Chopra’s counterknowledge

The New York-based Oxonian Society – founded by Oxford graduates to foster lively debate – is helping to promote Deepak Chopra MD, the New Age guru whose pseudoscience is utterly incompatible with the intellectual traditions of Oxford University.

The society has just offered me a free ticket to a private debate being filmed as part of Chopra’s “upcoming PBS special”. It is also hosting a speaker meeting for Chopra next year.

Chopra is more than just an entrepreneur from the wilder shores of alternative medicine: he also propagates bogus science. He is, for example, a hard-line opponent of evolutionary biology who believes (like fundamentalist Christians) that life could not have evolved through random mutation and natural selection.

Here is just a sample of Chopra’s craziness. This is what he told Larry King when he was asked about the devastating Asian tsunami:

And you know, there’s lots of evidence, even scientific, that the earth is a living organism. The Gaia hypothesis. Is it possible that our consciousness and the turbulence in our consciousness has anything to do with the turbulence in nature? Michael Lerner just referred to that. One of the very interesting things that happened with the tsunami was, no animal died. The elephants. The hares. The rabbits. The birds. They were so tuned in to the forces of nature that they escaped. They ran. Some of the elephants broke their chains and ran to the high level mountainous area where the tidal waves could not reach. We have lost that connection. Is there a way that we can collectively transcend to a level of consciousness where we see that the turbulence in our collective mind, possibly, is inseparable from the turbulence in nature? Because we are part of nature.     

In other words, if the 230,000 victims of the tsunami had only had an animal’s highly developed consciousness, they would probably have survived. This is really distasteful counterknowledge – but because Chopra is a New Age guru, as opposed to a Christian fundamentalist, he is given a platform by PBS, the Huffington Post and the Oxonian Society.

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“Distasteful counterknowledge.”

“Distasteful” is one of the most value-laden terms in this article. How is it distasteful to suggest that an animal can “read” nature? You might have a point here, but unless you can demolish his central point (animals ‘knew’ what was coming), Chopra still comes out of this unscathed. For that matter, could it not be that some reality ‘is’ distasteful?

As a wider point, one wonders what, after all the destruction of ‘error-stricken’ viewpoints around you, you would summarise as being ‘the truth’ of our existences. Unless you can set up a few pillars around which to revolve, you will always be liable to confuse very good targets with very bad targets. In this case, the point about the animals at least asks (NOT begs) the question: “Why, how, and what did they ‘know’?”

Unless you are prepard to take a starting point which leaves you open to ridicule, unless you are prepared to defend points that are ‘ridiculous’, unless you are prepared to consider views heretical to your central methodology, you are intellectually lost. I will happily accept all this ‘pseudo-bashing’ if you could publish positive results which defined your own stance. Otherwise, I find the tone rather enthusiastic, liable to get carried away, and often quite monotonous (as well as intellectually as questionable as some of the targets you seek to demolish.)

Just explaining why you haven’t been heralded as the saviour of mankind yet!

Pip pip,

Fernsy

Is the idea that ‘no large animals died in the tsunami’ another urban myth? Various reports, seeming to stem from from one Sri Lankan source, say no animals were killed, but this is not supported elsewhere or outside of Sri Lanka(http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=771&id=16472)

Where does this leave Chopra if his basic tenent isn’t supported?

It is well attested that many animals can detect the initial stages of an earthquake or tremor and respond to it. An evolutionary survival trait?

I agree with Matt’s comments. Damian your judging Chopra, ie. “Chopra’s craziness” and “Distasteful counterknowledge” makes it seem like you are becoming like those you seek to discredit.

Illes can be used as a sex-neutral pronoun, like English ‘they’. ,

The New York-based Oxonian Society – founded by Oxford graduates to foster lively debate – is helping to promote Deepak Chopra MD, the New Age guru whose pseudoscience is utterly incompatible with the intellectual traditions of Oxford University.

The society has just offered me a free ticket to a private debate being filmed as part of Chopra’s “upcoming PBS special”. It is also hosting a speaker meeting for Chopra next year.

Chopra is more than just an entrepreneur from the wilder shores of alternative medicine: he also propagates bogus science. He is, for example, a hard-line opponent of evolutionary biology who believes (like fundamentalist Christians) that life could not have evolved through random mutation and natural selection.

Here is just a sample of Chopra’s craziness. This is what he told Larry King when he was asked about the devastating Asian tsunami:

And you know, there’s lots of evidence, even scientific, that the earth is a living organism. The Gaia hypothesis. Is it possible that our consciousness and the turbulence in our consciousness has anything to do with the turbulence in nature? Michael Lerner just referred to that. One of the very interesting things that happened with the tsunami was, no animal died. The elephants. The hares. The rabbits. The birds. They were so tuned in to the forces of nature that they escaped. They ran. Some of the elephants broke their chains and ran to the high level mountainous area where the tidal waves could not reach. We have lost that connection. Is there a way that we can collectively transcend to a level of consciousness where we see that the turbulence in our collective mind, possibly, is inseparable from the turbulence in nature? Because we are part of nature.     

In other words, if the 230,000 victims of the tsunami had only had an animal’s highly developed consciousness, they would probably have survived. This is really distasteful counterknowledge – but because Chopra is a New Age guru, as opposed to a Christian fundamentalist, he is given a platform by PBS, the Huffington Post and the Oxonian Society.

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