What makes Deepak Chopra so stupid?

Deepak is back with Part 2 of Why Evolutionary Biology Embraces the Bogus.

It's short and shallow and utterly stupid. It's so shallow it's barely worth commenting on so this time I'm going to take a different tact and explain why Deepak Chopra is stupid and not just ignorant. I can sum it up for you right now: Deepak Chopra's preconceived notions of "non-physical" causes and "non-physical" consciousness blind him to all potential physical, brain level, explanations for human behavior and render him grossly incapable of learning anything new in the areas of neurophysiology, evolutionary psychology, quantum physics and related scientific subjects. If you get that, you can stop reading now (unless you want to know my secret big mistake in my last post on Chopra). The rest is detail and argument supporting the view you already understand.

We're all ignorant to some degree and I put my ignorance of Prozac and clinical depression out there in my first post on Deepak (that post is re-written now, so take my word for it or read the comments section on my fist Deepak post). However, unlike Deepak, I caught my error, thanks to you guys commenting on my post and pointing it out, and so I learned. But Deepak can't learn what I learned. That's why he is stupid and not just ignorant.

One of the things that happened in Deepak's first post on why he thinks evolutionary biology is bogus is that comments on his post pointed to a huge error in his implied assumption that losing one's job could cause a person to have an "imbalance of serotonin" and possibly needing Prozac. What he had said was simply; "Let's say a man loses his job, becomes depressed, and wants a prescription for Prozac. What made him depressed isn't the imbalance of serotonin in his brain but the loss of his job." There was confusion there about two uses of the term "depression." On one hand there is clinical depression which needs to be treated with a drug like Prozac, at least for awhile, and then there is the street use of the term "depression" which can mean you're a little sad, worried or blue in a completely normal and healthy way. The error is gross because in the case of clinical depression where you can get a prescription for Prozac it really is the imbalance of serotonin that's causing it. Normal sadness is still in balance.

If you're blue about losing your job you may have somewhat lower serotonin levels, I assume but don't know that and normal sadness may not even alter serotonin levels, but you certainly do not have an imbalance of serotonin in normal sadness. No doctor who knows what he is doing is going to give you Prozac for the kind of normal, in balance, sadness. Prozac is meant only for the chemically imbalanced, clinical depression and related serious conditions. Now, maybe losing your job might trigger a susceptibility to having your serotonin levels go out of whack but losing your job can not be called "the cause" simply because it's too normal an experience to lose a job and most people don't go clinical as a result. I have no experience myself with clinical depression. I've never used Prozac. I've never needed psychiatric help for depression in any way. But I have gotten fired from two jobs – that certainly made me sad, and eventually I re-thought my entire approach to life as a result, so the sadness was useful for me. Deepak was just dead wrong to imply that losing your job will cause clinical depression of the kind you need Prozac for.

In his new post, Deepak writes about how, in materialistic science, "associations will be mistaken for causes," and that is exactly what Deepak did with his comment about a man losing his job and getting depressed. We can prove job loss does not cause clinical depression and prove Deepak wrong. Deepak says, materialistic science, evolutionary psychology/biology, is using, "quite invalid reasoning, because it always winds up proving one's own preconceptions." But again, this is what Deepak is doing. He can't even acknowledge the provable errors he has already made. Deepak's own conclusion precedes the investigation.

He's guilty of everything he accuses evolutionary biology of and worse. One thing Deepak does that no evolutionary biologist would do is come to the table with no specific evidence and examples at hand. Deepak quotes no papers on the evolutionary biology he attempts to criticize but only makes vague assumptions about what evolutionary biologists do and assumes they do what he does – make bogus arguments and not examine evidence. It's pure projection.

Like I said earlier, I made a mistake in my first Deepak post and didn't take into account this confusion about the different meanings of "depression." I actually thought you might get Prozac for a little mood brightener after losing a job. I was ignorant. No doctor would prescribe Prozac for you unless he thought you were clinically depressed. I acknowledge this and I have learned. Deepak has learned nothing he admits too. In his recent post he totally ignores his past mistakes and moves on to build on his past ignorance and make a wall that guards him from "Materialist" scientific understandings. (Or maybe he's building a wall to guard his marks from understanding the science that would destroy his ability to con their money from them?)

Deepak says: "Evolutionary biology isn't a magic science or a privileged one. It brings a preconceived model to a problem." As far as I can tell, that's half correct, evolutionary biology isn't magic – magic is what Deepak pretends to sell along with his own preconceived (several thousand years ago) notions. Chopra goes further off track very soon by adding: "It applies that model without looking to the right or the left. It has a strong bias in favor of material fact instead of abstract philosophy."

Abstract philosophy? What's really lacking isn't abstraction or philosophy, what is not "allowed" in science is theological teleology and supernatural causes, something Deepak identifies, vaguely, with abstract philosophy.

