More levity from Deepak

December 2, 2014 • 7:14 am

The Deepakity still hasn’t learned that I don’t read Twi**er, and he’s still tw**ting at me.  I find this out only if I look at my alternative email account (which I do rarely), or someone tells me.  Here’s one that came yesterday:

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Deepak is flogging his new book, and he’s tweeting about it all over the place (as if he needs more sales!). If you go to the article he mentioned at SFGate, “Why physics needs God but God doesn’t need physics,” you’ll see a piece that begins like this:

Recently I created a brief storm on Twitter by throwing out questions that physicists can’t answer. Twitter allows you to contact famous physicists directly, and it’s predictable that a handful will become irritated and even riled up if you dare to challenge them. “What happens in physics stays in physics” is their motto, apparently. But I’m on tour for a new book, The Future of God, and for decades, ever since the publication of books like The Tao of Physics and God and the New Physics, it’s become evident that physics can’t escape its meeting with God.

I don’t mean the clash between belief and atheism. What I cover in the book, and what makes some physicists with famous names turn ad hominem and outright abusive, is something else. They are going to need God to solve some fundamental questions about reality. Even more irritating to them, God exposes the current crisis in physics. After promising us that physics will one day have the answer for where the universe came from, what it’s made of, and where human beings belong in the cosmos, today physics may actually be farther away from an answer than ever. Such is the nature of the crisis.

What is physics missing? METAPHYSICS! That is, physics can’t answer the Big Questions™, which to Deepakity include these:

What does it mean to exist?
How do we know things?
What makes reality real?

And Deepakity asserts that answering these questions requires a comity of both physics and metaphysics, for he sees (as does E. O. Wilson) that the answer to the questions “Why am I here?” is a historical one.

Well, fine and dandy, and physicists are working on that. But Deepakity argues that a pure naturalistic answer doesn’t suffice. We need God! And who is this God? Here Chopra begins to morph into Karen Armstrong:

In The Future of God I argue that there is a version of the deity that isn’t a patriarch sitting above the clouds but rather a God defined as the source of consciousness, and as such, the deity isn’t a myth, a matter of faith, a divine Father or Mother–in fact, such a God cannot be captured in words or images. God is pure “meta.” Physics needs such a God in order to find the higher order of answers that will rescue it from crisis.

He then bangs on about the importance of consciousness, and how that’s beyond science, but I needn’t say more, for reader Grania has translated the whole short article into English that the average person can understand. Her translation:

Scientists laugh at me on Twitter when I troll them in my desperate need for attention and validation.
But I don’t care, because I am right because in my head I can imagine that I am right; therefore I am right.
Scientists don’t get metaphysics. But metaphysics is totally science because it has the word “physics” in it. However, science can only answer “how” questions, not “why” questions. Therefore my thoughts are superior to their thoughts.
Now behold my mighty word salad and despair, you scientist you:
“[P]hysics needs God, and if God in fact is the source of consciousness–transcendent, immutable, without beginning or end, timeless, a field of infinite possibilities–it’s obvious that God doesn’t need physics. The beauty of this realization is that this field of infinite possibilities exists in us. It is here, now, and always. It is our very essence.”
That’s pretty much it, and the last paragraph is indeed Chopra’s: a holotype specimen of his obscurantist thinking. Thanks to Grania for doing the heavy lifting.

99 thoughts on “More levity from Deepak”

  2. But I don’t care, because I am right because in my head I can imagine that I am right; therefore I am right.

    …And if you don’t play nice, I will take my ball and bat and go home and sulk…

  3. Deepakity is like someone who gets an empty notebook then writes with an imaginary pen in invisible ink… you need metaphysical specs before you can read it properly, & Deepak is selling them.

    Just… nonsense.

    1. Depak needs to heed E.O. Wilson’s advice: introspection can only be advanced by observation. Deepak is wholly devoid of any semblance of peer review.

  4. Well paraphrased, Grania!

    PS, Professor CC… minor typo. “find and dandy” should probably be “fine and dandy”.

  5. Why say something can’t be put into words and then keep talking about it anyway? I mean, besides the fact that it garners money and attention? His God of the nanoscale gaps needn’t require criticizing entire professions he knows nothing about: Grania nails it, that it is blatant trolling and taking advantage of people’s ignorance. I’m looking forward to Deepak getting taken to the woodshed, even if it is his strategy. I wonder if theologians of the non-sophisticated variety ever challenge his nonsense? And if not, why not? Should be equally offensive to them.

