As predicted, we had a great time (as it were) talking about the nature of time last night at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Antonia and David gave great presentations, Gretchen moderated with aplomb, and Angel Ysaguirre and the rest of the Illinois Humanities Council crew organized the whole thing with practiced professionalism.
I was happy to have a chance to catch up with David, who has become semi-famous for his appearance in the movie What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (known informally as “What the Bleep?”). This movie was a travesty of a docu-drama, the basic gist of which was to push on an unsuspecting public certain New Age ideas about how quantum mechanics allows human consciousness to affect reality. David was interviewed by the filmmakers for hours, in which he patiently explained that everything they were saying was wrong. They then sliced his words to make it look like he was agreeing with the spirit of the movie, creating a willful misrepresentation of his views in the final product.
But since I last saw David in December, he had attended an event in Santa Monica in February featuring all of the speakers from the movie (such as Ramtha, a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit who is available for consultation for an appropriate fee). Although billed as a “conference,” it was really an excuse to sell expensive tickets to hundreds of gullible New Agers. The conference organizers were a different group from the filmmakers, who belatedly informed them that this was one person they should have left off the guest list — but too late.
After some hesitation, David decided to go, and thought very carefully about the talk he would give. I can’t do justice to the precision with which he worded his presentation, but the basic message was essentially this: “When you are trying to figure out how the world works, there are two ways to proceed. One is to invent a story about Nature which serves to say something flattering about yourself. The other is to listen to the story that Nature itself tells, no matter what it may turn out to be. What you are doing is the former; science is the latter.”
He was aiming specifically at pseudo-scientific mysticism, but I can’t think of a better characterization of the really fundamental difference between science and religion. There are differences in methods, and of course there are differences in results. But the most important distinction is in the initial attitude one takes toward the world. Real scientists will take what Nature tells them, and make sense of it as honestly and courageously as they can, regardless of what it says about their own place in the cosmos. If there was one lesson that we could spread through science education, that would be my choice.
The punchline was the response from the California audience. The other personalities on the speaker list were of course outraged, and attacked David in increasingly strident tones. But the audience, after the initial shock wore off, quickly took his side. Not really because they had become convinced of the superiority of reason and evidence to mysticism and quackery, but because they had transferred their reverence from the modern-day shamans to the philosophy professor from Columbia. They had found a new guru, who spoke more convincingly than the old ones. The more important lesson, that finding the right guru isn’t really the path to enlightenment, remained elusive.
Nice story. Two comments spring to mind:
(1) Let’s give at least some of the Santa Monica audience the benifit of the doubt. Maybe some of them agreed with what David said because they “got it”. I’m guessing he did not poll all of them later on to find out why the agreed with him. Having been in all the audiences of the Categorically Not! series, I have faith that the stereotype that all Santa Monicans who’d go to that sort of thing are hopelessly “gullible New Agers” is not correct.
(2) While I support your sentiments about scientific thought being a vitally important way to approach the world, I don’t agree with your rather narrow characterisation of all religion as being quite so self-centred.
Cheers,
-cvj
By “that sort of thing,” I presume you mean a weekend event where you pay hundreds of dollars to listen to spirit warriors being channeled from beyond the grave? I imagine it’s a different audience than Categorically Not!
I greatly appreciate this post. However, I do think you were a little hard on the audience. While it is true that such an event will attract a bunch of new-age wackos, it will also attract a few curious and/or critical folks. For instance, I would have liked to attend to have the chance to critique the comments of the other members of the panel.
Maybe you’re right, Sean. I don’t know. But there are rich people who can think scientifically too, right? Maybe they came along for one thing, but were convinced by David to come away with a different point of view… Just a thought.
-cvj
Sean, I’m not deliberately trying to be contrary here. In case it’s not clear, what I am basically saying is that we should not glibly (and in fact with no concrete evidence) dismiss the possibility that the very people we are trying to reach are just as capable of reason and critical thinking as we are. Otherwise, why are we bothering?
Cheers,
-cvj
I agree that you were probably a little hard on the audience.