Deepak claims: "Human beings do lots of non-physical things." Like what? Thinking? Feeling? Getting depressed – even clinically depressed? If there's no physical cause for clinical depression, then why does Prozac have any effect at all? Does Deepak think it is all placebo effect?

The assumptions Deepak claims are ignored or flouted by evolutionary biology are also "ignored" by neurophysiology and neuropharmacology and every other science out there. Deepak claims that "We intuitively know how to select a cause as opposed to an association." But the failures of Deepak's own intuitive attempts in this area prove that relying on intuition, and "religious-like" notions about souls, produce gross errors. Deepak says "evolutionary biology tends to forget intuition" but that will change as soon as someone writes a paper on intuition and where it really comes from and how Deepak gets things so clearly wrong using it.

Like everything else Deepak writes about, materialistic science produces results, even evolutionary science. And it is Deepak who produces only words.
And Deepak lies. This is what Deepak claims evolutionary biology is like:

"So what if two explanations arise in evolutionary biology? Assume that the gene for music is isolated. As an evolutionary development, the cause for this is that one gene pool didn't contain music and died out, while another gene pool did contain music and survived. If explanation A holds that prehistoric women were attracted to men who whistled while explanation B holds that prehistoric men ran away from men who whistled, there's no valid way to choose. In the absence of physical data, evolution is a highly dubious model to apply to behavior."

No Deepak that is your straw man version of something you have no understanding of. If you want real evolutionary psychology, go here:

Max Planck researchers have used psychological research techniques to successfully reconstruct primeval cognition.
http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2006/pressRelease20060904/index.html

And here:
http://www.mpg.de/english/institutesProjectsFacilities/instituteChoice/anthropologie/index.html

Let us know why you think the Max Planck group failed to "reconstruct primeval cognition."

Or, here's something easier, Steven Pinker on the evolutionary psychology of religion.
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2004_10_29_religion.htm

Deepak says "I realize that this kind of critique frustrates and even infuriates materialists…" Yes, being constantly lied about is frustrating. So, stop lying, Deepak and next time you want to criticize evolutionary psychology instead of making up a straw man version of an evolutionary psychology paper, read a real paper on it and criticize that.

Get me off this crazy planet!

There is a really bizarre and crazy story on Panda's Thumb about Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges of Cleveland, Texas State Rep. Warren Chisum, and a memo to members of the Texas House of Representatives. The memo called for the end of “tax-supported evolution science” because it has a religious agenda. Since the courts have ruled that “creation science” has a religious agenda and so violates the “Establishment Clause” Ben Bridges set out to prove that Darwinian evolution and the big bang theory were religious. Rep. Bridges claims it is the alternate “creation scenario” of the Pharisee Religion, derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the Kabbala dating back at least two millennia and it has a very specific religious agenda thus it cannot legally be taught in taxpayer supported schools. The memo then invites lawmakers to visit FixedEarth.com, the "non-moving Earth & anti-evolution web page of the Fair Education Foundation, Inc."

Is reality ripping off The Onion? Just how crazy and ignorant are our government representatives and the voters who elect them? We're talking "fixed Earth" here people, they can't believe in that little scientific factoid that got Galileo in trouble with the Catholic Church. They don't believe it after NASA has sent probes to Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. We couldn't do that if we were wrong about a heliocentric solar system. It prompted Panda's Thumb writer, Reed A. Cartwright, to say this:

"What Texas needs is not another anti-evolution bill, but a bill that would give politicians the Bridges-Chisum-Hall test. If the politician actually believes that there is any merit to the rantings of a fixed-earth creationist, then he fails the test, is declared legally stupid, and required to stay five counties away from any child."
-- Reed A. Cartwright

I wish. There are civil servant tests, almost every country has them, (there are scandals about them in China because their tests are so hard) and it seems that our elected representatives are civil servants so shouldn't they have to pass such tests before they run for office? Maybe we should learn from China?

Here's a general outline for a two phase plan; phase one – petition and write congress so that all people who want to run for office have to pass a basic civil service exam with a mild intelligence test included before they can campaign for any such representative position. Phase two – keep pressuring congress to make the test harder so we get the best people and also pressure for more scientific awareness and general intelligence.

What we would have to leave out, for the moment, is anything about evolution. In a different world maybe that would be included, but we're working with an electorate here in the U.S. where, according to Gallup polls, most people don't believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is supported by the evidence. The results have been similar since 2001, the first year in which Gallup asked the question.

Only 1.2 percent said they believe the scientific theory of evolution and "God had no part" according to some polls.

With poll numbers like that it's utterly amazing that we're winning the court cases. So, I'd be reluctant to push too hard. However, a simple bit of intelligence testing could weed out some of the real morons, like Rep. Ben Bridges of Cleveland and Rep. Warren Chisum.

So, get thinking people, how do we word a petition for testing would-be elected representatives before they can run?

