Earthlings, Chiaroscuros and Sfumatos, United to Save the Saviors
New age therapies cause 'retreat from reason'
Known as "Darwin's rottweiler", Prof Richard Dawkins caused a furore with a stinging attack on religion. Now the evolutionary biologist has turned his wrath on "new age" alternative therapies, describing them as based on "irrational superstition".
Prof Dawkins says that alternative remedies constitute little more than a "money-spinning, multi-million pound industry that impoverishes our culture and throws up new age gurus who exhort us to run away from reality".
The 66-year-old scientist has investigated a range of gurus and therapists, including faith healers, psychic mediums, angel therapists, "aura photographers", astrologers, Tarot card readers and water diviners, and concluded that Britain is gripped by "an epidemic of superstitious thinking".
Britons spend more than £1.6 billion a year on alternative remedies which Prof Dawkins describes as "therapeutic stabs in the dark". Health has become a battleground between reason and superstition, he says.
"There are two ways of looking at the world - through faith and superstition, or through the rigours of logic, observation and evidence, through reason. Yet today reason has a battle on its hands.
Reason and a respect for evidence are the source of our progress, our safeguard against fundamentalists and those who profit from obscuring the truth. We live in dangerous times when superstition is gaining ground and rational science is under attack."
He laments the fact that half the population claims to believe in paranormal phenomena and more than eight million have consulted psychic mediums, while the number of students sitting physics A-level has fallen 50 per cent and chemistry by more than a third in the past 25 years.
Prof Dawkins launches his attack in The Enemies of Reason, to be shown on Channel 4 this month. The professor, the author of many books from The Selfish Gene (1976) to the international best-seller The God Delusion (2006), holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the public understanding of science at Oxford.
In the two-part television series he challenges practitioners. He asks an "angel therapist" how many angels he (Dawkins) has. The therapist asks him: "Have you asked any angels to come close to you?" Prof Dawkins says he hasn't. "Well you haven't got any then," says the therapist.
He also meets a therapist who says she can teach him how to use his "psychic energy", a kinesiologist who "clears energy blockages in the meridian system" and a "psychic sister" who talks about Mr Dawkins senior as though he were dead, until Prof Dawkins points out that his father is very much alive.
Satish Kumar, a spiritualist and the editor of the ecological magazine Resurgence, whose fans include the Prince of Wales and the Dalai Lama, tells Prof Dawkins: "I represent the entire history of evolution, I was present in the beginning, the first big bang, and I'll be here for billions of years to come."
Prof Dawkins visits Elisis Livingstone, a £140-a-day faith healer who treats patients - including some with terminal cancer - with meditation, spiritual healing and recorded chants at her Shambala Retreat in Glastonbury, Somerset.
He appears bemused as she intones: "Smile your very best smile, swallow the smile with some saliva into the heart and let the heart smile back at you… and the golden glow that comes from the heart, comes from a golden flower and use the gold light from the centre of the flower like a sunbeam and beam it on to those petals and wake them up…"
But yesterday, Miss Livingstone hit back. "I have a 100 per cent success record with people at some level," she told The Sunday Telegraph. "Richard seemed to enjoy it while he was here. He was smiling and he didn't want it to stop.
"I deal with people including the bereaved and the abused, and I deal with their hearts. A rational mind cannot understand the heart."
Another guru whose work was challenged was Deepak Chopra, described by Prof Dawkins as a "one-man alternative health industry", who is paid up to $75,000 (£37,000) per lecture and claims Michael Jackson and Madonna as followers.
The professor reserves some of his most scathing criticism for homeopathy, used by 500 million people worldwide, and which, in the UK, benefits from taxpayers' money even though it requires no qualifications. The refurbishment of the Royal London Homeopathic hospital was part-funded with £10 million of NHS money.
Peter Fisher, the hospital's clinical director and a rheumatologist, tells him: "I don't claim that it's much more than a hypothesis. What I do say is that I have considerable evidence that homeopathy does work."
However, the medical establishment remains deeply sceptical about its success. A House of Lords committee found little evidence in 2001 that alternative health remedies work and raised doubts about a range of treatments, saying much of the evidence on homeopathy was anecdotal.
By David Harrison
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by DeusEx on -
Oooh, this is getting exciting! Thanks so much for continuing this discussion, it's quite enjoyable :)
I'm very much interested in the beliefs you mentioned: 2012 Ascension and Awakening. I'd love you to post links and information that you trust so I can research it myself. So much of the information out there is a bit vague and sometimes conflicting.
I'm sure if there are aliens, they would follow logic, reasoning, and the scientific method. In fact certain mathematicians and scientists have used those methods to show that there is indeed a 5th dimension. I'm sure someone smart like LS will hop in here as he's good with math haha.
I need to look into the left brain and right brain example you have given. From my understanding, I thought that model was outdated. I understand the concept you are trying to infer, but I really do see creativity and other traits one could label as left brained in science. I don't see scientists as staying within the lines as they must use their creative minds to form hypothesis, but become more analytical when designing the experiments and following the correct procedures. In the end it works out pretty well I think :)
Don't worry, I don't see you as being in a box haha. I just think it is a danger in many of the New Age philosophies and something that people that as easily influenced may succumb to. As you know with all religions, one must always balance the line between faith and blind devotion.
