You know that turbo-woo crap about human concsiousness creating everything thru observation?

[trotsky]

PZ Myers linked to the most thorough, incredible beatdown of it I've ever seen.

http://nirmukta.com/2009/12/14/biocentrism-demystified-a-response-to-deepak-chopra-and-robert-lanzas-notion-of-a-conscious-universe/

Yeah, it's long, but worth it.

On edit: I was going to quote a paragraph or two, but just couldn't pick from among the gems. After reading it again I think this one is a beauty:

Considering Chopra’s reputation in the scientific community for making absurd quack claims about every subject under the sun, one must wonder about the strange pairing between the two writers. With Lanza’s experience in biomedical research, he could not possibly be in agreement with Chopra’s brand of holistic healing and quantum mysticism. Rather, it seems likely that this is an arrangement of convenience. If you look at what drives the two men, a mutually reinforced disenchantment with Darwin’s ideas emerges as a strong motive behind the pairing. Both Chopra and Lanza are disillusioned with a certain perceived implication of Darwinian evolution on human existence - that the meaning of life is inconsequential to the universe. Evolutionary biology upholds the materialist view of modern science that consciousness is a product of purely inanimate matter assembling in highly complex states. Such a view is disillusioning to anyone who craves a more central role for the human ego in determining one’s reality. The view that human life is central to existence is found in most philosophical and religious traditions. This view is so fundamental to our nature that we can say it is an intuitive reaction to the very condition of being conscious. It has traditionally been the powerful driving force behind philosophers, poets, priests, mystics and scholars of history. Darwin dismantled the idea in one clean stroke. Therefore, Darwin became the enemy. The entire theory of biocentrism is an attempt to ingrain the idea of human destiny into popular science.

It's been remarked how the woos are the left's intellectual analog to the far-right fundies, and this paragraph really drives that home. Fear of scientific idea, and unwillingness to accept it, drives a dogmatic devotion to ANYTHING that tells them science is wrong.

[TZ]

1. I dare you to post this in R/T

I saw someone claiming the biocentrism crap as evidence of God/afterlife

[trotsky]

2. Pearls before swine, I'm afraid.

Too much science and reason.

[TZ]

3. This crap makes me wonder about our education system

I didn't read the whole article but most of those arguments made agaisnt it is stuff I learned in HIGH SCHOOL. (Of course I had a few advanced science classes and went to a really good public school system).
Its always a shock to me that people don't seem to understand stuff that seems so basic and fundamental to me...:(

[SidDithers]

4. You're just projecting...

</OM mode>

Thanks for posting, will read later.

Sid

[semillama]

5. Nice

I skimmed most of it, but it's definitely a good take-down of that crap. Interesting that one of the two people I actually bothered to put on ignore hasn't shown up yet - wonder if they took the metaphorical DU dirt nap?

[uriel1972]

6. Our Canadian friend?

Haven't heard from him in ages.

[semillama]

7. Perhaps someone created a reality in which he didn't exist

and POOF!

[charlie]

8. This is really good

Way more comprehensive than necessary though, since anyone who needs to read it, won't. But still, just the overview of competing alternatives to Copenhagen (which woos cling to like it's their last nickel) is a worthwhile bit of pop-sci writing.

I don't know this Lanza guy, except that he seems to be another dreary instance of an otherwise smart guy whose fame comes from acting dumb. It's embarrassing how easily he's dispatched:

Consider this statement by Lanza:

“Consciousness cannot exist without a living, logical creature to embody its perceptive powers of creation.“

How can consciousness create the universe if it doesn’t exist? How can the “living, logical creature” exist if the universe has not been created yet?

A bit of serial logic, and poof, he's gone. Again, embarrassing.

I was laughing my ass off at the treatment Deepak got. Lanza's apparently worth refuting, but with Deepak he just throws up his hands and reprints his inanities. LOL, really, what more is necessary?

I've read enough Deepak, but somehow I didn't know he was an ardent anti-Darwinist. And a lazy one, cribbing his objections from the same hoary crap posed and answered ages ago. I mean, he's like an AiG cover band -- tornado in a junkyard, why are there still apes, irreducible complexity, yadda, yadda. One minute he's marvelling over how exquisitely a bird's anatomy is purposed for flight, the "brilliant creative leap" nature took to make it happen, the next he's grousing about the un-fitness of flightless birds. It's all designed, except when it's not. But that just refutes Darwin. Or something.

Good article. Thanks for posting it.

[trotsky]

9. Yeah, that would be its one flaw - too much info.

But then, that's science - the ideas at hand ARE complicated. Woos like it simple, so the ultra-simplified, popularized notion that quantum mechanics means observation "creates" reality wins out.

How can consciousness create the universe if it doesn’t exist? How can the “living, logical creature” exist if the universe has not been created yet?

A bit of serial logic, and poof, he's gone. Again, embarrassing.

Embarrassing is a good word for that. However I can imagine the woo response: human consciousness is SO powerful and SO amazing, it REACHED BACK IN TIME to create the universe necessary for it to exist.

You just KNOW that would be the response, don't you? :rofl:

[charlie]

10. Definitely. That would be it

They're fond of time travel anyway, reaching back to turn happenstance into miracles they "attracted".

The good stuff, that is. They never kick themselves for manifesting us grumpy assholes in their realities.

We're quantum, we can do miracles!

You're also electrical. Plug an iPod in your butt and rock out!