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God would be an atheist...
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HOME / This Week About GWBAA WEEKLY COLUMNS Previous Coming Print column Why subscribe? Schedule Terms & Rates Subscribe Online column Subscribe BASICS Definitions Atheism Faith God Religion etc Analysis The meaning of life Morality etc NEXT STEPS Buy Discuss Join Read REVIEWS CONTACT Link to this site January 13, 2005 All Rights Reserved World Copyright © Martin Foreman |
Column 47: How to know hogwash A journey into the mystery of Deepak Chopra By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 797 words Publication date: January 8, 2006 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. Sometimes we do things not because we want to but because everyone else does them and we don’t want to feel left out. Like Disneyworld; it isn’t exactly a rite of passage, but life feels incomplete if you haven’t visited at least once. I’ve done both Disneys – Land and World – and I figured it was time for something new. So I read a Deepak Chopra book. For those of you living on Mars or in Iraq, DC is a best-selling “inspirational” writer, author of such books as The Path to Love and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. For several years How to know God; the Soul’s Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries had sat on my bookshelves. Over the Festive Season I finally picked it up. Chopra himself would probably say that God had prompted me. Well, if that was the case, God’s timing was way off. My soul was not inspired to get off the sofa, far less to look out its backpack and head for the metaphysical road. By the end of the nearly three hundred pages I had met boredom and was thoroughly acquainted with irritation, but God and I had yet to be introduced. It wasn’t that HTKG was difficult to read. Chopra writes well and the eye trips merrily down the page. No, the problem was in the ideas that the words conveyed – a combination of the meaningless, the preposterous and the trite. My first disappointment came with the bald assertion that God exists. I expected such an approach from a third-rate creationist speaking to a converted audience, but from Chopra’s reputation and a book with such a grandiose title I expected more – like a reason to believe in the deity. I didn’t get it. Although Chopra is honest enough to remind us occasionally that there is no proof for God, his strategy is to ignore that inconvenience, in the expectation that his readers will be seduced by the “miracles” he reports. These, however, are obscure and unsubstantiated: a priest who avoided being knocked down by a boy on a bicycle, a woman who sees John Lennon on the television and a Los Angeles telephone call. While Chopra attributes these events to God, more discerning minds might see the hand of alcohol, coincidence or imagination. More discerning minds might also wonder why Chopra deals only in good miracles, while in the real world God fails to prevent others from dying in accidents and allows murderers to carry out 9/11. But answer came there none… I carried on reading, relieved to learn that the spiritual quest had been reduced to Seven Steps to God. Surprisingly, however, when Chopra told me I would find God by looking in the mirror, all I could see was a middle-aged man needing a shave. When I sat down again, all that stretched before me was page after page of petty “miracles” interspersed with Apparently Deep But Actually Meaningless Observations such as “our beliefs must eventually shift to conform to reality, since in the quantum world belief creates reality.” The more I read, the more I had the impression of being addressed by a quack doctor staring me fixedly in the eye and daring me not to believe him. Giving Chopra the benefit of the doubt, I suppose he believes his own words. Because God is unknowable we can all invent our own description of him and Chopra’s version is more benign than the ugly bigot created by Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their ilk. If I were feeling charitable, I would simply ignore Chopra, send the book for recycling and look for something that nourishes rather than insults my intellect. After all, his goal appears to be no more than to make people feel good about themselves, buy more of his books and then maybe spend more money on some of the courses and products conveniently advertized on his website. But I’ve wasted two hours and I’m not in a good mood. What irritates me most is the fact that Chopra devotes his considerable talents to convincing people, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that there is another reality. The world is in a mess. America is deeply divided and ill at ease. Americans suffer inadequate health care and education systems. Religious leadership confers unprecedented power. Political leaders on both sides of the fence are incompetent, have oversized egos and pocketbooks, and are driven by ambition and arrogance. America desperately needs serious thinkers and competent leaders, not the God of either the Chopra or the Falwell variety. How much more valuable Chopra’s contribution to society would be if he offered not a fantasy but a concrete vision that united the country and restored pride and comradeship to all Americans. Instead of which, he offers hogwash.
Ripples...
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PREVIOUSLY... "Where are the Christians who should be protesting, with their voices, their pocketbooks and, above all, with their votes, at an ongoing policy that has killed or maimed thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis? Where are the protests against a self-defeating “war on terror” whose only success is to breed hatred in Muslim hearts? Where are the Christians who when struck by violence turn the other cheek?" Where are the Christians? "The only option left to thinking believers is a distant deity whose involvement in the creation of the universe is minimal and whose only function is reassuring love. God has evolved from the all too human to the ineffable – beyond description and beyond relevance." Fading away "Sex is often driven by economics. Many people spend their lives sharing a bed and their bodies with long-term partners who they have chosen for financial security. Only in the last two hundred or so years has love has become a priority in marriage, and in much of the world it is still a secondary consideration, if considered at all." Selling sex, saving lives "Religion uses its false morality to control sex. It determines that sex is good not when it makes you and your partner happy but when society approves of it, and that sex is bad, not when it hurts you, but when society disapproves." Your reason or mine? "The idea that life is meaningless is liberating rather than depressing. It allows each of us to create our own Meaning – a Meaning relevant to us rather than to an imaginary being, Instead of asking ourselves "what is the Meaning of Life?" we have the greater and far more rewarding question 'what Meaning should we give Life?' or ’what’s the best way to live?' Pleasure and happiness "Occasionally some of us ask, “Life, what’s it all about? Seventy years, if we’re lucky, of eating, sleeping and excreting. Is that it, or am I missing something?” That’s where the trouble begins. We start thinking, and thinking is something that most of us are not very good at. It usually means assuming we know the answer to any question and then looking for facts and arguments to confirm it." Of earthquakes and elephants "Anyone who flicks through the Bible and assumes that it’s true soon sees that God makes a habit of terminating people. Sometimes he kills them one at a time, but he has a penchant for multiple deaths and once, early in his career, he goes for total annihilation.” Pro-death |
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