Martin, you're a delusional idiot with the reading comprehension skills of a turnip.

My apologies to any other Martins out there, by Martin I mean the idiot who wrote this in the comments section of my first Deepak post, "Deepak Chopra gets stupid again.":

After reading this i must conclude once again that evolutionists can´t argue philosophically, and that they are as blinded by belief as their religious opponents. I mean:

"There's a reason evolution gave us depression and sadness and pain – it's supposed to motivate you to do what you have to do to get back to a state where you feel better."

What excacly is the evidence of this? Am i right that the only reason to believe in this is that it is taken as a given due to the infallability of the evolution hypothesis?

And the comment about consciousness is also nonsense, very little can be said with security about the nature of consciousness and its connection to the body.

So why attack Chopra when he makes claims in areas that are far from proven to be the other way? Are you interested in the truth or just the dogma of evolutionary thinking?

Let's take that short message apart, shall we. First line: "After reading this i must conclude once again that evolutionists…" The use of the word "evolutionists" clues me into the fact that Martin is not an evolutionists himself, which probably means he is a creationist. The use of the phrase "once again" clues me to the fact that he has read arguments for evolution and learned nothing.

Also, I don't even make an argument for evolution in my Deepak post. I argued against Deepak's position on what he calls "Evolutionary Psychology" simply by pointing out Deepak doesn't know what the term means, I say "he's not out of the starting gate." There is no argument for Evolution or Evolutionary Psychology needed in my Deepak post or used because Deepak doesn't even know what the term means. Deepak actually argues, badly, against neurophysiology thinking it's the same thing as Evolutionary Psychology.

Martin thinks "evolutionists can´t argue philosophically" and that clues me into the fact that Martin is a pretentious poseur.

What exactly does it mean to "argue philosophically" as opposed to argue generally? It means to argue philosophical points. I don't actually do that. I argue definitions and logic. I point out that Deepak doesn't know what Evolutionary Psychology is and then I demonstrate that his example of the drunk driver means the opposite of what he thinks. What I wrote was a logical argument, not a philosophical one. It was about Deepak Chopra's phoniness, a phoniness Martin shares. Those are points only loosely related to the underlying philosophies involved.

Martin then claims "we" are as blinded by belief as our religious opponents. To call an acceptance of a scientific theory a "belief" and comparing it to religion shows a gross misunderstanding of what religion and science are. He then quotes me saying this: "There's a reason evolution gave us depression and sadness and pain – it's supposed to motivate you to do what you have to do to get back to a state where you feel better."

That was a mistake, but not the mistake Martin thinks. Here's what happened; in Deepak's blog he had said "Let's say a man loses his job, becomes depressed, and wants a prescription for Prozac. What made him depressed isn't the imbalance of serotonin in his brain but the loss of his job." There is confusion here about two uses of the term "depression." On one hand there is clinical depression which needs to be treated with a drug like Prozac, at least for awhile, and then there is the street use of the term "depression" which can mean you're a little sad, worried or blue in a completely normal and healthy way. If you're blue about losing your job you may have somewhat lower serotonin levels, I assume but don't know that and normal sadness may not even alter serotonin levels, but you certainly do not have an imbalance of serotonin in normal sadness. No doctor who knows what he is doing is going to give you Prozac for the kind of normal, in balance, sadness that would be caused by nothing more than losing your job. Prozac is meant only for the chemically imbalanced, clinical depression and related serious conditions. Now, maybe losing your job might trigger a susceptibility to having your serotonin levels go out of whack but losing your job can not be called "the cause" simply because it's too normal an experience to lose a job and most people don't go clinical as a result. Deepak is just dead wrong to imply that losing your job will cause clinical depression of the kind you need Prozac for.

In my rush to get to my point about the drunk driver example I took on Deepak's confusion about these two uses of the term depression and said "There's a reason evolution gave us 'depression' and sadness and pain – it's supposed to motivate you to do what you have to do to get back to a state where you feel better."

Yikes! My bad! I did not mean there is that kind of evolutionary psychological explanation for clinical depression. Evolutionary psychology, as I understand it, is about what is adaptive, not what is maladaptive. Papers on Evolutionary Psychology that I have read, which is not many, have all been about the mystery of the normal not the abnormal. Why is religion normal, why do we like movies and art, why are we altruistic, etc..

More than an hour before Martin's comment was recorded I edited what I had written because mark, making another comment in my Deepak comments section, pointed out a mistake I made. I then edited my post, correcting and clarifying, by adding quote marks around the word "depression." Mark was right, I had let Deepak's confusion of the meanings of "depression" stand. However, Martin didn't understand mark's post. That's why I say he has the reading comprehension of a turnip.

The point of my saying; "There's a reason evolution gave us depression and sadness and pain…" was to be an example of the kind thinking Evolutionary Psychology deals with. I did not mean there is that kind of evolutionary psychological explanation for clinical depression. I meant "depression" in the street sense of feeling sad or blue.

