I wonder if Chopra could find a single sentence in MAGIC OF REALITY that is actually not true. The primary complaint is that Dawkins doesn't pay homage to spirituality. Buy why should he? This is a book about science.
I suppose Chopra equates "deep mystery" to God. But does he expect scientists who are in the business of finding material explanations to start looking for supernatural explanations? How do you do research for that?Chopra wrote:Dawkins, like other staunch materialists, believes that all subjective experience, being a product of the brain, must come down to a physical process, leaving no possibility that the physical processes of the brain maybe correlates to something happening in the mind. How microvolts of electricity and neurochemicals flying across synapses produce the entire world is a deep mystery, often referred to as the hard problem in consciousness research. This Dawkins doesn't even consider.
Here's a question. In our entire history, has any scientific discovery ever been attributed to supernatural explanations?
The answer is no. And, yet, Deeprok Chopra is having an apoplectic fit that Dawkins assumes material explanations in a field that naturally does and must assume naturalistic explanations.
It must be disheartening for woo peddlers to accept that they cannot contribute to the body of knowledge. But as we have discussed here on BT, that's not what religion is for. You cannot expect science to provide spiritual meaning just as you cannot expect religion to provide real world knowledge.
What I can't get over is Chopra's general snarky tone. It really is over the top. He makes several grand indictments like "This book tries to kill the legacy of faith in human culture." And "Dawkins is a one-man society for the suppression of curiosity." Good Lord, really?