    1. Theologians of the non-sophisticated variety challenge Chopra only because he’s a “New Ager” and isn’t focused on Christ. The general gist of what he says generally doesn’t rile them because it generally doesn’t conflict with the Christian God. It’s too general. That’s the advantage of going “mega.”

      I think Chopra’s words could have come from — or been copied and posted by — almost any theist.

      1. Also, theologians realize Chopra appeals to their own followers based on similar vagueness and sounds-good vibe. Why upset the target of their own appeal to ignorance. As long as they can be seen as mutually reinforcing positivity in a general way.

  8. This literally a tactic of those unethical salespeople, sell the solution to a problem you created.

  9. “But I don’t care, because I am right because in my head I can imagine that I am right; therefore I am right.”

    Exactly what Megan Fox (not the actress) said in her infamous “audit” of Chicago Field Museum.

  10. Hm… The Tao Of physics? Professor Jeremy Bernstein at the Stevens Institute of Technology called it “[a] superficial and profoundly misleading book”, according to Wikipedia. So it’s clear that Deepak admitted that his new book was in the same league, in terms of wooey language, as Fritjof Capra’s.
    I’m just a cartoonist, and even I didn’t fall for all that pseudoscience-laden claptrap, I even had my take on it at my site:
    Woobuster
    Professor Ceiling Cat, you might find a few of my comic strips that would interest you, and feel free to utilize them as you wish.

    1. Hi Phil:

      Loved your stuff, especially the “Banana Fallacy”. And, two great lines: “Modern times are arguably the worst time in history, except for the past,” and “The meaning of life? For me, it’s the end of faith”. Bravo!

      1. Thanks, Mark.
        I wonder if anyone would recognize the two cartoon characters in that foxhole strip. (Hint: I’m just quoting myself: “For me, it’s… the end of faith”)

        1. I wouldn’t have known without the hint (not the artist’s fault; I’m no better at figuring out caricatures than I am at finding nightjars), but the atheist is Sam Harris. Still can’t figure out who the believer is.

  11. Personally, I prefer a a Pastafarian g*d who touches us with his noodly appendages, a g*d who boiled for our sins. I think of him every time I prepare noodles and broth in my humble, earthly kitchen. I have checked, and he satisfy Chopra’s conditions for deification, as well as Russell’s for teapot.

        1. Yes, it is bog-standard Pastafarianism. It’s also a not-so-subtle double entendre intended to shock christianist heretic unbelievers. May the pirates take them.

          Religion is a bad joke and a crime against children (Dawkins).

  12. My understanding is that “Metaphysics” is a legitimate category in philosophy “concerned with the fundamental nature of being.” Naturalism is a metaphysical theory.

    And now we get to the part where the woo creeps in. Some philosophers (and most theologians and religious believers) think metaphysical beliefs must be unfalsifiable in principle and thus metaphysics is a reason-free, evidence-free zone. Unless, of course, you get to reason from intuitions.

    So they’ve stuck anything remotely “spiritual” in here and now you can claim something is “metaphysical” and you’re no longer accountable for what you believe. You’re especially no longer accountable to others — the ones who have closed their mind to metaphysics because they’re “stuck” in the physical.

    I’ve been told that I can’t criticize alternative medicine because it’s “metaphysical.” It’s like being on gool. You’re untouchable.

    1. Its often said by woomeisters that even if you try to think as a materialist and realist, you have to go through a curtain of meta-something. They claim the very decision to rely on science requires accepting a non scientific foundational argument, and therefore anything goes. Matt Dillahunty deals with this often by pointing out, I think successfully, that foundational elements are to be a minimal, rational set of beliefs one must accepts in order to proceed into broader domains. Not so much “anything goes.”

      1. Woomeisters tend to categorize like toddlers: anything you “can’t see and measure” or put in your mouth is “metaphysical” and/or “supernatural.” This category would now include concepts, values, thoughts, ideals, abstractions, numbers, morals, aesthetics, reason, and logic.

        It’s not just presupps who do this. It’s one of the most popular category confusions for all spiritual systems.