However, like I originally said, Deepak isn't even out of the starting gate when it comes to Evolutionary Psychology. Deepak seems to confuse Evolutionary Psychology with neurophysiology. He is so ignorant he doesn't know there is a difference between the two. It's all science and materialism to him. He probably makes this "mistake" because there is a lot more academic criticism of Evolutionary Psychology and no criticism of neurophysiology. The legit criticism of Evolutionary Psychology gives Deepak's attack on neurophysiology more of an aura of credibility. Yet it is neurophysiology which really deals the most crippling blows to Deepak's world view. He benefits from any confusion he can cause here and that's why I put quotes around "mistake" here.

There is a remote possibility that Deepak is not really ignorant and stupid, but rather "evil." The confusions he wants to give his readers are not his own, but simply the tools of his trade, used for his con job that require him to have ignorant fools, like Martin, as his marks.

Evolutionary Psychology and neurophysiology are linked. Neurophysiology asks how our brains work right now while Evolutionary Psychology asks how did our brains become what they are, how did they get to this present state from past states through evolutionary steps. This distinction is never made by Chopra.

And I also slip and get confused by the link between them which is another level of error on my part. When I said "There's a reason evolution gave us 'depression' and sadness and pain – it's supposed to motivate you to do what you have to do to get back to a state where you feel better," that was a very shallow and half-assed example of a kind of theory in Evolutionary Psychology. Simply and more generally, we have aversive experiences so we will learn to avoid the things that cause them. It's the history guessing that distinguishes Evolutionary Psychology from psychology and neurophysiology. Again, note that Deepak doesn't seem to know that.

Evolutionary Psychology is distinct from neurophysiology because it guesses at our evolutionary history. It's an attempt to use our knowledge of evolutionary biology to answer the why questions about the structure of the human mind. It is not about how things work now, not about how an imbalance of serotonin causes depression, that's neurophysiology.

Evolutionary Psychology assumes something Deepak Chopra doesn't want you to believe in (and Martin is one who doesn't believe it). It assumes we have an evolutionary history made of gradual, contingent, evolutionary steps. In both neurophysiology and Evolutionary Psychology there is the assumption that the mind is a set of materialistic information-processing machines. Evolutionary Psychology adds the assumption that our mind was "designed" by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors living on the African savannahs.
There is evidence for it. But I was not writing about that - yet.

Martin wants to know "What exactly is the evidence of this?" Well, Martin, why don't you Google "Evolutionary Psychology" and find out? Are you still here? Do you want to argue about it? Or are you just a drive by creationist spilling your stupidity into my comments section and leaving?

Martin then asks "Am i right that the only reason to believe in this is that it is taken as a given due to the infallability of the evolution hypothesis?" No, Martin you are not right. And it's spelled "infallibility" note the "i" not an "a."

Click here to learn the difference between how science and religion answer questions.

Martin next reveals he has the reading comprehension skills of a turnip by saying this: "And the comment about consciousness is also nonsense, very little can be said with security about the nature of consciousness and its connection to the body." Note that the only thing I said about consciousness was this: "What Deepak is really talking about here is "souls," the "Thetan" in scientology, Deepak's own bogus ideas about 'consciousness.' It's the homunculus, the ghost in the machine." And in that sentence the word "consciousness" has quotes around it and I specifically refer to Deepak's ideas about consciousness, not my own. It's much easier to know what Deepak is talking about when he uses the word "consciousness" than to know what consciousness is because Deepak has gone on and on about it before.

As for me, I think consciousness is produced by the "material" processes of the brain. I like what Marvin Minsky said about consciousness, that it's a suitcase term. Google it.

Then Martin delivers the clincher which proves he's an idiot, he writes: "So why attack Chopra when he makes claims in areas that are far from proven to be the other way?" Dude, my whole point was that Deepak Chopra doesn't even know what Evolutionary Psychology is! He's got it confused with neurophysiology. My point is he's an idiot – just like you. So, you're obviously going to miss that.

There's a difference between being ignorant and being stupid. Ignorant people can still learn. Chopra has proven that he can't learn (not obvious from one post by me but Deepak has a history of this, people comment on his blog and he never learns from them). You can't learn either until you improve your reading comprehension skills.

Yes!

I goofed, I got sucked into the vortex of Deepak Chopra's ignorance. It turns out Deepak was more ignorant than I first noticed. I have since edited the post where I made my mistake so it's not there any more. I owe the guys commenting here for the correction. This was a learning experience for me.

So, keep commenting and correcting me guys. I'll give you credit when you get it right. I can learn, unlike Martin and Deepak.

If you want to know more about my attitude towards Chopra, look here:


I'm taking over for PZ Myers on Chopra
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

I'll have to send him an apology for not living up to his standards of clartity since he was kind enough to link me.

