Deepak Chopra debates Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion

[Guest guest]

The God Delusion? Part 1

 

Deepak Chopra - November 15, 2006

 

Recently there have been a spate of books about God from scientists

responding to the debate over intelligent design that flared up last

year. These books raise a chorus of skepticism that God exists, most

in no uncertain terms. Science stands for rational thought, faith for

superstition and unreason. The latest bestseller in this vein is

Richard Dawkins' " The God Delusion, " and since I had the chance to

debate Dawkins on Channel 4 in England, I wanted to pick up the

subject here.

 

Dawkins has written extensively on evolution, holds a chair at Oxford

University, and speaks out loudly against any possibility that God is

real. He makes many points to support his claim that religion is

nonsense and that there isn't the slightest shred of rational proof

for God, miracles, the soul, etc. Since this is such an important

issue, I want to argue against him point by point in some detail.

 

1. Science is the only valid way to gain knowledge. Nothing about God

is needed to explain the world. Eventually science will uncover all

mysteries. Those that it can't explain don't exist.

 

This is the bedrock of Dawkins' argument, as it is of most skeptics

and scientific atheists. In his new book Dawkins expresses his

position with deep disdain for those who disagree, and his poisonous

tone weakens his argument. Yet there's no doubt that with current

advances in genetics and brain research, scientists have more

confidence than ever that mysteries are being unraveled as never

before. By the same token, something as primitive as faith in God

looks more and more pointless and misguided. At best God is a matter

of personal belief, at worst a superstition that blocks progress (in

the way the Bush Administration uses theology to block stem-cell

research).

 

The unfairness of this argument is that it squeezes God into a

corner. Dawkins makes it an us-versus-them issue. Either you are for

science (that is, reason, progress, modernism, optimism about the

future) or you are for religion (that is, unreason, reactionary

resistance to progress, clinging to mysteries that only God can

solve). He goes so far as to tar anyone who believes in God with the

same brush as extreme religious fanatics. Sadly, the media often

follow his lead, erasing the truth, which is that many scientists are

religious and many of the greatest scientists (including Newton and

Einstein) probed deep into the existence of God. Not to mention the

obvious fact that you don't have to go to church, or even belong to a

religion, to find God plausible.

 

But let's leave Dawkins' heated and unfair rhetoric aside. Is science

the only route to knowledge? Obviously not. I know that my mother

loved me all her life, as I love my own children. I feel genius in

great works of art. None of this knowledge is validated by science. I

have seen medical cures that science can't explain, some seemingly

triggered by faith. The same is true of millions of other people. I

know that I am conscious and have a self, even though Dawkins--along

with many arch materialists--doesn't believe that consciousness is

real or that the self is anything but a chemical illusion created in

the brain. By Dawkins' reasoning a mother's love is no more real than

God as neither can be empirically quantified.

 

A materialist could conceivably analyze the brain functions of a

Mozart or Beethoven down to the last synaptic firing, but that would

tell us nothing about why music exists, why it is beautiful, where

great symphonies come from, why inspiration uplifts the listener, or

in fact any relevant thing about the meaning of music. The world in

general has meaning, deep meaning at times. This cannot be dismissed

as a delusion, an artifact of chemicals. Beauty and meaning can be

known independent of a biochemical analysis.

 

The same analogy comes to mind whenever one hears that brain research

will eventually explain all human thought and behavior. If a

scientist could map every molecule in a radio as it was playing the

Beethoven Fifth, there would be a complete diagram of the symphony at

the level of matter. But the radio isn't Beethoven. It isn't his

mind, and a diagram of Beethoven's brain, which would also be at the

level of matter, is equally futile to explain what his mind was like

except in the crudest terms.

 

For thousands of years human beings have been obsessed by beauty,

truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and

God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it's a straw

man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself

or beauty itself. God stands for the perfection of both, and even if

you think truth and beauty (along with love, justice, forgiveness,

compassion, and other divine qualities) can never be perfect, to say

that they are fantasies makes no sense.

 

Science knows about objective reality, the mask of matter that our

five senses detects. But the mind goes beyond the five senses, and it

does Dawkins no good to lump the two worlds of inner and outer

together. In fact, insofar as brain research can locate centers of

activity that light up whenever a person feels love or pleasure or

sexual arousal, these subjective states leave objective traces

behind. That makes them more real, not less. In the same way, the

brain lights up when a person feels inspired or close to God;

therefore, we may be getting closer to the connection between inner

and outer states, not further away.

 

This is only the outline of an argument against science as the only

valid route to knowledge. Before going on to Dawkins' other points,

let's see what responders have to say.

 

 

 

The God Delusion (Part 2)

 

Deepak Chopra - November 17, 2006

 

In the continuing debate between science and religion, Richard

Dawkins makes another sweeping claim.

 

2. God is unnecessary. Science can explain Nature without any help

from supernatural causes like God. There is no need for a Creator.

 

 

To many people this argument sounds convincing because they believe

in science and find God hard to believe in. But Dawkins has pulled

the same trick that he resorts to over and over. This is the us-

versus-them trick. Either you think there is a personal God, a

superhuman Creator who made the world according to the Book of

Genesis, or you are a rational believer in the scientific method.

 

This assumption is false on several grounds. The most basic one is

that God isn't a person. In a certain strain of fundamentalist

Christianity God looks and acts human, and creating the world in six

days is taken literally (Dawkins refers to such believers

as 'clowns,' not worth the bother except to ridicule them). But God

isn't a person in any strain of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism,

Confucianism, the branch of Hinduism known as Vedanta, and many

denominations of Christianity--he's not a person in the Gospel of

John in the New Testament.

 

Therefore, reducing God to a Sunday school picture and claiming that

the Book of Genesis--or creationism in general--competes with science

isn't accurate. Fundamentalism hasn't played a role in scientific

debate for generations. Einstein pointed out that he didn't believe

in a personal God but was fascinated by how an orderly universe and

its physical laws came about.

 

Nor is it fair to present God as a Creator standing somewhere outside

the universe. Dawkins ridicules this notion by saying that such a God

didn't need to create the cosmos through the Big Bang and billions of

years of evolution. He could have created it whole and perfect to

begin with. Thus if we observe evolution at work--as of course we do--

then God is irrelevant and unnecessary.

 

This attempt to second-guess God again reduces him to a person who

thinks like a human being and would carry out creation the way a

smart scientist would--a Richard Dawkins, for example. God, if he

exists, is universal, existing at all times and places, pervading

creation both inside the envelope of space-time and outside it. To

use a word like " He " has no validity, in fact; we are forced into it

by how language works. A better word would be 'the All, " which in

Sanskrit is Brahman and Allah in Islam. Not every language is stuck

with He or She.

 

So at bottom, the real question is this: Do we need an all-pervading

intelligence to explain the universe? Forget the image of God sitting

on a throne, forget Genesis, forget the straw man of a Creator who

isn't as smart as a smart human being. The real debate is between two

world views:

 

1. The universe is random. It operates entirely through physical

laws. There is no evidence of innate intelligence.

 

2. The universe contains design. Physical laws generate new forms

that display intention. Intelligence is all-pervasive.

 

The second worldview can be called religious, but it's a trap to say

that only a Christian God explains intelligence in the universe.

There is room for a new paradigm that preserves all the achievements

of science--as upheld by the first worldview--while giving the

universe meaning and significance. Dawkins shows no interest in

uniting these two perspectives (he disdains the whole notion of a

religious scientist), but many of is colleagues do.

 

Before talking about such a synthesis, let's see what responders

think. Is God an all or nothing proposition as Dawkins claims? Must

science absolutely exclude God in any form?

 

 

 

The God Delusion? Part 3

 

Deepak Chopra - November 20, 2006

 

One of the reasons that Dawkins' book has touched a nerve is that

many scientists are outraged by the religious tide in world affairs.

Using theology as a shield, politicians are undermining the whole

rational structure of scientific progress. This bring us to another

major point for Dawkins.

 

3. The universe is a complex machine whose workings are steadily

being demystified by science. Any other way of viewing the world is

superstitious and reactionary.

 

What is so strange about this argument is that Dawkins himself is

totally reactionary. His defense of a material universe revealing its

secrets ignores the total overthrow of materialism in modern physics.

There is no world of solid objects; space-time itself depends upon

shaping forces beyond both space and time. The notion that Dawkins

stands for progress while religion stands for anti-progress may be

true in a broad social sense. Nobody would pick a Baptist preacher to

lead the human genome project.

 

But arch materialism is just as superstitious as religion. Someone

like Dawkins still believes there are solid objects randomly

colliding to haphazardly form more and more complex objects, until

over the course of billions of years the universe produced human DNA

with its billions of genetic bits.