    2. Metaphysics is important to science and to philosophy wanting to be consistent with science. The Deepak has unfortunately mangled all of that.

      Regrettably metaphysics also means “woo”.

      1. It’s quite apparent that Deepak never metaphysics he could understand.

        (Sorry about that… )

    3. To the extent that it’s legitimate, is “Metaphysics” just the imposition of arbitrary ‘reality principles’ after the work of physics is done? Or is there a sense (other than historical) in which metaphysics is prior to science?

      1. I’m not sure, but my understanding is that metaphysical beliefs can technically be formed from science, as Naturalism is both a working theory and a belief in the “fundamental nature of being.”

      2. Prior to in one way only: generality, as least as I worked in metaphysics. I don’t draw any dividing line: matters like control theory, automata theory or the general theory of evolution are metaphysical because they are hypergeneral theories about reality. Similarly scientifically enformed work on events (like mine :)), properties, states, etc. (the traditional metaphysical topics) is of a piece with the “originated outside of philosophy” stuff.

  13. The one line in which Deepak states the materialist position “What happens in physics stays in physics” is actually OK. It could be a real motto.

    1. I really do think that Deepity suffers from “Asshole Syndrome” in that he truly thinks his views are correct and those of others don’t matter.

  15. Back in the dark ages, I owned a Palm Pilot. On it I had an app called a “BuzzWord Generator.” Press the button once, and a phrase of meaningless gobbledygook would appear. Press the button a few more times, and you would have an entire paragraph of meaningless gobbledygook.

    I swear that some of the sentences deepakity is speaking are identical to what was produced by the BuzzWord Generator.

      1. Yes, you beat me to it. I reckon that last paragraph Grania quoted was produced on the Random Deepak Generator.

  16. After selling his book and his tour by comparing his work to the work of other popular books he tries to explain the crisis he has invented. He explains that metaphysics deals with an “invisible” reality; undetectable would be a more accurate word and explains why science isn’t concerned with metaphysics. He then goes on to say how Ancient Greeks used metaphysics to explain reality, as if they all believed the same things and their opinions are authoritative.

    I usually have a problem with the details of metaphors, but this one is particularly crap. He explains cars are physical yet their motion is unpredictable, but they have a driver and the driver is somehow a higher explanation. He seems to ignore the fact that drivers are also physical, we can talk to them and find out where they are going and we can study the paths they take and their surroundings. Of course studying the car itself is useless (unless it has a programmed sat-nav or is one of those cool driver-less cars also programmed), we don’t need to “go meta”, we just ask the driver, or follow them. He then appeals to Isaac Newton, but all of Isaac Newton’s greatest work involved ignoring metaphysics and paying close attention to the observable. Physics only works when we ignore what is “invisible”.

    “There are no experiments that can prove what came before the Big Bang, or what dark energy and matter actually are, or why evolution appeared in the early universe…” He seems to just ignore that it was physics that did the work to find these things out in the first place, metaphysics never came anywhere close because (as he describes) it deals with an “invisible reality” and not the reality we can observe. And then he tops his essay off with some abuse aimed at physicists, calling us isolated, arrogant, and wilfully blind. All insults that appear to be well understood by Deepak himself; always trying to sell his work, always bothering actual scientists, only asking rhetorical questions, always advertising his sales records and qualifications instead of discoveries.

    It’s weird that apparently humans have been doing metaphysics since the ancient greeks, longer than we have been doing actual physics, and yet all they seem to have figured out is that you can ask some very vague questions.

    1. If we delve into Chopra and/or any religious or spiritual belief system, it turns out that even our own minds can’t be explained by reference only to the material natural world, let alone the Mind of God. The ghost in the machine is just a microcosm of the Ghost in the Universe. Or, of course, the other way around. We are not projections of imagination, God is.

      So appealing to the driver as part of the physical explanation of how and where and why cars go sounds reasonable — but only to people who don’t still think of ‘agency’ as something spooky, mysterious, and beyond the physical.

  17. If Deepak has this direct line to God, why doesn’t he just get the answers and solve this crisis in physics?

    Also, If God exposed this crisis is Deepak just the messenger or what? So many questions.

    1. Oh, we ALL have the same direct line to God. Chopra just wants the physicists to use information they should already have access to, if they weren’t blocking it.

