I’ll make it simple for everyone: it’s Mind. Both Chopra and Craig think that mental things like thoughts, emotions, and intentions exist outside of space, time, and the laws of physics. When they talk about “potentialities” they mean the scope of imagination. Chopra gets there earlier through some sort of idealistic monism; Craig brings it in to the kalam for his “only a personal choice is outside of space and time” step. For both, the physics is mere window dressing thrown on to common sense intuitions about dualism.
WLC and Deepak in a room is suspiciously reminiscent of the infinite monkeys scenario. How many centuries of their incoherent babbling do you think it would take before they randomly come up with an actual true, meaningful statement?
On the other hand, we might get proof of the supernatural, as reality itself collapses to escape the inanity.
Nope. WLC & Deepak together? A swirling mass of of bullshit that collapses into an all consuming bullshit singularity? We’d all get sucked in and there just aren’t enough showers in the world to wash that sort of excrement off. For the good of all humanity they must never meet.
As a matter of fact, PZ is wrong. What Chopra says in this clip is exactly the same as Craig says, namely, that before the beginning of space and time, there was an infinite existence of something or other. Both Chopra and Craig agree that it involves something ‘supernatural’. Both of them talk utter bollocks, but they agree on it nonetheless. They do not have opposing views as PZ is saying here.
The resulting madness would consist of Craig rattling off his usual set of winners followed by Chopra agreeing with everything and then babbling incoherently about quantum and energy. Craig would so spend his rebuttals claiming he’d won the debate worth Chopra claiming he was one with the Universe.
I think I would pay money in order to not hear this debate.
“Akashic field?” Isn’t that the technology Captain Kirk stole from the Romulans?
If you’re to take the trouble to get them in the same room, might as well go full on Bond villain and make it a room where the floor opens up to a pool of lava and every time they say something ridiculous the floor opens a little wider. Or at least a pool of ill-tempered sea bass with lasers on their frickin’ heads. No better way to test someone’s convictions than to make it a life or death matter.
Deepsh*t Chopra uses all these sciencey sounding words, so people will think he knows what he’s talking about. But in fact, he just strings together words that really don’t mean anything at all. If it makes no sense to you, it isn’t your failing; you aren’t missing anything.
Sounds like ‘Aka’ or ‘shic’, I guess.
NO!!! Don’t do it!!! It’s like matter and anti-matter colliding.
The resulting vacuum could end the universe as we know it.
@Artor #6:
Sadly, they both likely think that they have centuries. One is convinced he will be rewarded with an eternity spent prostrating himself before his preferred tyrant, the other that he will be reborn into increasingly higher forms until he reaches the bliss of Nirvana. So there’s not a great deal of pressure to do something actually useful in this life.
Given that metaphysical stuff “feels good” in that it’s comforting to believe mystical stuff cares and guides us and we are part of it and its meaningful and we individually are important and that all feels good… given that frame of mind about “feeling good”: Am I the only person who thinks the idea that thoughts, emotions and intentions existing outside of space is a deeply *creepy* and *un*comfortable idea? I don’t mean in a superior snooty atheistic sense; I mean in a supernatural existential dread of the abyss so I turn to new age ideas sense. If I want to “feel good” about myself and believe I have meaning in the world the very *last* thing I want to contemplate is that my thoughts, emotions and intentions exist outside space, outside myself, and out of my control and belong to something else entirely. That frankly gives me the willies. Am I the only one who feels that way?
sorry for the derail, but this wasn’t a very serious conversation, was it?
Is it just me or does WLC speak the way Piers Anthony writes?
Here’s my serious analysis of Chopra vs WLC on physics: WLC selectively cites cosmological theories that confirm his particular philosophy, and pretends that they are the consensus view. Chopra, on the other hand, is just completely confused. He cited one cosmological scenario where time could go back infinitely (eternal inflation), and in the next second says that cosmologists say the universe only goes back 13.8 billion years. I think he didn’t even realize that he contradicted himself.
When Chopra was interviewed by Dawkins, he said that the term “quantum” was stolen by evil modern science.
I sent a friend of mine Planck’s acceptance speech for the Nobel prize, where he mentions adopting the term “quantum” and asked her to produce a document preceding that.
Silence.
When we met IRL she told me that’s fine, it’s just “opinions”.
And this is a person a genuinely like. -sigh-
Such a debate might contribute too much to global warming; don’t do it!
How about we Kickstarter fund a kumite tournament and then extend invites to William Lane Craig, Chopra, Ken Ham, Kirk Cameron, and Eric Hovind?
@jonmoles #13
“Do you expect me to talk?”
“No, Mr. Craig. I expect you to LIE!”
Artor #24
+>1
#22
Unfortunately, Kirk Cameron is JUST an idiot and wouldn’t qualify for any such contest with those other four. The other four are major league, professional shysters. Cameron is only an amateur and wouldn’t last 10 minutes.
#6 Unfortunately, I think youd be dissapointed , remember the monkeys are just banging randomly, while WLC and DC has a reverse WEASEL type program built in, where reasonable statements are always selected against.
So, he’ll be back next time as a tapeworm?
Ha! Take that Hawking -WRONG AGAIN! Chopra has you now! I’m pretty sure he was talking about the theoretical “false vaccum” from which universes could emerge and would explain hyperinflation in the early universe we are in, along with an infinite other universes that would be emerge from the false vacuum. He then goes on to establish that the false vacuum is, err, definitely real and we can.. well you see, we access it because we are intuitive… err.. no intuitive people are accessing the false vacuum which is actually the err.. the.. Sakashit no wait the Akashit field, so the the false vacuum that is definitely true is the Akashik field and we can access it as part of our universe and it makes us intuitive. Ha Hawking, bet you are feeling Deeply Chopped down to size now. Also anything else cool that you come up with, it was in our book hiding all along, just a few years after you publish it will jump right out and you will look like a fool. Sneer
I totally regret giving that a click.
Actually, it’s the study of fashions in the movie Pitch Perfect.
No, Chopra must not be allowed to swerve into William Craig’s Lane.
NO! Don’t cross the streams!
But I thought Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels were the ones starring in the Dumb and Dumber movie.
The idea here is that it’s not your thoughts, emotions & intentions, but your body that exists outside of you; that you aren’t your body, that your body is just some kind of ornament – that you are “something else entirely”.
I’ve never felt that way, for what that’s worth.
It would be bad.
Important safety tip, there, Jim @33. Thanks.
The word ‘gobbledygook’ was apparently coined with divine inspiration in anticipation of the need to have the perfect word to describe the effluent being issued from the mouth of Deepak Chopra.
I prefer bafflegab.
Oh my god, I absolutely lost it after he rattles off a bunch of nonsense and then it cuts to the interviewer at 2:33. She’s just staring blankly at him and blinks a few times.
Seriously, look at it. I’m just imagining a meme of filling in a thought balloon of what she’s actually thinking about at that moment.
Damn. I’m disappointed that he didn’t include me on the list of people who “inspired” this. I am, after all, the one who coined the term “Choprawoo” to describe his blather…
But Orac, That would require the Choprawoomaestro to pay attention to reality.