 

What's wrong with this argument is that if you trace DNA down to its

individual atoms, each is more than 99.9999% empty space. If you take

an individual electron, it has no fixed position in either time or

space. Rather, ghostly vibrations wink in and out of the universe

thousands of times per second, and what lies beyond the boundary of

the five senses holds enormous mysteries.

 

Enough mysteries, in fact, to be consistent with God. I don't mean a

personal God or a mythic one or any God with a human face. Set aside

all images of God. What we observe once we get over the superstition

of materialism (a superstition Dawkins defends to the last degree) is

that random chance is one of the worst ways to explain how the

universe evolved.

 

--The various constants in nature, such as gravity and the speed of

light, are too precisely fitted with each other for this to happen by

chance.

--If any one of six constants had been off by less than a millionth

of 1 percent, the material universe couldn't exist.

--Events at opposite ends of the universe are paired with each other,

so that a change in the spin of one electron immediately produces a

twin effect in another electron. This ability to communicate

instantly across millions of light years cannot be explained by

materialism. It defies all notions of cause and effect. it defies

chance.

--Every electron in the universe exists as a wave function that is

everywhere at once. When this wave function collapses, we observe a

specific isolated electron. Before the wave collapses, however,

matter is non-local.

 

The ability of objects and events to be everywhere at once seems like

an attribute of God--omnipresence. The ability of electrons separated

by millions of light years to 'talk' to each other seems like another

attribute of God--omniscience. This doesn't mean that God explains

the universe. It means that there may be governing forces at work

which allow the existence of universal consciousness. The self-aware

universe is a plausible theory. Many writers have described it,

although Dawkins disdains such theories.

 

If the universe is self-aware, it would explain the formation of a

self-replicating molecule like DNA far more elegantly than the

clumsy, crude mechanism of random chance. As the astronomer Fred

Hoyle declared the probability that random chance created life is

roughly the same as the probability that a hurricane could blow

through a junkyard and create a Boeing 707.

 

Before proceeding with the next step in refuting the anti-God

position, let's pause to see what responders think. Do you think a

random universe of concrete objects colliding by chance is the right

model for creation?

 

 

November 23, 2006

Correction

Dear friends,

I want to thank the responders who pointed out that Fred Hoyle, the

British astronomer who invented the phrase Big Bang, nevertheless

opposed the notion of an expanding universe. I remembered one fact

and forgot the other. My apologies.

Love,

Deepak

 

 

 

The God Delusion? Part 4

 

Deepak Chopra - November 24, 2006

 

At a certain point we must leave Dawkins behind, since he is riding a

hobby horse. He feels compelled to attack the onslaught of irrational

forces that pose a crisis to the very existence of science. I doubt

the crisis is so dire. Without screaming that the sky is falling

down, one can say that two broad rivers of human experience have run

into each other. One river carries science and objective observation

of the world. The other river carries subjective experience and our

craving for meaning, beauty, love, and truth.

 

There is no reason why these two rivers need to be separated, and

what we are seeing--despite Dawkins' hysterical defense of

materialism--is a merging. With a generation there will be accepted

theories that integrate the world 'out there' with the world 'in

here.'

 

This brings us to another of Dawkins' major points.

 

4. The universe is neither intelligent nor conscious. Science doesn't

need those ingredients to explain Nature and its workings. Starting

with atoms and molecules governed by strict physical laws, we will

eventually explain everything.

 

This argument has to be made in a very loud voice with total

conviction to sound plausible. Dawkins holds that humans are

conscious because chemicals randomly collide in the brain to produce

a phantom we ignorantly call the mind. This is a fashionable view and

in fact is the logical outcome of arch materialism. Where else could

mind come from if not molecules, assuming that molecules are the

basis of the brain and therefore of reality itself?

 

Common sense finds it hard to take this argument seriously, because

it leads to nonsense. The brain contains an enormous amount of water

and salt. Are we to assume that water is intelligent, or salt is

conscious? If they aren't, then we must assume that throwing water

and salt together--along with about six other basic building blocks

of organic chemicals--suddenly makes them intelligent. The bald fact

is that Dawkins defends an absurd position because he can't make the

leap to a different set of assumptions.

 

--Consciousness is part of existence. It wasn't created by molecules.

--Intelligence is an aspect of consciousness.

--Intelligence grows as life grows. Both evolve from within.

--The universe evolved along intelligent lines.

 

I realize that I've dropped a bomb into the discussion. The instant

the word 'intelligent' comes up, skeptics rush in to shout that one

is defending Intelligent Design, which is a stalking horse for

creationism, which is a stalking horse for fundamentalist

Christianity, which is a stalking horse for Jesus as the one and only

son of God. Such is the heated climate of debate at the moment, and

Dawkins takes full (unfair) advantage of it. Only Jesus freaks could

possibly believe in an intelligent universe.

 

However, if consciousness is innate in the universe, so is

intelligence. That absolutely has nothing to do with God sitting on a

throne in heaven creating Adam and Eve. If we remain sane and clear-

headed, the reason to assume that consciousness exists is simple.

There's no other way to account for it. Without a doubt there is

enormous design, complexity, organization, and interconnectedness

everywhere in Nature. You can either say " I see it, let me explain

it " or you can say " Ignore it, it's just a byproduct of randomness. "

 

Consciousness isn't just plausible as part of Nature, it's totally

necessary. Not just to keep God around but to keep science around.

That will be the next stage of the discussion. First I'd like to hear

responders' views. Do you think you are conscious and intelligent, or

are you being fooled by random chemical reactions inside your skull?

 

 

 

The God Delusion? Part 5

 

Deepak Chopra - November 27, 2006

 

Science has progressed through experiments that convince people about

the truth through verified results. If it's true that consciousness

is everywhere in Nature--a basic tenet if you want to prove that God

exists--there needs to be an experiment to prove it. Materialists

argue

 

that no such experiments exist and therefore no claim for either

consciousness or intelligence is believable. Life proceeds by chance,

adaptation, and survival. That's the creed of Darwin, who single-

handedly stripped Nature of everything having to do with intention,

purpose, and intelligence as a guiding force. In Dawkins' view

there's no need to alter this stroke of radical surgery.

 

This can be stated as another major point.

 

5. Consciousness is a byproduct of matter. Its existence has no other

explanation.

 

There are many philosophical ways to cast doubt on this statement,

but since science believes in experiments, here is one. It's a

thought experiment. Einstein came up with the theory of relativity

through a thought experiment, so it's completely valid as science to

do experiments in your head.

 

Think of a yellow flower. Can you see it? Are you sure of the color

and the fact that it's a flower and not a fish that you can see? If

so, then the experiment has been successful. You have made a major

strike at the root of materialism. When you see a flower in your

mind, there is no flower inside your brain. That seems simple enough.

But where is the flower? There's no picture of it in your cerebrum,

because your brain contains no light. How about the color yellow? Is

there a patch of yellow inside your brain's gray matter? Obviously

not.

 

Yet you assume--as do all who fall for the superstition of

materialism--that flowers and the color yellow exist 'out there' in

the world and are photographically reproduced by the brain, acting as

a camera made of organic tissue. In fact, existence of flowers shifts

mysteriously once it is closely examined. The experience of sight,

sound, touch, taste, and smell is created in consciousness. Molecules

don't assemble in your head to make the sound of a trumpet blaring in

a brass band, for example. The brain is silent. So where does the

world of sights and sounds come from?

 

Materialists cannot offer any reasonable explanation. The fact is

that an enormous gap exists between any physical, measurable event

and our perception. If I talk to you, all I am doing is vibrating air

with my vocal cords. Every aspect of that event can be seen and

measured, but turning those vibrating air molecules into meaningful

words has never been seen or measured. It can't be.

 

That's why Dawkins will never find God. He's looking in the wrong

place. The physical world can't deliver God, not because God doesn't

exist, but because the solid, physical world is an illusion--as

quantum physics proved long ago--and one must look inside

consciousness itself to find what God is about. If God is a universal

intelligence, that will turn out to be a fact. It won't be

superstition. It won't be derived from the Bible or the Koran.

 

When you get to the primal state of the universe, what is it? A

universal field that encloses all matter and energy. This field is

everywhere, but it also localizes itself. A molecule in the brain is

one expression of the field, so is a thought. If a molecule isn't an

object but a collapsed quantum wave, then that holds true for the

whole brain. The field turns out to be the common ground of both the

inner and outer world. When Einstein said that he wanted to know the

mind of God, he was pointing us toward the field, which quantum

physics continues to explore. Crude skeptics like Dawkins lag far

behind.