Deepak Chopra gets stupid again

Deepak Chopra, after a long period of relative calm, has erupted again into another rant full of scientific ignorance in his new Huffington Post blog entry, "Why Evolutionary Biology Embraces the Bogus (Part 1)."

Link:

Why Evolutionary Biology Embraces the Bogus (Part 1)

Mr. Chopra is upset over some pop science articles that have appeared in "the media" touting new explanations for things like altruism, generosity, and music. He doesn't like such complex matters being traced to the brain, which is dependent upon genes, and genes dependent upon that evil-ution.

Chopra read some articles called "Are You a Giving Person? Your Brain Tells Why" and "Music on the Brain: Why We Are Hard-Wired to Rock" and they have upset the poor little charlatan. He's horrified by their great air of confidence and he feels his own world view has atrophied and is endangered. He wants human behavior explained in terms of culture, human values, religion, and philosophy – not evolutionary psychology.

Since Mr. Chopra doesn't link the articles he mentions and a Google search doesn't bring them up I can only rely on similar articles I've read. For example, "How Altruistic Is Your Brain?" which is linked here:

"How Altruistic Is Your Brain?"

Another example would be "Altruism 'in-built' in humans" which is here:

"Altruism 'in-built' in humans"

Deepak found some claims in his articles to be "thoroughly bogus" in his view, saying they step over the boundary of "believable explanations." So, what doesn't Deepak believe?

Deepak thinks evolutionary biology and genetics cannot deal with the philosophical order of explanation. He doesn't think the articles he has read deal with the proper category of explanation. He writes; "Let's say a man loses his job, becomes depressed, and wants a prescription for Prozac. What made him depressed isn't the imbalance of serotonin in his brain but the loss of his job." Actually, it's possibly both. The loss of his job affected an imbalance of serotonin which then caused depression. It's also possible it's just a chemical imbalance caused not by job loss but by a virus, a bad diet or any number of causes. Deepak simply presumes to know the cause is the guy losing his job.

In the case of losing his job, the Prozac might make him "happy" again, but he'll be a happy bum on Prozac -- if he can get the prescription that is.

As some commentary on Deepak's own blog already notes, Chopra mistakes the common meaning of depression for the clinical condition that will get you a prescription for Prozac. People who are a little down because of losing a job don't usually get prescriptions for Prozac from a reputable doctor. I looked up Prozac on Google and it is used for treating major clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, including panic associated with agoraphobia (a severe fear of being in crowds or public places) and under the brand name Sarafem, the active ingredient in Prozac is also prescribed for the treatment of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).

So, that guy who is feeling down about losing his job, well, he's going to have to go to the websites I went to and fake it to abuse Prozac because if his depression was caused just by losing his job he ain't going to get it if he's honest.

There's a reason evolution gave us "depression" and sadness and pain – it's supposed to motivate you to do what you have to do to get back to a state where you feel better. And when I say "depression" here I don't mean the kind you need Prozac for. I mean the way you naturally would feel if you lost your job. Clinical depression is when the brain system goes wrong for chemical/biological reasons, as it too often does.

The philosophical order of explanation that evolutionary psychology deals with might identify a normal amount of sadness as a motivation to get to a better state, but there is in all probability no real evolutionary role for clinical depression. It is just the system going wrong. So, Deepak isn't even out of the starting gate when it comes to understanding evolutionary psychology, and then it gets worse.

Deepak claims, based on pop science articles he apparently doesn't understand, that science offers a "kind of wrong explanation all the time. It mistakes agency for cause." This, according to Deepak is because "the brain is serving as the agent of the mind, it isn't causing mind."

What Deepak is really talking about here is "souls," the "Thetan" in scientology, Deepak's own bogus ideas about "consciousness." It's the homunculus, the ghost in the machine.

This comes through only slightly when he offers an example of how explanations can be correctly arrived at:

"A car driven by a drunk driver swerves off the road in a blizzard. Several kinds of people show up at the scene, and each one is asked 'What caused this accident?' A car mechanic points to the steering wheel and the drive train, which turned the car off a straight line. A driving instructor says that the driver lacked the skill to negotiate a slippery road. A doctor says the driver's reflexes were impaired by alcohol. A psychologist says that the driver had a fight with his wife at a party and therefore drank too much out of anger. The driver himself says that he must have dozed off for a moment.

"It's obvious that all these answers fit the worldview of the person answering. They each occupy a different order of explanation. Theories power perceptions. But it's also obvious that the car mechanic is furthest from giving a cogent answer. By confining himself to the steering wheel and drive train, he can provide an explanation that is mechanically correct but totally wrong-headed. In our hyper-technical world today, we can add some experts at the accident scene who are wrong-headed in a more impressive way. A neurologist holds up an MRI of the driver's brain and locates impaired activity in the motor cortex. A cell biologist detects minute alterations in sugars and enzymes in the liver. A quantum physicist calculates the amplitude of the probability curve that collapsed to produce neurotransmitters in the synaptic gaps of the driver's cerebrum.

