Entry #074: Andrew Cohen

Cultmaster, founder of EnlightenNext and professional con artist, Cohen has also been writing for the despicable Huffington Post.

So what is Evolutionary Enlightenment? ”To put it simply, enlightenment is evolving. It is no longer found only in the bliss of timeless Being; it is found also in the ecstatic urgency of evolutionary Becoming.” Exactly how Lacan would have said it if he had attended Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment. If you’re excited about the rest, you can read it here. Pound out word-salad, include references to ancient mystics, collect the money. Well-known recipe for success.

Apparently ”Evolutionary Enlightenment, is unique for placing the traditional realization of enlightenment in the context of cosmic evolution” (whatever that means). By awakening to the timeless "Ground of Being," human beings can liberate themselves from their ego and the "Authentic Self.", a self beyond ego that represents ”humanity at its most wholesome”, : motivated by an evolutionary impulse that is "one with the big bang itself." Right.

More here, partially on the cult-like nature of Cohen’s organization. In fact, the cult is so vile that even Andrew’s mother cannot stand it.

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Diagnosis: Über-crackpot and delusional nutjob with delusions of grandeur. Utterly unhinged from reality. Pretty famous and influential apparently.

Entry #072: Deepak Chopra

A.k.a. The King of woo woo

The arch-bishop of woo himself, and probably one of the most influential (and flaky and zealous) crackpots chugging along today. A prolific author of New Age/self-help books (and a regular contributor to that absolutely abhorrent cesspool of anti-science, Huffington Post), Chopra is famous for using poorly understood (or not understood at all) vocabulary from physics, particularly quantum physics, mixed with “Eastern knowledge”. His writings are usually centered around woo-y claims along the lines of “recognize your inner beauty and the quantum entanglement will cure you”. Ardent opponent of “materialistic science” which hasn't yet recognized the ancient wisdom of Eastern spirituality, reincarnation, homeopathy and such. Earns a lot of money.

His most common inference rule is The Galileo Gambit (“scientist uniformly reject my ideas, but hey! Remember Galileo; his ideas were also reject by the scientific community [well, the church, in fact] back in the days; therefore I am right and everyone else are close-minded). An antidote is available here.

Some examples of his style: Chopra bashing skepticism (that is, Chopra fighting against logic and scientific inquiry – spot the fallacies): ; Chopra being taken on by Michael Shermer; Chopra on ”only spirituality can save the world” (and as Myers points out, Chopra neglects to tell us how); Chopra failing to deal with criticism; Chopra ”proving” that there is an afterlife; Chopra in general (this is part 3; links to the earlier ones); Chopra failing critical thinking yet again.

Well, I guess you get the point. This is a guy so utterly unable to grasp the foundations for critical thinking, so completely out of touch with reason, rationality and the ability to distinguish evidence from wishful thinking, that he must set some kind of record.

This is a decent, recent example of total Chopra failure. This one is marvelous.

A most hilarious parody of Chopra, the "DBag Chopra" twitter account, is found here.

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Diagnosis: This guy is seriously dangerous; he’s been claimed by Time magazine to be one of the 100 most important people of the 21st century; he has a huge following (Mikhail Gorbachev referred to Chopra as "one of the most lucid and inspired philosophers of our time"). His grasp of reason, critical thinking and reality is more tentative than Jack Chick’s, however, and the lunacy he represents might in the long run be even more dangerous than the Discovery Institute.

In short, he is probably the most influential loon in our Encyclopedia, and among the most dangerous (with Cynthia Dunbar and David Barton and some others).

Entry #068: Betsy Chasse

Producer, director and screenwriter for “What the bleep do we know” (together with, among others, the irretrievably lunatic William Arntz), Betsy Chasse is also an escapee from Ramtha’s school of enlightenment. She also runs Eloramedia, ”which offers spiritually oriented, motivational books, videos and music for children of all ages – adults included! She is a highly sought after speaker on such subjects as spirituality, the blending of science and spirituality, and marketing to the cultural creative demographic.”

A sympathetic interview can be found here. Among other things, it reveals that Chasse is ”infamous For: Driving scientists up the wall by claiming water's atomic structure can be changed by bad thoughts - and heavy metal music”. Indeed.

Chasse admits that before she started the film she didn't know anything about quantum physics. She learned from this film is that it's up to her, however: ”I am the creator of my own reality. I am responsible for my own self. By taking on that responsibility it's really empowered me to do great things in my life.” In other words, everything she knows about quantum physics she’s learned from the film she made about it without knowing anything in advance. A potent recipe for creative belief formation. A fair and succinct review of the movie is found here.

