How to effectively critique New Age ideas?

[Confused Ape]

As for the all "big questions" those questions are open, you can just appreciate the mystery of the unknown. If I end up being reincarnated or floating about in some other worldly plane of quantum mechanical reality I don't think it really affects my life or anything I do anyway. It's not something to base your life on.

I agree. The way I see it, the real truth about death is unknown because nobody on either side of the argument about it has come back from being dead past the point of no return.

Many people have a need for some kind of reassurance, though. This is why they turn to physicists who see quantum physics as a way to answer questions about survival after death etc. The physicists concerned believe this kind of thing themselves - scientists are as human as the rest of us so they don't all share the same world view.

[Angrboda]

Part of this is a testament to the effectiveness of transparency in science. Regardless of the field, from cosmology to physics to neuroscience, there are gaps in our understanding and explanations of phenomena. And anywhere you find gaps you'll find people with dogmatically influenced agendas attempting to use those gaps and their "science" as a wedge to break open the gap to make further room for their agenda. The fact is, there are still some real, seeming fundamental questions, and just like any other landscape, people will use the terrain to their advantage, whether their aim is to increase knowledge, or something else. And it only compounds things that, from the side of philosophy, we have a very limited understanding of the nature of the scientific method and scientific practices as a whole; so there's no clear way to tell from surface features who is contributing to closing the gap, and who is just aiming to take advantage of the hole.


.

[Zone]

I agree. The way I see it, the real truth about death is unknown because nobody on either side of the argument about it has come back from being dead past the point of no return.

There seem to be some kind of a spectacular show involving tunnels and beings of light just before people get to that point but it seems very similar to a DMT trip.

[Confused Ape]

There seem to be some kind of a spectacular show involving tunnels and beings of light just before people get to that point but it seems very similar to a DMT trip.

Andrew Newberg Questions And Answers.

Is God only in our brain?
Our research indicates that our only way of comprehending God, asking questions about God, and experiencing God is through the brain. But whether or not God exists "out there" is something that neuroscience cannot answer. For example, if we take a brain image of a person when she is looking at a picture, we will see various parts of the brain being activated, such as the visual cortex. But the brain image cannot tell us whether or not there actually is a picture “out there” or whether the person is creating the picture in her own mind. To a certain degree, we all create our own sense of reality. Getting at what is really real is the tricky part.

This could easily apply to NDEs. Nobody knows what, if anything, happens when people are dead past the point of no return because nobody has come back to tell us what it's like to be dead past the point of no return.

Amit Goswami, a physicist, came up with an idea about how quantum physics allows for survival after death - he won't know if he's right, though, unless he finds himself still existing once he's dead past the point of no return.

[Zone]

It's best to avoid using quantum physics as some kind of mystical spiritual life after death that's Depak Chopra territory. And there's no point looking to science for salvation from science. Non-survival after death won't particularly inconvience anyone seeing as that would mean you wouldn't be there to experience what is not happening to you. But you're right in that no-one on Earth has come back to tell anyone anything about it. The spirits mediums channel and all that business don't seem to have anything interesting at all to say on this subject or anything else you would think they would.

[Confused Ape]

It's best to avoid using quantum physics as some kind of mystical spiritual life after death that's Depak Chopra territory.

Quantum Physics of Quantum Healing

Theoretical physicist Amit Goswami, Ph.D., joins Deepak Chopra, M.D., to ponder these questions from an unlikely perspective as they merge the concepts of quantum physics with ancient Ayurvedic traditions and modern western medicine..

They're in the same territory.

[Zone]

Best focus on the actual hard control trial based evidence they present, or the lack of it. You can speculate about all kinds of things as soon as anyone actually makes any kind of claim about anything it's all about the evidence.

[Confused Ape]

Best focus on the actual hard control trial based evidence they present, or the lack of it. You can speculate about all kinds of things as soon as anyone actually makes any kind of claim about anything it's all about the evidence.

Amit Goswami isn't the first physicist to go off in a mystical direction. I've added extra information in brackets to save people from having to click on the links for people.

Quantum Mysticism

David Bohm (a theoretical physicist) was deeply influenced by Jiddu Krishnamurti, (speaker and writer on philosophical and spiritual subjects) crediting him as a source for understanding the worldview he proposed in his interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that he put forth in Wholeness and the Implicate Order

The Harvard historian Juan Miguel Marin noted also the "“lucid mysticism,” a synthesis between rationality and religion" favored by Wolfgang Pauli (a theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner) that Pauli "speculated that quantum theory could unify the psychological/scientific and philosophical/mystical approaches to consciousness".

From the wiki article about Pauli.

Pauli had a severe breakdown. He consulted psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung who, like Pauli, lived near Zurich. Jung immediately began interpreting Pauli's deeply archetypal dreams,[4] and Pauli became one of the depth psychologist’s best students. He soon began to criticize the epistemology of Jung’s theory scientifically, and this contributed to a certain clarification of the latter’s thoughts, especially about the concept of synchronicity. A great many of these discussions are documented in the Pauli/Jung letters, today published as Atom and Archetype. Jung's elaborate analysis of more than 400 of Pauli's dreams is documented in Psychology and Alchemy.

Then there's Erwin Schrödinger and Eugene Wigner being into the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism.

[Zone]

They're a bit like the modern equivalent of Isaac Newton who was an alchemist. But if they have any substantial scientific evidence of their mystical claims then the sciencific community and even Richard Dawkins would be interested in that. Otherwise it's the equivalent of a religious or magical belief using modern day or scientific sounding terminology.

[Confused Ape]

They're a bit like the modern equivalent of Isaac Newton who was an alchemist. But if they have any substantial scientific evidence of their mystical claims then the sciencific community and even Richard Dawkins would be interested in that. Otherwise it's the equivalent of a religious or magical belief using modern day or scientific sounding terminology.

Meanwhile, New Agers will listen to the scientists who tell them what they want to hear. I don't know enough about quantum physics to argue about it so the only thing I could do is point New Agers in the direction of articles by skeptics - it's then up to them to make their own minds up.

Have just found another physicist who is into unorthodox research - Brian David Josephson

Brian David Josephson, FRS[1] (born 4 January 1940) is a Welsh physicist. He became a Nobel Prize laureate in 1973[2] for the prediction of the eponymous Josephson effect.[3]

Josephson is one of the more well-known scientists who say that parapsychological phenomena may be real, and is also interested in the possibility that Eastern mysticism may have relevance to scientific understanding.[12] He has said that one of his guiding principles has been nullius in verba (take nobody's word, the motto of the Royal Society), saying that "if scientists as a whole denounce an idea, this should not necessarily be taken as proof that the said idea is absurd; rather, one should examine carefully the alleged grounds for such opinions and judge how well these stand up to detailed scrutiny."[5][12]

I find it interesting how many scientists don't share Richard Dawkins' world view.