science - The Chopra Foundation

A New Hot Button: Consciousness-Driven Evolution

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD

Science is meant to be the opposite of a belief system. No one underlined this point more securely than Charles Darwin, who devised a theory of evolution that defied the strongest belief of his time, the all but universal belief in the bible version of the origins of man. The fossil record supported a notion contrary to the Bible that creation was a process, not a single event dictated by a divine Creator. Despite a century and a half of proof that Darwin was right, taking God out of evolution still sticks in the throat of many people.

Pollsters find, to the dismay of trained scientists, that God remains in play for many when it comes to our origins. For example, a 2013 Pew Research poll found that one-third of respondents believe that human beings have always existed in their present form. When broken down by religion, this anti-Darwin, pro-Bible view is held by 64% of white evangelical Protestants and 50% of black Protestants broken down by political party, only 43% of Republicans believe that human beings evolved over time versus 67% of Democrats and 65% of independents.

(more…)

The President’s Tweets and the Future of Shame

By Deepak Chopra, MD

Last week the new Twitter account @POTUS of President Obama became a lightning rod for the worst in social media behavior. Within minutes of its setup, as reported in the New York Times, the account was flooded with vitriolic racist tweet Photo Mar 06, 1 25 27 AM s, complete with hideous images, including one of Mr. Obama with his neck in a noose. Many troubling issues arise from this shameful behavior, but at the center is shame itself.

Behavior on the Internet, Twitter, and other social media outlets has become shameless, and at the same time, these outlets are being used to publicly shame people, especially innocent high school students being electronically bullied by cruel classmates. Shameless behavior has no consequences, and social media and the Internet afford easy anonymity. Put these two elements together, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for anti-social trends that keep building and building.

(more…)

How the Universe Pulled a Vanishing Act

By Deepak Chopra, MD

The issues facing modern physics are so baffling that they’ve crossed a threshold and now fascinate the general public. We laymen have very little at stake, personally speaking, when scientists argue over the Big Bang—without advanced mathematical training, it’s all but impossible to follow the arguments. But we do have a stake when the universe starts to disappear, as it is doing right this minute.

The cosmic vanishing act began, approximately, when dark matter and dark energy showed up on the radar of cosmology. “Dark” is a misleading term, because the space between the stars is pitch black, but it isn’t dark in the way that dark matter and energy are. They are dark as in totally mysterious. No light is given off by them, or any known form of energy we associate with the universe. They cannot be measured, and so far as anyone can guess, dark matter is probably not constituted of anything resembling atoms or subatomic particles.

The reason that dark matter and energy are important is arcane to the layman, having to do with the fact that instead of moving apart at a constant rate or slowing down, the galaxies are accelerating as they move away from each other. This acceleration defies gravity, so at the very least dark energy is some species of antigravity (to put it in very general terms—the actual nature of this unknown force is complex, arcane, and much speculated over).

(more…)

Why Does Richard Dawkins Keep Doing Me Favors?

By Deepak Chopra, MD

In a recent article on his website, Richard Dawkins spontaneously erupted, even though he and I haven’t had contact for many months. We debated once in Mexico City, and he erupted there, too. The ideas I put forth, such as the possibility that we live in a conscious universe, bring out the Scrooge in him.

Now he’s posted a real bah humbug: “Why Does Deepak Chopra Hate Me?” written by Steven Newton (Link: https://richarddawkins.net/2015/04/why-does-deepak-chopra-hate-me/) It’s mostly an ad hominem fulmination without basis in fact. Dawkins pastes the tag “anti-evolutionist” on me even though he was part of an e-mail discussion for a while that included top geneticists and other scientists along with me, in which we discussed where evolutionary theory might be heading in the future.

Dawkins bowed out with a surly growl. He doesn’t keep up with the new genetics, and so one can understand why it infuriates him that someone like me, lacking his academic credentials, knows something about the subject–enough to be writing a new book, Super Genes, with Dr. Rudy E. Tanzi, one of the world’s leading researchers on Alzheimer’s. Dawkins, despite his scientific background and air of complete authority, has written zero books with any prominent researcher, geneticist, or anyone else who might bring him up to date on his own field.

I can only shrug at his latest polemic, which is filled with stray arrows shot in the dark. Actually, he’s done me a favor. By airing the ideas he finds preposterous, such as flaws in Darwinian theory, the conscious universe, and the ontological problem of whether the moon exists without an observer (he seems unaware that this “crackpot” idea was discussed between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr on a famous occasion), Dawkins is pointing his readers to some of the most exciting theory that is sure to impact the future of science.

Sadly, mocking these ideas is the closest he will ever come to grasping them.

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 80 books with twenty-two New York Times bestsellers. He serves as the founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing. His latest book is The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure.

Can Science and Religion Save Each Other? (Part 2)

by Deepak Chopra, MD

Science is used to being dominant, and religion is used to being defensive–these are familiar poses for two worldviews, the one being on the rise, the other on the decline. Generally when an entire belief system is on the decline, it steadily disappears. There’s no need to believe that the king’s touch can cure disease once modern medicine appears, and no need for bleeding to be a medical practice when its usefulness is experimentally invalidated. But the model of progress that substitutes automobiles for horse-drawn carriages doesn’t apply to religion. It may lose adherents who accept the argument that scientific rationality is superior to faith. The values of modern secular society are constantly on the rise.

(more…)