Eight Minutes Old

Yesterday I got a comment on an article which is almost eight month old by now. The topic was an event called ‘Quantum-Philosophy and spirituality’*, which was advertised in a students magazine. I criticized this. The (German) comment now asks me why I did this, claiming that science and esoteric/spirituality/alternate realities should meet and accept each other. As my answer turns out to be a bit longer, I decided to put it up as a separate post.

I argued against this event, because I think the statements made in the run-up to it were not correct. That ‘Quantum-Physics support ancient knowledge of religions’ is simply not true. Quantum-Physics unfortunately is hard to understand and thus a lot pf physicists made corresponding, sloppy and admiring comments about it. These are well suited for quote-mining, citing them out of context to support completely different mystic claims. But: quantum-Physics centers on the smallest building blocks in nature. These play no role in ancient religious or philosophical texts, as they were completely unknown at those times. And of course quantum physics does not produce any statements on spirituality, so it simply is impossible that it supports such things. Rather, the esoteric scene loves to ‘borrow’ physical terms, to appear more serious. This is indicative: Why do they need to abuse science to claim they know the truth, trying to be taken serious? Science, interestingly, can well live without them, has impressive achievements to back itself up, and it is taken serious.

Now, on to the topic of joining science and spirituality/esoteric:

These so-called ‘encounter’ of science and spirituality aim, in my opinion, at manipulating people who do not know much about science. There it is stated that esoteric claims are backed up by science, without giving any evidence for these declarations, which therefore can not be verified by the audience. That there is no closing of ranks with science is concealed.

What I do when I argue against such events is to fight against the instrumentalisation of science (or better: an illusion of science build by new-age esoterics). The often heard argument, that scientists should be more open to other views and to accept everything, reveals the complete lack of comprehension what science is. It shows that the scientific method is not understood. Science looks for the best description and explanation of nature. The main tool it applies is falsification: exclusion of ideas that do not work. Advising science to accept contradicting opinions therefore is like demanding its dissolution.

I would like to end with some concrete examples. They are cited (translated by myself) from the description of an event by the EIFAR.

It [the quantum physic] unambiguously says, through by now countless experiments accepted in all branches of science, that the psyche pervades the matter.

No, it doesn’t.The psyche has absolutely nothing to do with quantum-physics. Accordingly, there are no experiments at all that support this claim, neither is it accepted in any science. No scientist I ever met would have agreed with this. This simply is an bold imputation, I would say. At that is why I protest against events of this kind. And then the text becomes almost insulting:

In their [scientists of the 'Newtonian school'**] mechanical universe there is no meaning for love and ethics. Because, following their description, we are something like a genetic mistake that is used to make it to the next generation and in the process we only mutate randomly.

[both quotes from the site 'http://eifae-akademie.de/pages/posts/quantenphilosophie-und-spiritualitaet11.php', at October 13, 2009; 2:39 p.m.]

I leave this uncommented, as it speaks for itself.

*: EIFAE - European Institute for Applied Ethics. Seems to be the name of an partnership under the German Civil Code, according to the ‘Impressum’ of their website.

**: They contrast Newtonian, ‘old’ science with quantum-physicist, the new science as they call it. To make this clear: this difference does not exist in physics, all physicists accept quantum-physics. But of course it is easier to be able to say, once a scientist shows up and criticizes, that he is one of the old, stubborn physicists and does not speak for the majority of scientist who all support the new-age spirituality.

Tags: EIFAE, New-Age, Newton, Stiftung Rosenkreuz, Astrology and Esoteric, Buddhism, Christianity, Physicists, Physics, Quantum-Philosophy and Spirituality, Quantum-Philosophy, Quantum-Physics, Religion, Sceptic, Science and Spirituality, Science, Spirituality, Talk