Deepak Chopra's Alternative Medicine and Other False Claims About the Universe

Watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon recently and seeing Deepak Chopra promoting his latest book I was reminded of how much I dislike him and his brand of new-age alternative medicine and nonsense. I then remembered seeing an episode of a Richard Dawkin's "The Root of All Evil?" where he takes on alternative medicine and interviews Chopra on his misuse of science and quantum theory. You can watch some full episodes of this great British Channel 4 series here.

A few of my other favorite video debates between skeptics and spiritualists follow.

Sam Harris vs. Rabbi David Wolbe
This is a generally good debate and gets at a lot of the main conflicts between believers and skeptics. There is one particular moment that has entertained many viewers where Harris asserts that we should treat religious believers with the same disregard that we do believers in the ongoing life of Elvis Presley. It is here that the Rabbi asserts that though he has no empirical evidence for his beliefs such evidence is not necessary and he does have "supporting arguments" instead. Harris rightly points out that evidence is needed since his claims do "tresspass on scientific territory." Here I'd like to capture some of thinker and friend Ryan Mays' comments on this from my Facebook page (since rarely do interesting discussions take place on Facebook and are likely to be lost in the noise). Mays says:

How interesting for Harris' interlocutor to call them 'supporting arguments'. ' No, they aren't empirical, but they still carry weight...' Well, what kind of weight? What makes them compelling? What differentiates them from other (obviously ridiculous) metaphysical claims or chains of reasoning?

That is Harris' point: his opponent wants both to distance his arguments from certain evidential standards, but simultaneously clothe them in a kind of unquestioned legitimacy emanating from experience of 'humans', 'consciousness', 'design'.

Appealing to those notions are by no means necessarily a dead end, but one has to own up to how we might negotiate their legitimacy in the relevant contexts. It isn't enough just to say that because they are 'supporting arguments' or non-empirical that they are beyond scrutiny of an appropriate kind, i.e. what Harris calls 'common-sense'.

Hitchins vs. Sharpton
This one is responsible for the loss of any remaining respect I had for Al Sharpton. While I didn't expect him to be able to withstand the full force of Hitchins' intellectual attack, I did expect him to at least convince me that he has spent a minute or two in his life thinking about why he holds his beliefs and perhaps maybe a minute even preparing for the debate. Sadly he did not convince me of either.


Sam Harris vs. Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan's book "No God but God" is one I found very facinating and learned quite a lot about the history of Islam. However his personal beliefs and motivations are suspect and Harris takes him to task very well, specifically regarding the defense of moderate muslims and differentiating them from the "fundamentalists" or "extremists". Harris asserts that our tolerance of the moderates actually shields the extremists from the scrutiny and confrontation they deserve.

Garret Keizer on Conservative Psychology, Death of the Parties and the New Body Politic

In the April 2010 issue of Harpers, Garret Keizer writes the Notebook, titled "Shine, perishing Republicans", a theologically worded piece about the demise of the conservative movement. He points out that many have already observed how the right's current situation is characterized by promoting small government and limited economic intervention but instead has given us socialization of large parts of the economy. However, in his estimation the larger irony is based on the shared psychology of conservatism, "an anthropology based on some notion of original sin. That is to say, the politically conservering impulse grows out of a deep-seated pessimism in regard to the ability of human beings to improve their lot merely by wishing to do so."

This is why he goes on to say:

"Beyond all the prattle about big and small government, this is the mega-irony of the Republican Party: that of all people conservatives ought to have been the first to grasp the dangers of unregulated markets. If big government is susceptible to the abuses of "sinful" human beings, how much more susceptible is a corporate system that is bigger than any government? The right wing of the party ought to have seen this better than the center, and the religious right ought to have seen it best of all. That they failed to see it bespeaks a spiritual bankruptcy beside which the financial plight of an auto industry is as a gnat unto a camel."

The Bush administration or even the Regan administration, he says, can't truly be called conservative. "In his heart of hearts, the Republican conservative is still a pioneer and a homesteader, someone who takes care of himself, practices thrift, prizes industry, despises waste."

He goes on to characterize the left Democratic ideology as one which balances this survivalist mentality, one based on the social-contract. Both ideologies are not sustainable in their raw form without the other. Both parties should "drop dead" he said, but the politics that might emerge after their deaths is what is interesting.

"The trick is to create a society in which the privilege of disposable income is not contingent on the existence of disposable people... A grown up body politic will acknowledge its children, set them strict rules, and let them play with their credit ratings and their hedge funds, their light sabers and their cap pistols, in a well supervised back yard so the adults can get down to what adults are meant to get down to: the pleasurable socializing of their resources and the passionate coupling of their best ideas."

The Power of Nightmares

Watch all 3 parts of this BBC documentary, a very insightful look at the rise of the Islamist movement from Sayyid Qutb to Bin Laden, paralleled with the rise of the US Neocons like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Both groups are shown to build fantasy enemies out of the Soviet Union, and later, each other.

Watch critically though, because there are some stretched comparisons, unreasonable conclusions and some flat out mis-information. Generally very well done though, even with some its faults, it very thought provoking. Check out Peter Bergen's assessment in The Nation here.