 

Fortunately, as the two worlds of inner and outer begin to merge, we

won't be plagued by either the superstition of religion or the

superstition of materialism. New concepts will explain how the color

yellow exists in our brain as the same phenomenon as a yellow flower

in the meadow. Both are experiences in consciousness.

 

That covers the basic and I think most convincing refutation of the

anti-God argument. It doesn't prove God by any means, much less does

it degrade science. The damage that anti-God rhetoric does is to

cloud reality. In reality there is ample room for both God and

science. Many forward-looking thinkers realize this; sadly, Richard

Dawkins isn't among them.

 

 

 

The God Delusion? Part 6

 

Deepak Chopra - December 01, 2006

 

The fact that Dawkins is serving as point man for a broad sense of

outrage among scientists who want religion to stay out of the

laboratory is admirable. But that is a social issue. The deeper issue

is whether God has anything to offer to science. Dawkins emphatically

thinks there is no practical use for God, the soul, transcendence, or

any other so-called spiritual concept in his field, which is

evolutionary biology. This brings us to another main point.

 

6. The evolution of life can be explained completely without

intruding the notion of an intelligent designer.

 

This point would seem to be a slam dunk, since Darwin's theory--and

those that have sprung from it--is purely physical. Evolution

proceeds, according to Darwin, through environmental stresses that

put pressure on a species to survive. A sudden change in climate, the

appearance of new predators, a drastic drop in the water supply are

all examples of such stresses. Some creatures will adapt better than

others. This is measured by whether a population of animals increases

or decreases. Thus adaptation comes down to reproduction. If an

animal exhibits changes that increase its chance of passing those

changes on to its offspring, evolution moves forward. If, however, a

mutation occurs that lowers the chance for reproduction, obviously it

can't be passed on, and as a result other species survive in the

endless competition for food, territory, and mating rights.

 

This whole scheme, which has been validated thousands of times over,

excludes God. Random mutations have nothing to do with a designer.

The rise and fall of species shows no intelligent plan. Even the idea

of progress is over-simplified. Evolution doesn't automatically make

a species bigger, stronger, more intelligent or more beautiful. Blue-

green algae, for example, is one of the most primitive forms of life,

yet it fits its niche in the environment perfectly well today, just

as it has for billions of years. The fact that an orchid seems more

beautiful to our eyes and a redwood tree more majestic doesn't mean

God created that beauty and majesty. Or that Nature intended those

qualities in any way.

 

Yet the triumph of materialism in explaining the formation of life is

grossly flawed. Dawkins realizes that there are enormous gaps in

evolutionary theory, but he keeps assuring us that these will be

filled in over time. Genetics, like evolution itself, proceeds by

increments, and we mustn't leap to embrace an intelligent designer

just because so many things around us seem, well, intelligently

designed.

 

The fact that the world appears to be so perfectly knit, so

stunningly precise down to the millionths of a degree, so beautiful,

and in the end so meaningful to anyone who can appreciate these

qualities, is a problem for materialists. For centuries one of the

strongest proofs of God has been the inference that nothing less than

a supreme being could have created life. Unfortunately for Dawkins,

refuting this claim isn't nearly as easy as he thinks.

 

To begin with, he tries to claim probability for his side, saying

that the odds against a Creator God are too slim to be credible,

whereas the odds for Darwin's theory exist right before our eyes.

Could it really be true that blue-green algae evolved, one tiny step

at a time, until every single tree, flower, fern, and grass grew from

it (not to mention every animal)? The odds seem impossibly small, but

the fossil record proves that they came true.

 

God, on the other hand, is merely inferred. He's an invisible

supposition, and who needs one when we have fossils? The flaw here is

subtle, for Dawkins is imagining God in advance and then claiming

that what he imagines has little chance of existing. That's perfectly

true, but why should God be what Dawkins imagines--a superhuman

Creator making life the way a watchmaker makes a watch? Let's say God

is closer to being a field of consciousness that pervades the

universe. Let's say that this field keeps creating new forms within

itself. These forms swirl and mix with each other, finding more

combinations and complexities as time unfolds. Such a God couldn't be

imagined because a field is infinite, and there's nowhere it isn't.

Thus trying to talk about God is like a fish trying to talk about

wetness. A fish is immersed in wetness; it has nothing to compare

water to, and the same is true of consciousness. We are conscious and

intelligent, and it does no good to talk about the probability of not

being conscious and intelligent.

 

We are in God as a fish is in water. Dawkins doesn't take this

argument seriously (he imagines that he can entirely dismiss geniuses

on the order of Plato, Socrates, Hegel, Kant, Newton, and Einstein

simply because they aren't up on the current issue of Scientific

American, as he is). In the past, thinkers saw intelligence and

consciousness all around them, and they set out to explain their

source, which some called God. It's not necessary to use such a word.

But it is necessary to find the source.

 

Dawkins, along with other arch materialists, dismiss such a search.

Are information fields real, as some theorists believe? Such a field

might preserve information the way energy fields preserve energy; in

fact, the entire universe may be based upon the evolution of

information. (there's not the slightest doubt that the universe has

an invisible source outside space and time.) A field that can create

something new and then remember it would explain the persistence of

incredibly fragile molecules like DNA, which by any odds should have

disintegrated long ago under the pressure of entropy, not to mention

the vicissitudes of heat, wind, sunlight, radiation, and random

mistakes through mutation.

 

Dawkins falls prey, not to the delusion of God, but to the delusion

of an all-mighty chance acting mindlessly through matter. He cannot

admit the possibility of an ordering force in Nature. Therefore, he

has no ability to discover the precursors of the human mind, which is

ultimately the greatest triumph of evolutionary biology, not DNA.

Until we have a credible explanation for mind, it's pointless to

argue about God as if we understand what's at stake. Religion and

science are both operating with incomplete concepts.

 

The entire universe is experienced only through consciousness, and

even though consciousness is invisible and non-material, it's the

elephant in the room so far as evolutionary theory is concerned. This

is a huge topic, of course, and I've offered earlier posts on the

many flaws in current evolutionary theory. under the topic of

Intelligent Design. It's difficult threading one's way through the

battlefield, with fundamentalists firing smoke on one side and

skeptics arrogantly defending the scientific status quo on the other,

but earth-shaking issues are at stake. When we understand both

intelligence and design, a quantum leap in evolutionary theory will

be possible.

 

 

 

The God Delusion? Part 7

 

Deepak Chopra - December 04, 2006

 

Ultimately, Richard Dawkins can fight with religion all he wants and

it will be only a sideshow. He is a color commentator sitting in the

bleachers, not a player in the game. Skepticism offers critiques, not

discoveries. Ironically, this is a shared fate with religion, which

has ceased to play a progressive and vital role in modern society.

The two are locked in a sterile embrace. So how can a new conception

of God change this situation? The answer centers on the last point

from Dawkins in our discussion.

 

7. The universe is full of wonder and mystery, but these will be

solved, one at a time, until science has a complete understanding. In

this way the entire supernatural tradition--and God himself--will be

erased.

 

This is a powerful and optimistic claim that seems plausible in an

age of heady discoveries in physics and biology. The famous Theory of

Everything draws closer to fulfillment than ever. In fact, science

has become even more ambitious. The original Theory of Everything

belonged solely to physics. It had no intention of explaining the

evolution of life. But with the completion of the human genome

project, life will also cease to be a mystery, so Dawkins assures us.

Every mechanism hidden inside DNA will be mastered and used for human

good.

 

It's hard for materialists not to thump their chests, as Dawkins so

brazenly does. Unfortunately, the Theory of Everything has hit a

brick wall. Quantum physics lacks the power to cross the border into

the invisible world that lies beyond subatomic particles, the so-

called virtual domain. Not only is this the realm of 'dark matter'

and 'dark energy'--mysterious shadows of the matter and energy we see

around us--but all possible universes also lie across the same

boundary, as well as the " zero point " where space and time are born.

 

Genetics seems to be riding higher, but behind the display of public

triumph, biology has not solved the existence of mind, and therefore

the same obstacle faces both fields. An invisible world lies sealed

off from investigation, leaving us to trace its footprints and

echoes. MRIs and CAT scans are impressive but limited. As someone

once commented, brain research is like putting a stethoscope to the

outside of the Astrodome and trying to figure out the rules of

football. Dawkins finds consciousness (as well as quantum physics)

totally irrelevant, a comment on his own intellectual limitations

rather than reality. If God is going to become viable again, he will

have to be a God who solves some key mysteries in the virtual domain:

 

--What separates life from inert matter?