"Does the addition of ultra-specificity on any of these planes offer an answer better than the driver's 'I must have dozed off'? Actually, no."

And that is where Deepak is dead wrong. Everybody but the driver has a level of explanation that can change the results for the driver in the future.

The car mechanic might design cars that prevent drivers from going off the road:

http://tim.griffins.ca/writings/old/computers-in-car-safety.html

The driving instructor can teach the skills needed to negotiate a slippery road.

The doctor can design tests (which already exist) that help police get drivers impaired by alcohol off the road, help cure his alcoholism and other things.

The psychologist can help the driver resolve issues with his wife and teach the driver better ways to deal with his frustration than drinking too much out of anger.

The driver on the other hand can not keep himself from "dozing off for a moment" until he confronts why he did doze off in the first place. Does he even acknowledge to himself that he drank?

The car mechanic is not the furthest from giving a cogent answer. However, it is an answer that ignores the issue of the driver. This is not totally wrong-headed. However, it does represent a danger in the way our technology can remove our responsibility, but that's for another blog post.

The other explanations Deepak thinks "wrong headed" are: "A neurologist holds up an MRI of the driver's brain and locates impaired activity in the motor cortex" and "A cell biologist detects minute alterations in sugars and enzymes in the liver." These explanations have even more power to change our lives. Consider the "The Hedonistic Imperative":

http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/tabconhi.htm

http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedonist.htm#saving

You'll see a comment by "miken" in my comments section and he saw something I missed. I was baffled as to what the point of Deepak's example was about and miken noted that it seems to be an attempt to apply the old 'blind men and the elephant' allegory to describe science. It's even more bogus than I first thought! The blind men argued about whether the elephant was like a snake, a tree trunk or Deepak Chopra's ass, but none of the scientists, or rather the mechanic, the doctor and the psychologist would argue about it. They'd agree with each other that the causes advanced by the others were both valid and contributory.

Deepak says we must "intuit the correct order of explanation" before you can sensibly offer the correct answer. That has more to do with whom you're explaining things too and what you want the explanation to accomplish and it can be reasoned out rather than "intuited" by taking into account who you're explaining things to and why.

Deepak ends with:

"When a devout Christian asks God to heal her instead of going to the doctor, rationalists feel frustrated because in their eyes she is stubbornly relying on the wrong order of explanation (i.e., attributing disease to sin and cures to God's mercy), but they rarely see the same flaw in themselves."

Maybe the flaw here is in Deepak Chopra and not in the scientists, or even the pop science writers?

Harris versus Sullivan, the battle continues

Andrew Sullivan's latest response to Sam Harris, called "The Unclean Glass," is up.



Andrew begins, of course, by distorting Sam's position because if he didn't Andrew's head would explode. The longer this goes on, the more insane moderate Christianity seems. Andrew Sullivan does a great job on politics, he seems clear and rational, but when it comes to his faith we can begin to see how his thoughts have been befogged.

Sam asked Andrew to "Imagine a discourse about ethics and mystical experience that is as contingency-free as the discourse of science already is." Andrew distorts that into being "completely contingency-free" (meaning contingency in an absurdly ultra-broad way) rather than "as contingency-free as the discourse of science already is." There's a difference, because, as Andrew correctly notes, science is not "completely contingency-free." Science, is however, far more free of contingency than any religion is. Everything in science is open to question. There is, contrary to creationist claims, no dogma in science and "dogma" is the word Sam should have used.

Sam slipped. He didn't specify the kind of contingencies science is free from (it is dogma you meant, Sam. Don't throw Andrew's language back at him, it's loaded). Normally Sam wouldn't have to bother with such specificity and it should be obvious from context. However, when you talk to someone as deeply in denial as Andrew is, you have to speak with so much specificity that one's language becomes leaden and dull.

Andrew then goes on and on to preach to Sam things I'm pretty sure Sam already knows, such as about David Hume and faith in our own senses and memory. That helps Andrew feel superior to the assumed ignorance of the atheist. However, having faith in my senses isn't the same as having faith in dogma, and by dogma I mean stories passed down for generations that can't be checked on. My senses are me and what I seek to explain (even if they're the known illusions of itchy phantom limbs) the Christian dogma is a hand me down (I was raised Christian and rejected it).

Andrew, yet again, avoids answering Sam's questions about this dogma/contingency simply and directly. This was Sam's question: "...the specific beliefs that would make you a Christian and a Catholic, as opposed to a generic theist. Do you believe in the resurrection and the virgin birth? Is the divinity of the historical Jesus a fact...?" As I said, dogma is the contingency that Andrew's previous post was avoiding and Sam was asking about the clearest cases of Christian dogma. Andrew continues to avoid being direct about this. However, the implied answer is that, yes, Andrew believes in the resurrection and the virgin birth of Jesus as well as the divinity of the historical Jesus. (Why does Andrew avoid saying it directly? Does just saying it sound too dogmatic even for him?) Andrew's "rational, empirical explanation" for his belief in that dogma is that those whom saw Jesus saw something "so astonishing, so utterly unlike anything that had ever occurred before, that they became on fire with this new truth."