      God is a field of consciousness that is set up for maximum diversity — and that includes the divine and diabolical, the sacred and the profane. (Deepak Chopra)

      See? We are emmenations of God.

  18. Chopra’s prognostications should be called agnostications. Than man slips between the slips inside the slips.

  19. Nice one Grania – I like this part best: Now behold my mighty word salad and despair, you scientist you….

  21. “Physicists get annoyed when I babble nonsense about their field of expertise. They must know I’m right.”

  22. Gee- until I read this, I didn’t know that there WAS a “crisis” in Physics! Thanks, Deepcrap!

  23. “What makes reality real?” This is a tough one. But if we cannot today answer well this, at least we can answer the correlated question: What makes UNreality real (at least to some people)? Many things. And Depacity is one example of them…

  25. …it’s predictable that a handful will become irritated and even riled up if you dare to challenge them.

    The only word I can think of with regard to this statement is “projection”. Chopra gets his panties in a bind every time someone criticizes him.

        1. The great thing about selling god is that you don’t have to worry about customer service/quality control/truth in advertising/any of that kind of stuff. Dead people don’t call the complaints department.

  27. Maybe you can start a competition? God needs biology but biology doesn’t need God (unless you’re a creationist…but even then if God was a designer he was either lazy or lousy (or both since they’re not mutually exclusive)). I’m guessing that Deepak has never heard of Karl Popper who basically tackled the difference between science and metaphysics.

  28. Kink told me, “We are here because we are not there. If we were there we would not be here.”

    Kink earned his Kat Snax for that one.

  29. Let me describe for you something that words cannot describe using words, naturally. You see, all these silly scientists spend time making statements that are coherent, while I use incoherence. There are infinite things that are incoherent, thus my views are infinitely wise.

    1. There are infinite things that are incoherent, thus my views are infinitely infantilely wise.
      There, fixed it, sort of.

    2. Let me describe for you something that words cannot describe using words, naturally.

      Yes, one has to admire at least the chutzpah of any presentation including: “God cannot be captured in words or images. God is…”

  30. Deepak is truly out of his mind and out of control. Sadly, his popularity and book sales are out of control too. Who buys this stuff? Who really thinks he’s offering a higher knowledge? Baffling.

  31. How many books has Deepak written? He’s a cottage industry of his own. I’ve always had a problem with people who make money by taking advantage of people’s ignorance and gullibility. They have to know what they’re doing!

    1. “As of 2014 Chopra has written 75 books, 21 of them New York Times bestsellers, which have been translated into 35 languages.[82] According to Paul Offit, writing in 2013, Chopra’s business grosses around $20 million annually, built on the sale of courses, books, videos, herbal supplements and massage oils; a year’s worth of anti-aging products can cost up to $10,000.[83] Chopra himself is estimated to be worth over $80 million as of 2014.[84] As of 2005, according to Srinivas Aravamudan, he was able to charge $25,000 to $30,000 per lecture five or six times a month.[85]” –Wikipedia, “Deepak Chopra”

      2. He has either convinced himself of his BS, believes his BS really helps people or is a sociopath.

      3. Makes me almost want to be a Christian so I’d know he’d eventually be punished for his sins. Camel through the eye of a needle and all that.

  33. What does it mean to exist?
    How do we know things?
    What makes reality real?

    Aidan? Mr. Gravel Inspector?

    Might you have a sock rock you could spare for Mr. Chopra? He would seem to be in desperate need of its application.

    b&

  34. So according to Deepak, God is “…a field of infinite possibilities.” Well that helps me understand God a lot better. I’m not sure about the infinite part, but I have a field of possibilities behind my yard every spring. Usually by mid-summer it’s mostly weeds. I’ve never felt the urge to pray to it, although I frequently curse it when the weeds start to invade my yard.

  35. Chopra puts himself in the same league as the creationists with his “questions that physicists can’t answer.”.
    We have a saying here in Holland: One fool can ask more than ten sages can answer.

  37. So, let me get this straight…

    Deepak(ity) wants the answer to 3 big questions:

    What does it mean to exist?
    How do we know things?
    What makes reality real?

    And because we do not have the verifiable answers at the current time, Deepak(ity) wants to make an answer up that “fills in the gaps”?

    Even better, he wants to claim that HE has the answers?