--What part does the observer play in creating reality?

--How does the infinite quantum field organize and govern every event

in the universe?

--How does chaos relate to order? Are they enemies or secret allies?

--How did evolution overcome entropy, the ceaseless march of the

physical universe toward chaos and the deep freezer of " heat death " ?

--Why is the universe so amazingly hospitable to human life?

 

This last question is the most pressing one, for both believers and

non-believers. To claim that the swirling, chaotic quantum soup that

erupted from the Big Bang evolved into human life by random chance is

only believable because science has no urgent need to find a credible

alternative. As long as a scientist stands outside nature with his

nose pressed against the glass like a child peering through a bakery

shop window (to borrow an image from the noted physicist John

Wheeler) we get a false picture of the cosmos. The only advantage of

isolating yourself in this way is that it fits the scientific method.

But no matter how many rats run through the maze, it's futile to

pretend that we are outside the experiment. The truth is completely

different:

 

--We are imbedded in the universe. What we observe is ourselves

reflected back at us.

--Every sight, sound, texture, taste, and smell is the product of an

observer. As the observer changes, so do all these qualities.

--We perceive imagination, beauty, creativity, etc. in ourselves and

thus we see the same in Nature. Every attribute of the human mind is

imbedded in the universe.

 

Why can you remember your birthday and the face of someone you love?

Because DNA can remember how to produce generations of human beings.

Why does DNA remember? There's the mystery. We can link memory as a

human attribute to chemical memory. But when we ask where chemicals

learned to remember, science is baffled. Dissecting DNA is one thing.

Asking the " why " of DNA is another.

 

Dawkins feels that why is a foolish, probably meaningless question,

totally devoid of scientific interest. So be it. But why is the

single most important question humans ask, particularly when it comes

to ourselves. Ultimately we want to know who we are and our purpose

for being here. Dawkins doesn't seem to have any doubt about who he

is: he's the evolutionary byproduct of chemical forces, physical

laws, random events, natural selection, competition, adaptation, and

survival. So is an amoeba. Sadly, this reductionist picture of human

life is devoid of meaning. It's merely a map of how a physical

machine called the body came to be built. Such knowledge is like

knowing everything about a computer except how to plug it in.

 

What if memory is an attribute of Nature itself? All around us we see

memory at work. The insulin that functions in primitive organisms

retains the same function in higher mammals. The chemical reaction

that propels a butterfly's wings to beat is duplicated to make human

heart cells beat. Once we take seriously the notion that we are

inside the bake shop, not standing outside with our noses pressed up

against the glass, it becomes obvious that memory isn't a separate,

isolated attribute.

 

Nature is constantly remembering. Nature is constantly creating,

exercising imagination, discovering quantum leaps. When hydrogen and

oxygen combined, the result wasn't another inert gas. It was water,

and water represents a huge imaginative leap on the part of the

universe. The reason one can say this with confidence is simple: if

the universe didn't have imagination, neither would we. That's what

it means to be imbedded in the field. Nothing we know about ourselves

can be separated from what Nature displays.

 

Which finally, at long last, breathes new life into God. Dawkins is

absolutely right to declare a requiem service over the God of

organized religion and to warn us about the dangers of superstition,

dogma, and pseudo-science. (Too bad he isn't wise enough to heed the

words of a right-wing fundamentalist on CNN: " As long as you hate us,

we're not going away. " ) But what Dawkins tragically misses holds far

more optimism for the future than he ever could: the universe is

renewing itself through us. Science is God explaining God to God

using a human nervous system. Or as one wit put it, God created

scientists to prove that he doesn't exist--and failed.

 

There is nothing outside the field. It displays omnipresence and

omnipotence, being all-pervasive and containing all matter and

energy. Soon science will come to terms with the presence of

consciousness in the field (advanced systems theory as well as

information theory is hard at work already) and we will add

omniscience to the list. This new God will be the source of mind. Its

ability to orchestrate evolution will make sense because it must.

Humans cannot have any knowledge except knowledge of ourselves. Every

facet of the cosmos is a mirror. The fact that the chemical reaction

driving a butterfly's wings also keeps you and me alive is no

accident--it's part of a design.

 

Contrary to what Dawkins thinks, this design isn't a blueprint or a

diagram set down by a fictitious God. It's a vital, ever-evolving,

imaginative, dramatic process. Strangely enough, so is human

existence. The similarity isn't a coincidence--there is nothing we

call human that isn't, quite literally, transcendent. Beyond the

physical world lies the womb of creation, and whether we call it God

is irrelevant. We came from a source, we are forever in contact with

our source, and we are constantly returning to our source. This is

the real mystery of existence that Dawkins trivializes with his over-

heated skepticism. Far more profound are the words of T.S. Eliot:

 

And what you thought you came for

Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled.

 

In the final post on this topic, I wll address some of the responses

I have received.

 

P.S.

Some responders have problems with a sentence from this post: " When

hydrogen and oxygen combined, the result wasn't another inert gas. "

I meant, of course, another inert gas like radon or neon. If I

thought that oxygen and hydrogen were inert gases, I wouldn't have

stated that they combine, since by definition inert gases can't

combine. They have no free electron(s) in their outer orbits with

which to combine.

 

This discussion will be more productive if we all grant each other

the respect we would like to receive.

 

Love, Deepak

[Guest guest]

, " jagbir singh " <adishakti_org

wrote:

>

> The God Delusion? Part 1

>

> Deepak Chopra - November 15, 2006

>

> Recently there have been a spate of books about God from scientists

> responding to the debate over intelligent design that flared up last

> year. These books raise a chorus of skepticism that God exists, most

> in no uncertain terms. Science stands for rational thought, faith for

> superstition and unreason. The latest bestseller in this vein is

> Richard Dawkins' " The God Delusion, " and since I had the chance to

> debate Dawkins on Channel 4 in England, I wanted to pick up the

> subject here.

>

> Dawkins has written extensively on evolution, holds a chair at Oxford

> University, and speaks out loudly against any possibility that God is

> real. He makes many points to support his claim that religion is

> nonsense and that there isn't the slightest shred of rational proof

> for God, miracles, the soul, etc. Since this is such an important

> issue, I want to argue against him point by point in some detail.

>

> 1. Science is the only valid way to gain knowledge. Nothing about God

> is needed to explain the world. Eventually science will uncover all

> mysteries. Those that it can't explain don't exist.

>

> This is the bedrock of Dawkins' argument, as it is of most skeptics

> and scientific atheists. In his new book Dawkins expresses his

> position with deep disdain for those who disagree, and his poisonous

> tone weakens his argument. Yet there's no doubt that with current

> advances in genetics and brain research, scientists have more

> confidence than ever that mysteries are being unraveled as never

> before. By the same token, something as primitive as faith in God

> looks more and more pointless and misguided. At best God is a matter

> of personal belief, at worst a superstition that blocks progress (in

> the way the Bush Administration uses theology to block stem-cell

> research).

>

> The unfairness of this argument is that it squeezes God into a

> corner. Dawkins makes it an us-versus-them issue. Either you are for

> science (that is, reason, progress, modernism, optimism about the

> future) or you are for religion (that is, unreason, reactionary

> resistance to progress, clinging to mysteries that only God can

> solve). He goes so far as to tar anyone who believes in God with the

> same brush as extreme religious fanatics. Sadly, the media often

> follow his lead, erasing the truth, which is that many scientists are

> religious and many of the greatest scientists (including Newton and

> Einstein) probed deep into the existence of God. Not to mention the

> obvious fact that you don't have to go to church, or even belong to a

> religion, to find God plausible.

>

> But let's leave Dawkins' heated and unfair rhetoric aside. Is science

> the only route to knowledge? Obviously not. I know that my mother

> loved me all her life, as I love my own children. I feel genius in

> great works of art. None of this knowledge is validated by science. I

> have seen medical cures that science can't explain, some seemingly

> triggered by faith. The same is true of millions of other people. I

> know that I am conscious and have a self, even though Dawkins--along

> with many arch materialists--doesn't believe that consciousness is

> real or that the self is anything but a chemical illusion created in

> the brain. By Dawkins' reasoning a mother's love is no more real than

> God as neither can be empirically quantified.

>

> A materialist could conceivably analyze the brain functions of a

> Mozart or Beethoven down to the last synaptic firing, but that would

> tell us nothing about why music exists, why it is beautiful, where

> great symphonies come from, why inspiration uplifts the listener, or

> in fact any relevant thing about the meaning of music. The world in

> general has meaning, deep meaning at times. This cannot be dismissed

> as a delusion, an artifact of chemicals. Beauty and meaning can be

> known independent of a biochemical analysis.