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Diagnosis: Chasse lives and breathes on confirmation bias in its most purified form – indeed, the whole message of What the bleep can be summed up as a defense of confirmation bias as a method of inquiry. The impact of the movie was big, but Chasse is probably soon forgotten. All the better.

Entry #059: Lee Carroll & Kryon

 

After a couple of stock loons from the anti-vaccinationist and creationist movements, it’s time to take another plunge into the more outré and downright weird recesses of the looniverse. This is where we find this gem.

Take some time to savor the delectable whiff of Timecube, the exquisite pastel shadings and the breathtakingly amateurish first-time-powerpoint-user-style animations. This is solid stuff.

So, what are they up to? You’ll get a taste of it here.

Here is their most recent announcement: “When many heard the magic of what happened in Sedona in 2009 when Jan [Tober – a member of the Kryon team] took the stage with bowl master William Jones, they wanted more. Jan is now offering a DNA activation using her voice, channelling and simultaneously playing up to seven crystal bowls... all offered as a custom ten minute CD "reading" of your life essence. She takes personal information, then creates a custom CD in her studio! Very well received, many are lining up to have this DNA activation process done.”

You might ask, so what is a DNA activation process? Well, who knows, really – the explanations are mostly word-salad, asserting things such as “Someday your science is going to show that DNA actually sings!” and “[your DNA] is magnetic, and therefore it responds to the grid! […] Now, suddenly in this new energy, your science begins to understand that there are at least 11 dimensions at the heart of every atom of matter. (We have told you that there are 12.) And suddenly you are beginning to understand that even time is variable”

You can also subscribe to their “Marshmallow messages”, daily e-mail messages of love, positive thought, and light, at no cost, sent by E-mail only to the Kryon family worldwide.

Mostly, however, it is about channeling and our relationship to Gaia; the channelings are apparently published in their monthly journal, the Sedona Journal of Emergence. Apparently Carroll and Tober channeled the “original subject of the Indigo children”. You can also click a button to see the DNA names, sounds, paintings and descriptions of the teachings that Lee has channelled on the Twelve Interdimensional Layers of DNA (I admit that I frankly didn’t dare to click that button).

Lee Carroll is the main character, apparently. A biography can be found here. Apparently he’s held meetings almost next to the UN General Assembly. Impressive.

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Diagnosis: Kryon seems to be a prime example of unhinged, new-agey, fluffy woo with a post-modernist twist to it, and Carroll must surely rank among the most purebred crackpots out there. I seriously doubt that they have any extensive or detrimental impact, however.

Entry #054: Fritjof Capra

The king himself of touchy-feely new age bullshit, Capra is the author of ”The Tao of Physics”, which captured the imaginations of the Dunning-Kruger baseline some decades back by exploring the similarities between quantum theory and Eastern philosophies. Capra is a physicist, systems theorist, and has aslo written ”The Turning Point”, ”Uncommon Wisdom”, ”The Web of Life”, and ”The Hidden Connections”. Dr. Capra is also a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, and the sort of guy that would be a demi-good of the clinically moronic David Brooks’s neural Buddhists. ”The Tao of Physics” claims that physics and metaphysics are both inexorably leading to the same knowledge, and proceeds by way of wishy-washy Zen Buddhism peppered with half-baked concepts from quantum theory in a thoroughly confused, pyramids and magnet stone kind of quasi-religious delusional gruel.

Using Thomas Kuhn's ”The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” as a stepping stone, he and the Benedictine monk Steindl-Rast also explored the parallels between new paradigm thinking in science and religion (yes, exactly – poor understanding of Thomas Kuhn is probably the greatest generator of fluffy woo in history) that together offer what the authors consider remarkably compatible view of the universe. Evidence is selectively used if anyone wondered.

His main fight is against reductionism (a concept he doesn’t understand, rest assured) and a mechanistic world-view, in favor of a holistic approach. The wikipedia article is informative, if sympathetic. The penchant such people have to rely on armchair confirmation bias rather than evidence is obvious from their bald assertions (probably they believe it themselves) that their direction is the one in which scientific consensus itself is moving. It isn’t. Capra and his ilk are loons and crackpots.

A soulmate of Deepak Chopra, some representative examples of his rosy-tinted woo is found here, here and here (all sympathetic sources; he explains his disdain for Darwinism and Francis Bacon, among other things).

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Diagnosis: Woo-meister and cranky dingbat. Enormously influential – if you’ve ever heard of ”the similarity between Zen Buddhism or [insert wooey Eastern ”philosophy”, preferably one you know little about, here], Capra is the instigator. One of the most important crackpots alive.