    I am not a scientist, just a rational thinking person, but isn’t that the “God fills the gaps” idea? An idea that has been figuratively folded up, shoved in a drawer, and put away for good? (barring some actual evidence)

    Talk about “woo-woo,” is this Deepak some sort of snake oil salesman?

  38. It is true, though, that science can only answer “how” questions. For the answers to “why” questions, one needs to consult a bullshitter.

  39. After promising us that physics will one day have the answer for where the universe came from, what it’s made of, and where human beings belong in the cosmos, today physics may actually be farther away from an answer than ever.

    Unfortunately for woo peddlers, that is a perfectly orthogonal description of the correct status.

    – The discovery of the Higgs put the capstone in physics first self-consistent theory that is valid on an exponential energy scale, possibly up to right below Planck scale (at the GUT/inflation scales).

    – Yesterday the Planck data release conference in Italy put out the preliminary polarization results. That result will put the capstone in the Hot Big Bang, meaning that everything from the above standard particle energy scale up until today is the valid time scale for non-exotic physics. (Because alternate theories has no good reason to predict that polarization, even when they get the cosmic microwave background amplitudes correct.)

    – And one of today’s leading lights in physics, Nima Arkani-Hamed, enthused us (or at least me) with a public lecture the other week where he pointed out that basic physics is now extremely constrained.

    If we start out with 3D space and 1D time [which Nima doesn’t explain, but could be because it is the only configuration that allows for enclosed cells, i.e. life] and quantum mechanics, everything of standard physics falls out. We get 1/r^2 long range forces acting on particles, and particles having spin 0 (mass), 1/2 (matter), 1 (electroweak forces), 3/2 (supersymmetry) and 2 (gravity). The supersymmetry slot is the last one left, it is the last major symmetry of a peculiar sort or in other words the last large sector of laws, putatively explaining most or all of non-neutrino dark matter. As I remember it Nima says that since we have found everything else that has been allowed by constraints, we should expect to see this too.

    I recommend watching the seminar. Either as antidote to Depuke-all-over-physics ulcer-bacteria-drools-from-my-Chops-rah. Or simply because it is an elegant description of where we are at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/watch-live-today-quantum-mechanics-and-the-fabric-of-our-universe/ [it says “watch live”, but the lecture was put up on youtube].

  41. Our woo-meister is probably lapping up all this attention – albeit of the adverse variety.

    I really wonder if Chopra actually studied any physics in his student days in India all those many, many years ago? Perhaps he needs a challenge from a REAL physicist – to write Physics 101 or equivalent?

  42. Friedrich Nietzsche said

    “Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.”

    It’s from “The Gay Science” previously translated as “The Joyful Wisdom”

    Chopra is clearer than Karen A as to whether he thinks God exists or not, but he plays the hurt feelings card and taunts his opponents far worse than Karen A and he uses many technical scientific terms in ways that violate their actually meaning.

    1. Deepak is easily hurt because he is a narcissist. He also flies into rages because he is a narcissist.

  43. I’ve never had any patience with this man. Is he a medical doctor or a psychologist or just a graduate from a mail order diploma mill?

    If he didn’t have that enchanting (to me) Indian accent, he’d probably be living under a bridge somewhere.

    I’ve only a few college credits under my belt. I’m no expert on anything scientific so maybe I’m not educated enough but Chopra makes as much sense as Sarah Palin, the Queen of Word Salad.

    The man has managed to hoodwink the masses into thinking he has some prescient knowledge about mystical things, which connect science to faith. In other words, he’s a buffoon and you’re wise not to absorb his cries for attention on Twitter or anywhere else.

  44. In my early 20s, Sartre answered my existential questions – we make our own meaning, and it has stayed with me for all these decades as a foundation.

  45. I was going to ask what SFGate was, but a Google tells me the SF is San Francisco. Maybe appropriate, as I recall SF was the home of much flower power and, regrettably, associated woo.

    I originally assumed SF referred to Science Fiction, which might be considered appropriate for Deepak except I like to think SF fans, much though some of them might like to dress up and speak Klingon, generally have an appreciation of what is science and what is fiction and what the difference is…

  46. His boasting about asking questions that the physicists can’t or won’t answer only proves the maxim that
    “one fool can ask more questions than seven wise can answer”
    (it’s even ten wise in the Dutch version as I recall it).

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