>

> The same analogy comes to mind whenever one hears that brain research

> will eventually explain all human thought and behavior. If a

> scientist could map every molecule in a radio as it was playing the

> Beethoven Fifth, there would be a complete diagram of the symphony at

> the level of matter. But the radio isn't Beethoven. It isn't his

> mind, and a diagram of Beethoven's brain, which would also be at the

> level of matter, is equally futile to explain what his mind was like

> except in the crudest terms.

>

> For thousands of years human beings have been obsessed by beauty,

> truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and

> God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it's a straw

> man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself

> or beauty itself. God stands for the perfection of both, and even if

> you think truth and beauty (along with love, justice, forgiveness,

> compassion, and other divine qualities) can never be perfect, to say

> that they are fantasies makes no sense.

>

> Science knows about objective reality, the mask of matter that our

> five senses detects. But the mind goes beyond the five senses, and it

> does Dawkins no good to lump the two worlds of inner and outer

> together. In fact, insofar as brain research can locate centers of

> activity that light up whenever a person feels love or pleasure or

> sexual arousal, these subjective states leave objective traces

> behind. That makes them more real, not less. In the same way, the

> brain lights up when a person feels inspired or close to God;

> therefore, we may be getting closer to the connection between inner

> and outer states, not further away.

>

> This is only the outline of an argument against science as the only

> valid route to knowledge. Before going on to Dawkins' other points,

> let's see what responders have to say.

>

>

>

> The God Delusion (Part 2)

>

> Deepak Chopra - November 17, 2006

>

> In the continuing debate between science and religion, Richard

> Dawkins makes another sweeping claim.

>

> 2. God is unnecessary. Science can explain Nature without any help

> from supernatural causes like God. There is no need for a Creator.

>

>

> To many people this argument sounds convincing because they believe

> in science and find God hard to believe in. But Dawkins has pulled

> the same trick that he resorts to over and over. This is the us-

> versus-them trick. Either you think there is a personal God, a

> superhuman Creator who made the world according to the Book of

> Genesis, or you are a rational believer in the scientific method.

>

> This assumption is false on several grounds. The most basic one is

> that God isn't a person. In a certain strain of fundamentalist

> Christianity God looks and acts human, and creating the world in six

> days is taken literally (Dawkins refers to such believers

> as 'clowns,' not worth the bother except to ridicule them). But God

> isn't a person in any strain of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism,

> Confucianism, the branch of Hinduism known as Vedanta, and many

> denominations of Christianity--he's not a person in the Gospel of

> John in the New Testament.

>

> Therefore, reducing God to a Sunday school picture and claiming that

> the Book of Genesis--or creationism in general--competes with science

> isn't accurate. Fundamentalism hasn't played a role in scientific

> debate for generations. Einstein pointed out that he didn't believe

> in a personal God but was fascinated by how an orderly universe and

> its physical laws came about.

>

> Nor is it fair to present God as a Creator standing somewhere outside

> the universe. Dawkins ridicules this notion by saying that such a God

> didn't need to create the cosmos through the Big Bang and billions of

> years of evolution. He could have created it whole and perfect to

> begin with. Thus if we observe evolution at work--as of course we do--

> then God is irrelevant and unnecessary.

>

> This attempt to second-guess God again reduces him to a person who

> thinks like a human being and would carry out creation the way a

> smart scientist would--a Richard Dawkins, for example. God, if he

> exists, is universal, existing at all times and places, pervading

> creation both inside the envelope of space-time and outside it. To

> use a word like " He " has no validity, in fact; we are forced into it

> by how language works. A better word would be 'the All, " which in

> Sanskrit is Brahman and Allah in Islam. Not every language is stuck

> with He or She.

>

> So at bottom, the real question is this: Do we need an all-pervading

> intelligence to explain the universe? Forget the image of God sitting

> on a throne, forget Genesis, forget the straw man of a Creator who

> isn't as smart as a smart human being. The real debate is between two

> world views:

>

> 1. The universe is random. It operates entirely through physical

> laws. There is no evidence of innate intelligence.

>

> 2. The universe contains design. Physical laws generate new forms

> that display intention. Intelligence is all-pervasive.

>

> The second worldview can be called religious, but it's a trap to say

> that only a Christian God explains intelligence in the universe.

> There is room for a new paradigm that preserves all the achievements

> of science--as upheld by the first worldview--while giving the

> universe meaning and significance. Dawkins shows no interest in

> uniting these two perspectives (he disdains the whole notion of a

> religious scientist), but many of is colleagues do.

>

> Before talking about such a synthesis, let's see what responders

> think. Is God an all or nothing proposition as Dawkins claims? Must

> science absolutely exclude God in any form?

>

>

>

> The God Delusion? Part 3

>

> Deepak Chopra - November 20, 2006

>

> One of the reasons that Dawkins' book has touched a nerve is that

> many scientists are outraged by the religious tide in world affairs.

> Using theology as a shield, politicians are undermining the whole

> rational structure of scientific progress. This bring us to another

> major point for Dawkins.

>

> 3. The universe is a complex machine whose workings are steadily

> being demystified by science. Any other way of viewing the world is

> superstitious and reactionary.

>

> What is so strange about this argument is that Dawkins himself is

> totally reactionary. His defense of a material universe revealing its

> secrets ignores the total overthrow of materialism in modern physics.

> There is no world of solid objects; space-time itself depends upon

> shaping forces beyond both space and time. The notion that Dawkins

> stands for progress while religion stands for anti-progress may be

> true in a broad social sense. Nobody would pick a Baptist preacher to

> lead the human genome project.

>

> But arch materialism is just as superstitious as religion. Someone

> like Dawkins still believes there are solid objects randomly

> colliding to haphazardly form more and more complex objects, until

> over the course of billions of years the universe produced human DNA

> with its billions of genetic bits.

>

> What's wrong with this argument is that if you trace DNA down to its

> individual atoms, each is more than 99.9999% empty space. If you take

> an individual electron, it has no fixed position in either time or

> space. Rather, ghostly vibrations wink in and out of the universe

> thousands of times per second, and what lies beyond the boundary of

> the five senses holds enormous mysteries.

>

> Enough mysteries, in fact, to be consistent with God. I don't mean a

> personal God or a mythic one or any God with a human face. Set aside

> all images of God. What we observe once we get over the superstition

> of materialism (a superstition Dawkins defends to the last degree) is

> that random chance is one of the worst ways to explain how the

> universe evolved.

>

> --The various constants in nature, such as gravity and the speed of

> light, are too precisely fitted with each other for this to happen by

> chance.

> --If any one of six constants had been off by less than a millionth

> of 1 percent, the material universe couldn't exist.

> --Events at opposite ends of the universe are paired with each other,

> so that a change in the spin of one electron immediately produces a

> twin effect in another electron. This ability to communicate

> instantly across millions of light years cannot be explained by

> materialism. It defies all notions of cause and effect. it defies

> chance.

> --Every electron in the universe exists as a wave function that is

> everywhere at once. When this wave function collapses, we observe a

> specific isolated electron. Before the wave collapses, however,

> matter is non-local.

>

> The ability of objects and events to be everywhere at once seems like

> an attribute of God--omnipresence. The ability of electrons separated

> by millions of light years to 'talk' to each other seems like another

> attribute of God--omniscience. This doesn't mean that God explains

> the universe. It means that there may be governing forces at work

> which allow the existence of universal consciousness. The self-aware

> universe is a plausible theory. Many writers have described it,

> although Dawkins disdains such theories.

>

> If the universe is self-aware, it would explain the formation of a

> self-replicating molecule like DNA far more elegantly than the

> clumsy, crude mechanism of random chance. As the astronomer Fred

> Hoyle declared the probability that random chance created life is

> roughly the same as the probability that a hurricane could blow

> through a junkyard and create a Boeing 707.

>

> Before proceeding with the next step in refuting the anti-God

> position, let's pause to see what responders think. Do you think a

> random universe of concrete objects colliding by chance is the right

> model for creation?

>

>

> November 23, 2006

> Correction

> Dear friends,

> I want to thank the responders who pointed out that Fred Hoyle, the

> British astronomer who invented the phrase Big Bang, nevertheless

> opposed the notion of an expanding universe. I remembered one fact

> and forgot the other. My apologies.

> Love,

> Deepak

>

>

>

> The God Delusion? Part 4

>

> Deepak Chopra - November 24, 2006

>

> At a certain point we must leave Dawkins behind, since he is riding a

> hobby horse. He feels compelled to attack the onslaught of irrational

> forces that pose a crisis to the very existence of science. I doubt

> the crisis is so dire. Without screaming that the sky is falling

> down, one can say that two broad rivers of human experience have run

> into each other. One river carries science and objective observation

> of the world. The other river carries subjective experience and our

> craving for meaning, beauty, love, and truth.

