Quantum Crap
Well, just when you thought real SCIENCE had sent the theists back to their cloisters to further fret over the welfare of GOD, out comes a revival of pseudoscience movies like bad eggs from a nervous goose -- all with the word 'Quantum' in their titles, subtitles or opening credits.
No doubt this recent raft of cinematic religious proselytizing probably gained a lot of momentum from the film titled "What the Bleep Do We Know?" and it's whimsical interpretation of quantum phenomena.
In that film, Judy Z. Knight 'channels' the personality and teachings of a 35,000 year old warrior named Ramtha, who supposedly is an alien being with mystical connections. Of course, Knight now operates the Ramtha School of Enlightenment which you can attend for a goodly fee and maybe get to listen to Ramtha himself/herself.
Ramtha. Huh.
Why do these aliens have such craftily manicured names like Ramtha, Xenu (scientology's GOD-like figure) or Zool (from Ghostbusters)? Why can't they sometimes have names that don't sound so human-contrived -- so kitschy -- like Nurgut or Doofug or Erkle? I mean, c'mon.
I watched two of these ever more popular quantum mythology releases yesterday. One titled 'Voice' and another titled 'The Quantum Activist' -- both produced by essentially the same outfit. Here's my sweet review of one of these, um... spiritual 'info-movies'. I might review the other one next week if I have the time.
The Quantum Activist 2009, Intention Media, Bluedot Productions, featuring Dr. Amit Goswami. Now increasingly popular as a downloadable film on the internet.
The movie features a character called Amit Goswami, PhD, and centers around his spiritually-derived science beliefs and postulations, coined 'Monistic Idealism'. A Hindustani-American with a penchant for wearing any of a number of 60-ish Bing Crosby golfer's hats, Goswami enjoys some repute, having spent his academic career as a physics professor in Oregon and then retiring to futz about on the lecture circuit.
Wikipedia:
"Amit Goswami is a theoretical nuclear physicist and member of The University of Oregon Institute for Theoretical Physics since 1968, teaching physics for 32 years. After a period of distress and frustration in his private and professional life starting at the age 38, his research interests shifted to quantum cosmology, quantum measurement theory, and applications of quantum mechanics to the mind-body problem."
OK Respect!
But...
"He became best known as one of the interviewed scientists featured in the 2004 film What the Bleep Do We Know!?. Goswami is also featured in the recent documentary about the Dalai Lama entitled Dalai Lama Renaissance, and stars in the newly released documentary "The Quantum Activist.
"In the late 1980s Goswami developed an idealist interpretation of quantum mechanics, inspired in part by philosophical ideas drawn from Advaita Vedanta and theosophy. Calling his theory "monistic idealism", he claims it is not only "the basis of all religions worldwide" but also the correct philosophy for modern science."
He retired as a physics professor and now teaches fairly regularly at the Ernest Holmes Institute, the University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles; Pacifica, California, which rightfully should be called a 'School of Theosophy' -- or maybe just a 'Church'.
Google search for Ernest Holmes:
"Religious Science, also known as Science of Mind, was founded in 1927 by Ernest Holmes (1887–1960) and is a spiritual, philosophical and metaphysical religious movement within the New Thought movement."
Sigh. And here I was thinking that all those New Age folks packed up, moved to Sedona and opened 'Crystal' shops.
The film blathers on, and Goswami points out: "How can we find scientific evidence for GOD? All we have to do is determine how GOD relates to consciousness. That's all we have to know."
Aw shucks Dr.Goswami. Do we have to? In the first few seconds of the movie, we are clear on where Goswami stands, and it's all about GOD.
He continues: "There is very clear scientific evidence for the existence of GOD."
The film then cuts to scenes of various religious icons -- the standard fair-haired white-people type renderings of The Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ...
" So my question is, what are you doing about it?"
We are then presented with scenes of various Hindu folks meditating, peaceful seashores, grand sunrises -- a young Western woman in meditative pose ponders the ultimate near a babbling brook...
Aw crap! Really? Because of quantum mechanics proven super-positioning, collapsing wave functions -- it's 'spooky action at a distance' -- this is evidence of GOD? How about things just got too complicated for you, so you jumped off the science bus at the corner of Faith-in-GOD Boulevard and Jesus Way and decided to make a lot of money on the lucrative lecture circuit for the scientifically perplexed?
From Goswami's website:
"Dr. Amit Goswami ‘s life work has been to successfully integrate science and spirituality..."
"To make social changes is the job of the activist. We need activism that uses the power of quantum physics. Quantum physics gives us ideas that are transformative, that can lead us and our social institutions from separateness back to unity."
Well, quantum physics does indeed give us ideas that certainly *could be* transformative socially, but it could do so more rapidly and more successfully if we teach our students proper science rather than spiritually-based hocus pocus.
"Heaven will be manifested on Earth. Heaven will be manifested on Earth.", he repeats in a scene toward the end of The Quantum Activist, while grinning beneath one of his numerous Crosby hats.
However, whatever Goswami says and however many times he repeats it in such lofty scientific terms, he seems completely oblivious to any 'new developments' in Quantum theory -- even though Richard Feynman had already created his physics classroom standard reference, 'Feynman Diagrams', while Goswami was still dribbling out his first essays on 'quantum spirituality'.
The reasonable-minded wish he had paid more attention to his 'science' than his 'feelings', but there it is, and I have a strong suspicion that he has largely ignored such work as Feyman's, Bell's, Schrödinger's, Wheeler's, Hoyle's, Dyson's, Rees's -- even Casimir's -- in favor of his "new science" of what he calls "Monastic Idealism" (which in fact dates back a few millennia to the Upanishads and which expectedly serves him well financially).
Ultimately -- and stunningly -- Goswami stretches what we have thus proven of quantum theory into the spiritual realms and presents it here as "...evidence for GOD".
It's simply head-poundingly frustrating to watch such religiously biased goo-filled wackery -- especially from those who *claim* to be *real* scientists -- intentionally knocking real science and real scientists on the head by craftily inserting a GOD factor into quantum mechanics via self-savvied mystical equations --using the convenience of GOD as the ultimate explanation -- as if GOD were some sort of proven theoretical Einsteinian cosmological constant, the Higgs Boson, or Dark Energy.
It thus seems that the unsolved aspects of quantum mechanics -- the most substantially proven theory in history, resulting in products constituting nearly one third of the world's economy -- have opened up a Pandora's Box of theosophical quackery that is quite happily unlimited in it's ejaculation of baseless, pop-idealism and pseudo-scientific conjecture.
As Goswami posits in the beginning of the film: "There is very clear scientific evidence for the existence of GOD. So my question is, what are you doing about it?"
What are we (scientists, logical thinking, normally skeptical, compassionate humans) doing about it?
We're doing the best we can -- racing against the clock to save the sick, diseased and starving in this world (you know -- the ones we really need to care about in the world we really live in) -- to elevate ourselves beyond vapid, self-centered, spiritual ideologies and the arcane penchant for using GOD as an explanation for anything we don't yet understand.
Instead of poncing about making heaps of moolah in ill-titled theosophical feel-good churches that shiftily call themselves 'Scientific Institutes', Goswami, his 'Quantum Activists' and his brethren in GOD could get back on the science bus (there's a science bus station right on the corner of Honest Humanity Street and Compassion Circle -- easy to find) and lend a hand. I am sure GOD couldn't care less one way or the other.
Seriously -- put on some man-pants and go digging into that buried, hard-to-scratch-out evidence until you bring it to the light of reason, rather than jump off the bus at Faith-in-GOD.
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