Looking forward to your reply :)
QLoveNLight said:DeusEx:
Thank you for your reply to my post - I always enjoy reading other people's views when they are intellectually based and not a simple flame. Anywho, allow me to reply to your reply ; ) Believing (in the context I was using it) = 2012, Ascension, Awakening, etc. I hope that is narrow enough.
As for not thinking logic, reasoning, and scientific methods is 3rd dimensional - well, you're right - they are also 2nd and 1st dimensional so I stand corrected. ; )
Although me to explain my inside the box theories. First off, yes, science has made leaps and bounds because of a select few who have managed to think outside the box - like Einstein for example. However, without those select few, I don't imagine science would have made such leaps and bounds because scientific processes are too inside the box but then again, they have to be in order to be logical and ultimately, scientifically valid. After all, if you don't follow scientific methods in research, experiments, and study then you may run the risk of being labeled a pseudo-scientist. When I say "inside the box," I am simply describing someone who is typically left-brained in his or her thought processes as opposed to someone who is more right-brained in his/her processes. There is nothing wrong with a logically thinking person, of course, but these individuals have a tendancy to supress their brain's creative processes which, to me, would be an "inside the box" kind of thinker. So, I hope that helps clear up what I mean by "inside the box."
As for me, I am both logical and creative. I follow logic in certain things that I do whereas with other things, I follow a more creative approach. In my opinion, this makes me a more outside the box kind of thinker or, if you prefer, a more center brain thinker.
So overall, I should perhaps clarify that not all science is "inside the box" as this would not allow for the advances that science has undergone over the many centuries it has existed. But, it is in my opinion that many scientists are incapable of being "outside the box" simply because they have supressed their left brains and are only able to stay "within the lines" - if you don't mind the coloring analogy.
Finally, I agree with your comment about so New Age thinkers put themselves inside a box, but only to a certain extent. I would have to say that only SOME of the New Age thinkers out there put themselve inside a box. And for those individuals, I would have to say that they are the crazy religeous fanatics, whether it's New Age or not, which is really incidental. And yes, separation of individuals from the collective would most definitely be bad for us as an evolving species - that's not only logical but New Age at the same time if you have had a chance to research both viewpoints on the matter. As for shunning reasoning - I do not and would not so I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. But reasoning wouldn't, of course, be the sole reason why the species has gotten to where it is today. Reasoning alone couldn't do such a thing because ego would never allow it.
DeusEx said:Hi Quinn,
First of all, thank you for your well thought out response. First I would ask you define what you mean by believing so I can narrow down my thoughts a bit more. I do not think using logic, reasoning, and scientific methods is "third dimensional" thinking or allowing oneself to be placed into a box. Do you consider scientists at the cutting edge to be placed in a box?
Scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, etc... all understand the need to speculate and theorize. We are all the same in that regard are we not? However, they chose to remain focused on logic, reasoning, and scientific methods whereas New Age thinkers stay within the realm of speculation.
I understand the need for homeopathy, etc and there are multitudes of studies that show evidence that some work. One such example is acupuncture. There are numerous universities that are willing to put these alternative medicines to the test. Why not have validation?
My original comment to this post was actually showing you how New Age thinkers are actually placing themselves in a box. You may want to believe otherwise but the example I provided should be enough. Separation of the individual from the community or society is quite a danger to the existence of homo sapiens.
Reasoning is not a bad thing. Why shun it when it has brought the species to where it has been today?
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Permalink Reply by iDom on -
Quinn, you're welcome :D And to end it on "more of that of which there's not enough in this world", here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM1bC3OI_Ls
Enjoy :D
QLoveNLight said:iDom:
Ahhhh, I rather enjoyed your reply. Your playful stabs at the various points in my reply were rather amusing and I always enjoy a good laugh. So, thank you for that.
Now if I may retort ; P I wish I did have a plausible and probable explanation for all the bigger questions in the universe that science has clearly failed to answer. A little more thinking outside the box for science may actually help them obtain some of those highly sought after answers. And who knows, CERN may actually help them get closer. In the meantime, we'll just have to speculate and theorize - hey, it works for science so why not New Age?
As for your math and statistics - I don't know how simple that is especially when you're talking about lives lost. There's nothing simple about that now is there? Unless of course, you're ruled by ego and since your name isn't Brad Johnson (I hope), I'll consider that a moot point. And yes, the millions of dollars spent on research in the field of medicine has saved plenty of lives and in the same accord, it has killed millions too through failed technologies that, to this day, tend to cause more damage then are helpful (such as radition/chemotherapy) or the many pharmaceuticals that have caused more damage and death than the over-inflated research monies wasted on studies and production of the pharmaceuticals in the first place. Or perhaps we can talk about the millions of dollars the United States spent on the research and development of the atom bomb, which of course only has one purpose, to kill millions of human beings. And if that wasn't enough, we spent even more money to deploy two of these atom bombs and killed hundreds of thousands of human beings once all the dust had finally settled. But hey, it was a great accomplishment for science after all....
At any rate, since my original thoughts on "the audacity to say that billions of dollars (British Pounds) are wasted on homeopathic treatments, pseudo....", I reallly don't see much of a debate regarding how many lives were lost due to the madness of religeon and beliefs - Dawkins wasn't referring to money being wasted on that nor was I in my original thought. I'm sorry if there was confusion there....
Finally, the box of course was meant figuratively as I'm sure you realized - but none-the-less, thank you for the witty sarcasm, God knows there's not enough of that in this world :P
L&L,
~Q
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