>

> There is no reason why these two rivers need to be separated, and

> what we are seeing--despite Dawkins' hysterical defense of

> materialism--is a merging. With a generation there will be accepted

> theories that integrate the world 'out there' with the world 'in

> here.'

>

> This brings us to another of Dawkins' major points.

>

> 4. The universe is neither intelligent nor conscious. Science doesn't

> need those ingredients to explain Nature and its workings. Starting

> with atoms and molecules governed by strict physical laws, we will

> eventually explain everything.

>

> This argument has to be made in a very loud voice with total

> conviction to sound plausible. Dawkins holds that humans are

> conscious because chemicals randomly collide in the brain to produce

> a phantom we ignorantly call the mind. This is a fashionable view and

> in fact is the logical outcome of arch materialism. Where else could

> mind come from if not molecules, assuming that molecules are the

> basis of the brain and therefore of reality itself?

>

> Common sense finds it hard to take this argument seriously, because

> it leads to nonsense. The brain contains an enormous amount of water

> and salt. Are we to assume that water is intelligent, or salt is

> conscious? If they aren't, then we must assume that throwing water

> and salt together--along with about six other basic building blocks

> of organic chemicals--suddenly makes them intelligent. The bald fact

> is that Dawkins defends an absurd position because he can't make the

> leap to a different set of assumptions.

>

> --Consciousness is part of existence. It wasn't created by molecules.

> --Intelligence is an aspect of consciousness.

> --Intelligence grows as life grows. Both evolve from within.

> --The universe evolved along intelligent lines.

>

> I realize that I've dropped a bomb into the discussion. The instant

> the word 'intelligent' comes up, skeptics rush in to shout that one

> is defending Intelligent Design, which is a stalking horse for

> creationism, which is a stalking horse for fundamentalist

> Christianity, which is a stalking horse for Jesus as the one and only

> son of God. Such is the heated climate of debate at the moment, and

> Dawkins takes full (unfair) advantage of it. Only Jesus freaks could

> possibly believe in an intelligent universe.

>

> However, if consciousness is innate in the universe, so is

> intelligence. That absolutely has nothing to do with God sitting on a

> throne in heaven creating Adam and Eve. If we remain sane and clear-

> headed, the reason to assume that consciousness exists is simple.

> There's no other way to account for it. Without a doubt there is

> enormous design, complexity, organization, and interconnectedness

> everywhere in Nature. You can either say " I see it, let me explain

> it " or you can say " Ignore it, it's just a byproduct of randomness. "

>

> Consciousness isn't just plausible as part of Nature, it's totally

> necessary. Not just to keep God around but to keep science around.

> That will be the next stage of the discussion. First I'd like to hear

> responders' views. Do you think you are conscious and intelligent, or

> are you being fooled by random chemical reactions inside your skull?

>

>

>

> The God Delusion? Part 5

>

> Deepak Chopra - November 27, 2006

>

> Science has progressed through experiments that convince people about

> the truth through verified results. If it's true that consciousness

> is everywhere in Nature--a basic tenet if you want to prove that God

> exists--there needs to be an experiment to prove it. Materialists

> argue

>

> that no such experiments exist and therefore no claim for either

> consciousness or intelligence is believable. Life proceeds by chance,

> adaptation, and survival. That's the creed of Darwin, who single-

> handedly stripped Nature of everything having to do with intention,

> purpose, and intelligence as a guiding force. In Dawkins' view

> there's no need to alter this stroke of radical surgery.

>

> This can be stated as another major point.

>

> 5. Consciousness is a byproduct of matter. Its existence has no other

> explanation.

>

> There are many philosophical ways to cast doubt on this statement,

> but since science believes in experiments, here is one. It's a

> thought experiment. Einstein came up with the theory of relativity

> through a thought experiment, so it's completely valid as science to

> do experiments in your head.

>

> Think of a yellow flower. Can you see it? Are you sure of the color

> and the fact that it's a flower and not a fish that you can see? If

> so, then the experiment has been successful. You have made a major

> strike at the root of materialism. When you see a flower in your

> mind, there is no flower inside your brain. That seems simple enough.

> But where is the flower? There's no picture of it in your cerebrum,

> because your brain contains no light. How about the color yellow? Is

> there a patch of yellow inside your brain's gray matter? Obviously

> not.

>

> Yet you assume--as do all who fall for the superstition of

> materialism--that flowers and the color yellow exist 'out there' in

> the world and are photographically reproduced by the brain, acting as

> a camera made of organic tissue. In fact, existence of flowers shifts

> mysteriously once it is closely examined. The experience of sight,

> sound, touch, taste, and smell is created in consciousness. Molecules

> don't assemble in your head to make the sound of a trumpet blaring in

> a brass band, for example. The brain is silent. So where does the

> world of sights and sounds come from?

>

> Materialists cannot offer any reasonable explanation. The fact is

> that an enormous gap exists between any physical, measurable event

> and our perception. If I talk to you, all I am doing is vibrating air

> with my vocal cords. Every aspect of that event can be seen and

> measured, but turning those vibrating air molecules into meaningful

> words has never been seen or measured. It can't be.

>

> That's why Dawkins will never find God. He's looking in the wrong

> place. The physical world can't deliver God, not because God doesn't

> exist, but because the solid, physical world is an illusion--as

> quantum physics proved long ago--and one must look inside

> consciousness itself to find what God is about. If God is a universal

> intelligence, that will turn out to be a fact. It won't be

> superstition. It won't be derived from the Bible or the Koran.

>

> When you get to the primal state of the universe, what is it? A

> universal field that encloses all matter and energy. This field is

> everywhere, but it also localizes itself. A molecule in the brain is

> one expression of the field, so is a thought. If a molecule isn't an

> object but a collapsed quantum wave, then that holds true for the

> whole brain. The field turns out to be the common ground of both the

> inner and outer world. When Einstein said that he wanted to know the

> mind of God, he was pointing us toward the field, which quantum

> physics continues to explore. Crude skeptics like Dawkins lag far

> behind.

>

> Fortunately, as the two worlds of inner and outer begin to merge, we

> won't be plagued by either the superstition of religion or the

> superstition of materialism. New concepts will explain how the color

> yellow exists in our brain as the same phenomenon as a yellow flower

> in the meadow. Both are experiences in consciousness.

>

> That covers the basic and I think most convincing refutation of the

> anti-God argument. It doesn't prove God by any means, much less does

> it degrade science. The damage that anti-God rhetoric does is to

> cloud reality. In reality there is ample room for both God and

> science. Many forward-looking thinkers realize this; sadly, Richard

> Dawkins isn't among them.

>

>

>

> The God Delusion? Part 6

>

> Deepak Chopra - December 01, 2006

>

> The fact that Dawkins is serving as point man for a broad sense of

> outrage among scientists who want religion to stay out of the

> laboratory is admirable. But that is a social issue. The deeper issue

> is whether God has anything to offer to science. Dawkins emphatically

> thinks there is no practical use for God, the soul, transcendence, or

> any other so-called spiritual concept in his field, which is

> evolutionary biology. This brings us to another main point.

>

> 6. The evolution of life can be explained completely without

> intruding the notion of an intelligent designer.

>

> This point would seem to be a slam dunk, since Darwin's theory--and

> those that have sprung from it--is purely physical. Evolution

> proceeds, according to Darwin, through environmental stresses that

> put pressure on a species to survive. A sudden change in climate, the

> appearance of new predators, a drastic drop in the water supply are

> all examples of such stresses. Some creatures will adapt better than

> others. This is measured by whether a population of animals increases

> or decreases. Thus adaptation comes down to reproduction. If an

> animal exhibits changes that increase its chance of passing those

> changes on to its offspring, evolution moves forward. If, however, a

> mutation occurs that lowers the chance for reproduction, obviously it

> can't be passed on, and as a result other species survive in the

> endless competition for food, territory, and mating rights.

>

> This whole scheme, which has been validated thousands of times over,

> excludes God. Random mutations have nothing to do with a designer.

> The rise and fall of species shows no intelligent plan. Even the idea

> of progress is over-simplified. Evolution doesn't automatically make

> a species bigger, stronger, more intelligent or more beautiful. Blue-

> green algae, for example, is one of the most primitive forms of life,

> yet it fits its niche in the environment perfectly well today, just

> as it has for billions of years. The fact that an orchid seems more

> beautiful to our eyes and a redwood tree more majestic doesn't mean

> God created that beauty and majesty. Or that Nature intended those

> qualities in any way.

