how new agers escape the human condition

There's nothing quite like creationism mixed with a heavy dose of woo in which anything you dream of can come true because quantum.





As if trying to prove my earlier post about the alarming preponderance of pseudoscience on the left, a tidy gem of nonsensical drivel every bit as bad as you’d hear from a devoted creationist managed to land on my radar. It’s one of those breathtakingly inane pieces by a fervent, starry eyed disciple of quantum and biocentric woo that tends to inspire nothing less than bouts of misanthropy and really makes you think that a species capable of not only producing, but promoting this wretched garbage doesn’t deserve to explore space or extend its lifespan.

Maybe I’m too harsh on the writer since she’s a fashion commentator but why in name of Cthulhu’s sweaty old jock strap does any editor let a fashionista write a treatise about evolutionary biology and quantum physics? Worse yet, to what degree does said fashionista have to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect to be blissfully unaware that she’s further out of her area of competence than a giant squid on a space station is out of his natural habitat? Ok, all right, I’ll try to same something nice about her post. It’s not William H. Depperman level insane. Really, that is the best I can do for you in the nice department before tearing into what passes for substance in this mess.

Now, remember that New Age human origins stories and creationist tales are extremely similar, they just use different buzzwords and come to a different conclusion at the end. Whereas religious fundamentalists declare that after being created humans must worship their one true deity not to get tortured in the afterlife, New Agers twist their spirituality into a sort of theistic secularism in which any deity you worship is just fine and dandy, as long as you recognize that you should worship someone or something because it created you. Because both systems want to convince you that you’re created rather than evolved, and are just lucky to even be here, they’ll use very similar rhetorical tactics of decry evolution in its scientific sense as an utter impossibility and do it by horrifically mangling its definition, the evidence for it, and what it entails, all too often proclaiming that visionary scientists are rebelling against the very notion of neo-Darwinian evolutionary biology we know today like so…

An interesting experiment and indeed correct in that we are still evolving, however to attribute it to the Victorian, matter-based, Darwinian model of evolution is backward-thinking and flawed given the recent leaps and bounds in metaphysical sciences and physical historical evidence [against] linear evolution. The ideology [that] we randomly mutated from ocean slime to knuckle-dragging neanderthal long-long lost cousins to our current incarnation is one that [has] been dogmatically accepted into mainstream evolutionary hegemony without challenge until recent years.

Holy shoggoth on a fish stick, where do we start? Probably the first thing to do would be to point out that what was laid out before us was the Pokemon model of evolution rather than an accurate description of how living things change and survive, and that this imbecility is absolutely no different from Ken Ham’s big declarations of how science is overthrowing evolutionary theory or parodies intended to ridicule evolutionary biology by those who lack any understanding of it, often willfully. Considering that we see all living things, including us, evolving and going through natural selection regardless of what self-proclaimed experts will tell you, there should be no doubt about the idea that life on our planet is in constant flux.

But apparently, there’s all sorts of unnamed, uncited evidence that evolution is all wrong and a good chunk of this evidence apparently comes in the form of metaphysical treatises. Astute readers may recognize that metaphysics is just a buzzword-larded branch of theology, also known as speculations about the supernatural, also known as musings of a creative bunch really not interested in any tangible scientific research or experimentation. If utter ignorance with a nod to those who spend most of their time speculating about the sound on the color blue are your best challenges to the theory of evolution as it stands, no wonder it continues to be the mainstream idea.

The latest science suggests we are intelligently designed not by some sentient humanistic being from on high, [by] a higher, energetic, source intelligence. Einstein’s Unified Field theory equation was completed in 2007. The breakthrough proves everything: matter (which derives from energy, which is what we’re made from) all natural laws and processes link to one underlying, unifying consciousness — aka, God, Source, Allah, Yaweh — pick your favourite.

Paging Charlene Werner to the know-nothing ward, paging Dr. Werner. Why do New Age crackpots love to do their best impressions of Marquis de Sade’s more aggressive experiments with the hired help on the laws of mass-energy equivalence? How do they graduate form middle school not knowing what the term energy even means to then go on and abuse it to justify their notions of mystical vibrations?

Matter is not some sort of a lower vibration of energy, it’s very much its own thing. But since it can be generated by energy, it can be turned back into it with the speed of light in a vacuum square representing the exchange rate of the transaction. That is all that mass-energy equivalence says about our bodies’ composition. How this points to some sort of big, irrefutable volume of proof that a singular entity spawned the cosmos, only our overzealous fashionista and a stable of quantum woo cranks who would fail a basic physics class seem to know. Just like a fundamentalist will point to the Big Bang and say that it was God’s hand, so too does this New Ager and declare it so by virtue of her ignorance of how mass-energy equivalence works. And of course there are almost magical invocations of the bizarre quantum realm which serves as the New Age deus ex machina for the most outlandish woo…

Quantum physicist Amit Goswami supports the existence of a God consciousness, “The evidence for God is within us, but to see it we have to be subtle. To live it, we have to grow. Mystics, contrary to religionists, are always saying that reality is not two things — God and the world — but one thing, consciousness. But the problem with science has always been that most scientists believe that science must be done within a different monastic framework, one based on the primacy of matter. Quantum physics showed us that we must change that myopic prejudice of scientists, otherwise we cannot comprehend quantum physics.”

Quantum physics studies some very strange things. Very strange. Things that laugh in the face of causality, typically obeying the laws of physics only begrudgingly, delighting in every possible loophole they can find. At the same time, however, quantum mechanics has nothing to do with deities or consciousness, just motions and fluctuations of matter and energy in their smallest and most critical phases. If you’re not studying matter, energy, or their discrete quantum states, you’re not studying anything. You’re gazing into your own navel while you ooh and aah at the lint trapped in it and pretend that you’ve found some great insight into the workings of universe.

Saying that quantum physics is not a magical mantra that lets you justify anything you want is not an indictment of scientists’ myopia, it’s like pointing out the fact that no matter how much you try to pretend you’re an enlightened, non-corporeal entity, if a car hits you, it will crush your bones and squish your organs. And the sheer arrogance of this New Ageism just makes my head spin. No, it’s not that they have no proof for all their wild assertions, it’s just that you’re too materialistic and simple-minded to grasp how their oh so precious and open minds see the quantum hand of God. It’s just arrogant creationism at its very worst.

Really folks, it’s ok to say “I don’t know” once in a while. The world will not stop. The universe will not descend upon you with an unholy fury if you take a minute to admit that you don’t have all the answers instead of going off the rails with abject nonsense. Here’s an exercise for all you New Age types out there. Pick a quiet room in your home, sit in the lotus position, and ask yourself some big, really big questions. How did life arise? What triggered the Big Bang? Where did I leave my keys? What is the purpose of my life? Does size matter? And as you feel yourself starting to pull out whatever vapid cliché you read in The Secret or Deepak Chopra’s attempts to mimic a complete thought, stop and say aloud “I don’t know.”

Just keep doing that until you start to ask new questions about how life should be defined and what quantum physics really studies, and realize that you will never know all the answers because you’re just human and that repeating “quantum” or “consciousness” will not summon a library of empirical data proving whatever belief you hold. That partial knowledge against a very confusing and constant hum of questions to which there are no easy and convenient answers, is the human condition. Make the best of it rather than wasting your time reassuring yourself with stylish nonsense.