Hmmm, if Andrew saw David Blaine levitate off the ground, handle a few poison snakes and turn water into wine would he think it logical to assume Blaine was born of a virgin? Would he believe anything attributed to Blaine? If Criss Angel seemed to teleport out of a locked chest and then guessed Andrew's card would it mean that Criss Angel was the son of God? If Penn and Teller could do the cups and balls trick with clear plastic cups would Andrew have to conclude Penn and Teller were divine beings? Born of virgins? Would he get on fire with whatever Penn and Teller told him?

Andrew turns the question around, instead of answering why he believes Jesus rose from the dead he asks Sam why Andrew himself and so many others believe Jesus rose from the dead. He asks "What is your explanation? How do you account for why one person out of the billions who have ever lived had this impact? How probable is it that all these countless followers were all deluding themselves completely?"

Well, contrary to Andrew's assertions, it's obviously quite probable that all those followers are deluding themselves. What does Andrew make of the believers in Islam, Hinduism etc.? Look at all the things people do believe, Andrew, and then think that through again. Aliens abducting people, faith healers curing people, John Edward talking to the dead, Sylvia Brown telling you where the body is buried, Elvis sightings, Nazi holocausts that supposedly never happened, white supremacy, Ouija boards, voodoo, penis enlargement pills, breast creams, real estate scandals, Scientology, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Ted Haggart becoming a heterosexual, the honesty and integrity of George Bush … and on and on and on. People's brains are apparently full to the brim with BS.

Andrew points to the "many" Gospels (including Gnostic gospels Andrew? The gospels of Thomas, Judas and Mary?) testifying to the "power of his message," noting that only one of the thousands of Rome's victims is remembered in this way…" (well, two if you count Spartacus are remembered by name by me, scholars might come up with more names) and not just remembered but "worshiped over two millennia later…" Andrew then asks: "Does this not intrigue you?" Have you never asked how on earth did this happen? He then says: "As a simple piece of historical inquiry, it's an astonishingly unlikely turn of events."

It's not really astonishing if we look at the bigger picture of human history, not just Christian history. Andrew is impressed because Jesus is not just remembered but worshiped over two millennia later. Let's compare that with Egyptian religion, with how long Isis, Osiris and Ra were worshipped. It kicks off sometime before the "Archaic Period" (3414-3100 BC) when there is the unification of all Egypt. By 3000 BC at the very least, people had already been worshipping Isis, Osiris, Ra, and the Amen but now it's big. Further south, the Kushites seem to have also worshipped them. This religion lasts for more than 2,000 years as a state religion, closer to 3,000 years, and that is longer than Christianity has lasted. It sort of, but not quite ends, as a state religion with the Persian Period (517-425 BC) I think. But if being a state religion is the rule, Christianity died after the Enlightenment (perhaps its own Persian Period?) and that makes Christianity's life span significantly shorter than that of the Egyptian religion. In some ways, however, Isis, Osiris and Ra get incorporated into some forms of Gnostic Christianity and they continue far into the first centuries of AD.

If Andrew is going to accept long endurance, great numbers of worshippers and huge temples as indicators of "truth" rather than "truthiness" he'll have to start believing in Isis, Osiris and Ra. He'll also have to consider Hinduism and believing in Zeus. The point there is that it's not just the Egyptians, it's the Babylonians, Sumerians, the ancient Chinese, Indian Hinduism and other religions that have had, and continue to have, long lives and that have shaped their cultures with their own dogma. Is Andrew going to have to give them equal belief?

Looking at the bigger picture we can see that religion evolves and dogma like that about the names of specific saviors and what they did to save us is the most ephemeral part of religion. The part that continues through all of them, from Sumerian sun gods to the Islamic Koran to L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology, is a belief in a life after death, belief in magic and of powers beyond man's feeble abilities.

Andrew also asks, "...if Jesus wasn't nothing, … what was he in your eyes?" What Jesus was to me (I don't know about Sam) was a man who twisted an old religious meme into a new and more viral form. I explained my views in two essays over a decade ago, those are here:

http://www.textfiles.com/occult/notcrst1.txt
http://www.textfiles.com/occult/notcrst2.txt

Also here:

http://artofhacking.com/IET/CHRIST/live/aoh_notcrst1.htm
http://artofhacking.com/IET/CHRIST/live/aoh_notcrst2.htm

"What secret did he hold that so many others haven't?" The secret was that into those gospel stories about Jesus got weaved the greatest religious mind-fuck yet invented. And also because his followers would kill and die for the religion because they got so mind-fucked. Read my essays and future entries in this blog for more detail on all that.