>

> Yet the triumph of materialism in explaining the formation of life is

> grossly flawed. Dawkins realizes that there are enormous gaps in

> evolutionary theory, but he keeps assuring us that these will be

> filled in over time. Genetics, like evolution itself, proceeds by

> increments, and we mustn't leap to embrace an intelligent designer

> just because so many things around us seem, well, intelligently

> designed.

>

> The fact that the world appears to be so perfectly knit, so

> stunningly precise down to the millionths of a degree, so beautiful,

> and in the end so meaningful to anyone who can appreciate these

> qualities, is a problem for materialists. For centuries one of the

> strongest proofs of God has been the inference that nothing less than

> a supreme being could have created life. Unfortunately for Dawkins,

> refuting this claim isn't nearly as easy as he thinks.

>

> To begin with, he tries to claim probability for his side, saying

> that the odds against a Creator God are too slim to be credible,

> whereas the odds for Darwin's theory exist right before our eyes.

> Could it really be true that blue-green algae evolved, one tiny step

> at a time, until every single tree, flower, fern, and grass grew from

> it (not to mention every animal)? The odds seem impossibly small, but

> the fossil record proves that they came true.

>

> God, on the other hand, is merely inferred. He's an invisible

> supposition, and who needs one when we have fossils? The flaw here is

> subtle, for Dawkins is imagining God in advance and then claiming

> that what he imagines has little chance of existing. That's perfectly

> true, but why should God be what Dawkins imagines--a superhuman

> Creator making life the way a watchmaker makes a watch? Let's say God

> is closer to being a field of consciousness that pervades the

> universe. Let's say that this field keeps creating new forms within

> itself. These forms swirl and mix with each other, finding more

> combinations and complexities as time unfolds. Such a God couldn't be

> imagined because a field is infinite, and there's nowhere it isn't.

> Thus trying to talk about God is like a fish trying to talk about

> wetness. A fish is immersed in wetness; it has nothing to compare

> water to, and the same is true of consciousness. We are conscious and

> intelligent, and it does no good to talk about the probability of not

> being conscious and intelligent.

>

> We are in God as a fish is in water. Dawkins doesn't take this

> argument seriously (he imagines that he can entirely dismiss geniuses

> on the order of Plato, Socrates, Hegel, Kant, Newton, and Einstein

> simply because they aren't up on the current issue of Scientific

> American, as he is). In the past, thinkers saw intelligence and

> consciousness all around them, and they set out to explain their

> source, which some called God. It's not necessary to use such a word.

> But it is necessary to find the source.

>

> Dawkins, along with other arch materialists, dismiss such a search.

> Are information fields real, as some theorists believe? Such a field

> might preserve information the way energy fields preserve energy; in

> fact, the entire universe may be based upon the evolution of

> information. (there's not the slightest doubt that the universe has

> an invisible source outside space and time.) A field that can create

> something new and then remember it would explain the persistence of

> incredibly fragile molecules like DNA, which by any odds should have

> disintegrated long ago under the pressure of entropy, not to mention

> the vicissitudes of heat, wind, sunlight, radiation, and random

> mistakes through mutation.

>

> Dawkins falls prey, not to the delusion of God, but to the delusion

> of an all-mighty chance acting mindlessly through matter. He cannot

> admit the possibility of an ordering force in Nature. Therefore, he

> has no ability to discover the precursors of the human mind, which is

> ultimately the greatest triumph of evolutionary biology, not DNA.

> Until we have a credible explanation for mind, it's pointless to

> argue about God as if we understand what's at stake. Religion and

> science are both operating with incomplete concepts.

>

> The entire universe is experienced only through consciousness, and

> even though consciousness is invisible and non-material, it's the

> elephant in the room so far as evolutionary theory is concerned. This

> is a huge topic, of course, and I've offered earlier posts on the

> many flaws in current evolutionary theory. under the topic of

> Intelligent Design. It's difficult threading one's way through the

> battlefield, with fundamentalists firing smoke on one side and

> skeptics arrogantly defending the scientific status quo on the other,

> but earth-shaking issues are at stake. When we understand both

> intelligence and design, a quantum leap in evolutionary theory will

> be possible.

>

>

>

> The God Delusion? Part 7

>

> Deepak Chopra - December 04, 2006

>

> Ultimately, Richard Dawkins can fight with religion all he wants and

> it will be only a sideshow. He is a color commentator sitting in the

> bleachers, not a player in the game. Skepticism offers critiques, not

> discoveries. Ironically, this is a shared fate with religion, which

> has ceased to play a progressive and vital role in modern society.

> The two are locked in a sterile embrace. So how can a new conception

> of God change this situation? The answer centers on the last point

> from Dawkins in our discussion.

>

> 7. The universe is full of wonder and mystery, but these will be

> solved, one at a time, until science has a complete understanding. In

> this way the entire supernatural tradition--and God himself--will be

> erased.

>

> This is a powerful and optimistic claim that seems plausible in an

> age of heady discoveries in physics and biology. The famous Theory of

> Everything draws closer to fulfillment than ever. In fact, science

> has become even more ambitious. The original Theory of Everything

> belonged solely to physics. It had no intention of explaining the

> evolution of life. But with the completion of the human genome

> project, life will also cease to be a mystery, so Dawkins assures us.

> Every mechanism hidden inside DNA will be mastered and used for human

> good.

>

> It's hard for materialists not to thump their chests, as Dawkins so

> brazenly does. Unfortunately, the Theory of Everything has hit a

> brick wall. Quantum physics lacks the power to cross the border into

> the invisible world that lies beyond subatomic particles, the so-

> called virtual domain. Not only is this the realm of 'dark matter'

> and 'dark energy'--mysterious shadows of the matter and energy we see

> around us--but all possible universes also lie across the same

> boundary, as well as the " zero point " where space and time are born.

>

> Genetics seems to be riding higher, but behind the display of public

> triumph, biology has not solved the existence of mind, and therefore

> the same obstacle faces both fields. An invisible world lies sealed

> off from investigation, leaving us to trace its footprints and

> echoes. MRIs and CAT scans are impressive but limited. As someone

> once commented, brain research is like putting a stethoscope to the

> outside of the Astrodome and trying to figure out the rules of

> football. Dawkins finds consciousness (as well as quantum physics)

> totally irrelevant, a comment on his own intellectual limitations

> rather than reality. If God is going to become viable again, he will

> have to be a God who solves some key mysteries in the virtual domain:

>

> --What separates life from inert matter?

> --What part does the observer play in creating reality?

> --How does the infinite quantum field organize and govern every event

> in the universe?

> --How does chaos relate to order? Are they enemies or secret allies?

> --How did evolution overcome entropy, the ceaseless march of the

> physical universe toward chaos and the deep freezer of " heat death " ?

> --Why is the universe so amazingly hospitable to human life?

>

> This last question is the most pressing one, for both believers and

> non-believers. To claim that the swirling, chaotic quantum soup that

> erupted from the Big Bang evolved into human life by random chance is

> only believable because science has no urgent need to find a credible

> alternative. As long as a scientist stands outside nature with his

> nose pressed against the glass like a child peering through a bakery

> shop window (to borrow an image from the noted physicist John

> Wheeler) we get a false picture of the cosmos. The only advantage of

> isolating yourself in this way is that it fits the scientific method.

> But no matter how many rats run through the maze, it's futile to

> pretend that we are outside the experiment. The truth is completely

> different:

>

> --We are imbedded in the universe. What we observe is ourselves

> reflected back at us.

> --Every sight, sound, texture, taste, and smell is the product of an

> observer. As the observer changes, so do all these qualities.

> --We perceive imagination, beauty, creativity, etc. in ourselves and

> thus we see the same in Nature. Every attribute of the human mind is

> imbedded in the universe.

>

> Why can you remember your birthday and the face of someone you love?

> Because DNA can remember how to produce generations of human beings.

> Why does DNA remember? There's the mystery. We can link memory as a

> human attribute to chemical memory. But when we ask where chemicals

> learned to remember, science is baffled. Dissecting DNA is one thing.

> Asking the " why " of DNA is another.

>

> Dawkins feels that why is a foolish, probably meaningless question,

> totally devoid of scientific interest. So be it. But why is the

> single most important question humans ask, particularly when it comes

> to ourselves. Ultimately we want to know who we are and our purpose

> for being here. Dawkins doesn't seem to have any doubt about who he

> is: he's the evolutionary byproduct of chemical forces, physical

> laws, random events, natural selection, competition, adaptation, and

> survival. So is an amoeba. Sadly, this reductionist picture of human

> life is devoid of meaning. It's merely a map of how a physical

> machine called the body came to be built. Such knowledge is like

> knowing everything about a computer except how to plug it in.

