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.


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[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]

[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]

[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]

[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]