"That is an empirical question. And it merits an empirical answer." And there are such answers. But even if I'm wrong about Christianity being rooted in a mind-fuck we just have to consider that if you flipped a few million coins and get a specific number of heads up, the odds against the number you got would be millions to one. Only one number can come up on one throw and that's the way it is with state religions. One religion wins, the others die, and Christianity became a state religion that then persecuted others as they were persecuted for believing the wrong religion.

Andrew then goes on to cut his nose off to spite his face. He says; "No human society has ever functioned without the large faith that underpins all the little faiths: religion." Yes, Andrew, and prior to the Enlightenment no secular societies had ever existed. America was one of the first. Before then they all had state religions. You don't want that, do you? Your fundy friends would like it.

Andrew says; "No society has ever existed without the mature human acceptance of what we do not know and what is greater than we are. No civilization has ever been atheist at its core." America comes pretty close to being agnostic to its core by introducing freedom of religion and the two biggest competitors in governing the largest masses of people are officially atheistic, Russia and China. Are they somehow not atheistic to the core? What is the core here? If it's about what the majority believes I think Sweden is more than fifty percent atheist.

Andrew says; "No polity has ever been constructed in the absence of faith, or in the absence of a tradition of faith that makes belief in the present possible at all. Earth to Sam: Does this not tell you something?" It should tell Sam that Andrew is losing it. A lot of things have happened that have never happened before. Secular states, walls of separation between church and state, end of slavery, gay rights, women voting and this internet we're all using. We are certainly moving in a direction in which there will be a polity constructed in the absence of faith.

Andrew asks; "Or is it plausible that human beings tomorrow will become something that in all of human history and pre-history they have never, ever been?"

Yes! Andrew, yes! We are becoming something different; we already have become something that never existed before. If we hadn't changed and become secular gays wouldn't have any change of getting married and America would have a state religion. Already a majority of the worlds top scientists are atheists – can you account for that Andrew?

Andrew even commented on another aspect of it in his blog. Here:

Faith and the Universe

Andrew quoted Carl Sagan on the intersection of science and faith and said that what our generation has internalized is the utter insignificance of this planet and human beings, in the context of what we have come to know about the universe. Such knowledge was not only unknown to those who wrote the Bible, it was unknown to every human being before. It is brand-spanking new and it has changed everything. Andrew only noted, via Sagan, Galileo's push into the new ideas about our universe. What about Darwin, Freud and Turing?

Andrew says this new knowledge alters his faith. Alters it? It should have demolished it.

He says; "Denial of evolution, in my view, is a sign of weak faith, not strong faith. It's a function of terrible fear, not the confidence of a loving God." Evolution is somewhat compatible with some deistic notions of God, but evolution is not something a "loving God" would do to his creatures. Evolution needs a thousand dead failures for every incremental move forward. Evolution isn't going to stop because man arrived, so stop thinking of yourself as the crown of creation.

Christianity has some other core doctrines, like that of original sin, like that of "the fall," that evolution demolishes. If Darwinian evolution is true then there was no original sin, there was no fall after which man is thrown out of paradise. Murder, theft, deception, rape and more existed long before our first ancestors walked onto land. Man didn't fall into these sins because they were part of the survival strategies of prehistoric fish. God would have had to have invented and injected sin into the world before man emerged and that contradicts the core message of Genesis.

Evolution means there was no Garden of Eden and no original sin and no fall. Now, some would say that this Eden and original sin are being read too literally. They come up with allegorical meanings for Genesis' first chapters, like how man's original sin, really eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, was about man first becoming conscious. Oh, sooo, Jesus will save you from consciousness? Are you sure you like that interpretation?

Andrew then, poseur alert, poseur alert, writes: "Religion at its deepest is the attempt to reconcile this profound human predicament: that we exist in bodies but dream beyond them, that we are caught between the irrational instinct of beasts but endowed with the serene hope of angels. This paradox of humanity - which you would erase into a clean slate - is what religion responds to and has always responded to…" And this is from the guy who likes to expose others as poseurs. Then from some guy called Oakeshott; "…in the poetic quality, humble or magnificent, of the images, the rites, the observances, and the offerings (the wisp of wheat on the wayside calvary) in which it recalls to us that 'eternity is in love with the productions of time' and invites us to live 'so far as is possible' as an immortal."

Doesn't that narcissistic interpretation of religion sound grand! He calls it humility. He has the "serene hope of angels," and the gullibility of a child that believes in Santa Claus. He lives 'so far as is possible' as an immortal because he doesn't want to face his own imminent death. He writes so glowingly, so poserly, in wonder of his religious superstitions. What utter mush!

Sam, don't give this guy the clean glass, he is obviously the guy who shit in the last one.