>

> What if memory is an attribute of Nature itself? All around us we see

> memory at work. The insulin that functions in primitive organisms

> retains the same function in higher mammals. The chemical reaction

> that propels a butterfly's wings to beat is duplicated to make human

> heart cells beat. Once we take seriously the notion that we are

> inside the bake shop, not standing outside with our noses pressed up

> against the glass, it becomes obvious that memory isn't a separate,

> isolated attribute.

>

> Nature is constantly remembering. Nature is constantly creating,

> exercising imagination, discovering quantum leaps. When hydrogen and

> oxygen combined, the result wasn't another inert gas. It was water,

> and water represents a huge imaginative leap on the part of the

> universe. The reason one can say this with confidence is simple: if

> the universe didn't have imagination, neither would we. That's what

> it means to be imbedded in the field. Nothing we know about ourselves

> can be separated from what Nature displays.

>

> Which finally, at long last, breathes new life into God. Dawkins is

> absolutely right to declare a requiem service over the God of

> organized religion and to warn us about the dangers of superstition,

> dogma, and pseudo-science. (Too bad he isn't wise enough to heed the

> words of a right-wing fundamentalist on CNN: " As long as you hate us,

> we're not going away. " ) But what Dawkins tragically misses holds far

> more optimism for the future than he ever could: the universe is

> renewing itself through us. Science is God explaining God to God

> using a human nervous system. Or as one wit put it, God created

> scientists to prove that he doesn't exist--and failed.

>

> There is nothing outside the field. It displays omnipresence and

> omnipotence, being all-pervasive and containing all matter and

> energy. Soon science will come to terms with the presence of

> consciousness in the field (advanced systems theory as well as

> information theory is hard at work already) and we will add

> omniscience to the list. This new God will be the source of mind. Its

> ability to orchestrate evolution will make sense because it must.

> Humans cannot have any knowledge except knowledge of ourselves. Every

> facet of the cosmos is a mirror. The fact that the chemical reaction

> driving a butterfly's wings also keeps you and me alive is no

> accident--it's part of a design.

>

> Contrary to what Dawkins thinks, this design isn't a blueprint or a

> diagram set down by a fictitious God. It's a vital, ever-evolving,

> imaginative, dramatic process. Strangely enough, so is human

> existence. The similarity isn't a coincidence--there is nothing we

> call human that isn't, quite literally, transcendent. Beyond the

> physical world lies the womb of creation, and whether we call it God

> is irrelevant. We came from a source, we are forever in contact with

> our source, and we are constantly returning to our source. This is

> the real mystery of existence that Dawkins trivializes with his over-

> heated skepticism. Far more profound are the words of T.S. Eliot:

>

> And what you thought you came for

> Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

> From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled.

>

> In the final post on this topic, I wll address some of the responses

> I have received.

>

> P.S.

> Some responders have problems with a sentence from this post: " When

> hydrogen and oxygen combined, the result wasn't another inert gas. "

> I meant, of course, another inert gas like radon or neon. If I

> thought that oxygen and hydrogen were inert gases, I wouldn't have

> stated that they combine, since by definition inert gases can't

> combine. They have no free electron(s) in their outer orbits with

> which to combine.

>

> This discussion will be more productive if we all grant each other

> the respect we would like to receive.

>

> Love, Deepak

>

 

 

Dear Jagbir and all,

 

In this very important debate with Richard Dawkins, Deepak enlightens the issue

of God that both science and religion (or religion and science, if you like) are

grappling with in their own way. He does so with an intelligence combined with

wisdom that leaves the (test-tube) scientific method and (blind-faith) religious

method---way behind. Deepak comes to the reality that we are born in the womb

(of the Mother) of creation. " ...this design isn't a blueprint or a diagram set

down by a fictitious God. It's a vital, ever-evolving, imaginative, dramatic

process. Strangely enough, so is human existence. The similarity isn't a

coincidence--there is nothing we call human that isn't, quite literally,

transcendent. Beyond the physical world lies the womb of creation... " :

 

" This last question is the most pressing one, for both believers and

non-believers. To claim that the swirling, chaotic quantum soup that erupted

from the Big Bang evolved into human life by random chance is only believable

because science has no urgent need to find a credible alternative. As long as a

scientist stands outside nature with his nose pressed against the glass like a

child peering through a bakery shop window (to borrow an image from the noted

physicist John Wheeler) we get a false picture of the cosmos. The only advantage

of isolating yourself in this way is that it fits the scientific method. But no

matter how many rats run through the maze, it's futile to pretend that we are

outside the experiment. The truth is completely different:

 

--We are imbedded in the universe. What we observe is ourselves reflected back

at us.

--Every sight, sound, texture, taste, and smell is the product of an observer.

As the observer changes, so do all these qualities.

--We perceive imagination, beauty, creativity, etc. in ourselves and thus we see

the same in Nature. Every attribute of the human mind is imbedded in the

universe.

 

Why can you remember your birthday and the face of someone you love? Because DNA

can remember how to produce generations of human beings. Why does DNA remember?

There's the mystery. We can link memory as a human attribute to chemical memory.

But when we ask where chemicals learned to remember, science is baffled.

Dissecting DNA is one thing. Asking the " why " of DNA is another.

 

Dawkins feels that why is a foolish, probably meaningless question, totally

devoid of scientific interest. So be it. But why is the single most important

question humans ask, particularly when it comes to ourselves. Ultimately we want

to know who we are and our purpose for being here. Dawkins doesn't seem to have

any doubt about who he is: he's the evolutionary byproduct of chemical forces,

physical laws, random events, natural selection, competition, adaptation, and

survival. So is an amoeba. Sadly, this reductionist picture of human life is

devoid of meaning. It's merely a map of how a physical machine called the body

came to be built. Such knowledge is like knowing everything about a computer

except how to plug it in.

 

What if memory is an attribute of Nature itself? All around us we see memory at

work. The insulin that functions in primitive organisms retains the same

function in higher mammals. The chemical reaction that propels a butterfly's

wings to beat is duplicated to make human heart cells beat. Once we take

seriously the notion that we are inside the bake shop, not standing outside with

our noses pressed up against the glass, it becomes obvious that memory isn't a

separate, isolated attribute.

 

Nature is constantly remembering. Nature is constantly creating, exercising

imagination, discovering quantum leaps. When hydrogen and oxygen combined, the

result wasn't another inert gas. It was water, and water represents a huge

imaginative leap on the part of the universe. The reason one can say this with

confidence is simple: if the universe didn't have imagination, neither would we.

That's what it means to be imbedded in the field. Nothing we know about

ourselves can be separated from what Nature displays.

 

Which finally, at long last, breathes new life into God. Dawkins is absolutely

right to declare a requiem service over the God of organized religion and to

warn us about the dangers of superstition, dogma, and pseudo-science. (Too bad

he isn't wise enough to heed the words of a right-wing fundamentalist on CNN:

" As long as you hate us, we're not going away. " ) But what Dawkins tragically

misses holds far more optimism for the future than he ever could: the universe

is renewing itself through us. Science is God explaining God to God using a

human nervous system. Or as one wit put it, God created scientists to prove that

he doesn't exist--and failed.

 

There is nothing outside the field. It displays omnipresence and omnipotence,

being all-pervasive and containing all matter and energy. Soon science will come

to terms with the presence of consciousness in the field (advanced systems

theory as well as information theory is hard at work already) and we will add

omniscience to the list. This new God will be the source of mind. Its ability to

orchestrate evolution will make sense because it must. Humans cannot have any

knowledge except knowledge of ourselves. Every facet of the cosmos is a mirror.

The fact that the chemical reaction driving a butterfly's wings also keeps you

and me alive is no accident--it's part of a design.

 

Contrary to what Dawkins thinks, this design isn't a blueprint or a diagram set

down by a fictitious God. It's a vital, ever-evolving, imaginative, dramatic

process. Strangely enough, so is human existence. The similarity isn't a

coincidence--there is nothing we call human that isn't, quite literally,

transcendent. Beyond the physical world lies the womb of creation, and whether

we call it God is irrelevant. We came from a source, we are forever in contact

with our source, and we are constantly returning to our source. This is the real

mystery of existence that Dawkins trivializes with his over-heated skepticism.

Far more profound are the words of T.S. Eliot:

 

And what you thought you came for

Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled.

 

 

regards to all,

 

violet