I gave a talk last year in Santa Monica to the “Los Angeles
Futurist Society” about the age of the universe. I went in
expecting more or less the audience you describe, but I was
pleasantly surprised. Yes, there were the “life coaches”,
the screenwriters whose plots involved dark matter, the
aged hippie who used the word “grok” without any trace of
irony, but the majority of the audience were pretty down to earth.
There were many people from IT fields, some of whom were doing some seriously cool stuff, and many intelligent questions.
The proper scientific response to ‘metaphysical’ questions such as God or afterlife is ‘I don’t know’ and not arrogant dismissal. You are quite right that such issues are excluded from the purview of science, but to suppose that science can know everything is not scientific. You do NOT know what will happen to your consciousness after you die, because you have not yet been able to observe it. Also, there are well-known serious issues regarding the interaction of consciousness and quantum mechanics. However, where that movie went wrong was to suppose that we can create the fantasy world that we wish.
Clifford, both religion and science can be used for altruistic or selfcentered means. But as David observes in a memorable way, religions glorify the human position.
Torbjorn, My point is that this depends upon the religion in question.
-cvj
Benjamin, science dismisses things it has not had a chance to observe all the time. (Whether such dismissal is “arrogant” is a subjective matter.) As Bertrand Russell mentioned, he confidently rejects the idea of a perfect china teapot orbiting the planet Saturn, even though he had no direct evidence either way. Science can’t know everything, but it can study how the physical world behaves, and everything we’ve learned about that behavior leads us to conclude that death is the end of consciousness.
“Science can’t know everything, but it can study how the physical world behaves, and everything we’ve learned about that behavior leads us to conclude that death is the end of consciousness. ”
Way to go, Sean! This is what we need, scientists who will honestly tell it how it is, and not go in for intellectual multiculturalism [“the question of the so-called truth of statements about the afterlife is not relevant here…we have to be sensitive to the way different cultures have different *discourses* when dealing with the human condition…..”] or straight-out bullshit of the non-overlapping magisteria kind….
“Real scientists will take what Nature tells them, and make sense of it as honestly and courageously as they can, regardless of what it says about their own place in the cosmos.”
Finally, an explanation of why physicists are so humble.
Sean said:
“Science can’t know everything, but it can study how the physical world behaves, and everything we’ve learned about that behavior leads us to conclude that death is the end of consciousness.”
Sorry Sean, consciousness is not in the same category as Russell’s silly teapot orbiting Saturn, since that is totally ad hoc, does not fit in with physics in any way, and has no conceivable reason (unless tea-loving litterbug aliens passed through). As for consciousness, just think carefully how it could possibly arise from chemicals or electro-chemical impulses. What is the fundamental difference between chemicals in a test-tube and in the brain? If you say ‘organization’, then is a computer conscious and why? Using a term like ’emergent property’ is more bogus than so-called ‘mysticism’. Consciousness is a tremendous mystery, which does not fit in at all with materialism, and you cannot simply sweep that under the rug. At the same time, you are right to criticize ‘What the Bleep’, because that movie implies that we can wave a magic wand and create ‘our’ reality as the say, and that is patently false. We have no control over the laws of nature.
Also, intelligent design should most certainly not be taught as science, since it totally violates the scientific technique, which is based on correlated observations. It might be the case, however, that some kind of ‘God’ intended the primordial soup to cook up some life through natural processes, but that idea is still outside of the domain of science.
Physicists are extremely brilliant, but most of them need a good philosophy course. It’s not quite as trivial as they suppose.
Then the following
“The more important lesson, that finding the right guru isn’t really the path to enlightenment, remained elusive.”
implies that certain lessons can’t be learnt. (how come all the comments?)
From Amis:
“Then the following
“The more important lesson, that finding the right guru isn’t really the path to enlightenment, remained elusive.”
implies that certain lessons can’t be learnt. (how come all the comments?)”
I disagree.
There’s a difference between learning from other various people and spending your life jumping from one guru to another, constantly seeking that special being who has all the wisdom of the world and if only you just follow their “way” all will be right in your world.