Review of the Philosophy Book, War of the Worldviews by the Phyisicist Leonard Mlodinow and Spirituality leader Deepak Chopra

War of the Worldviews: Where Science and Spirituality Meet--and Do Not

This book shows great potential. Consider the depth of the worldview questions that Chopra and Mlodinow answer based upon their counter views of Reality!

How Did the Universe Emerge?

Is the Universe Conscious?

Is the Universe Evolving?

What is the Nature of Time?

Is the Universe Alive?

What Is Life?

Is there Design in the Universe?

What Makes us Human?

How Do Genes Work?

Did Darwin Go Wrong?

What Is the Connection Between Mind and Brain?

Does the Brain Dictate Behavior?

Is the Brain Like a Computer?

Is the Universe Thinking Through Us?

Is God an illusion?

What Is the Future of Belief?

Is There a Fundamental Reality?

And Mlodinow’s explanations are lucid, detailed, and measured. Chopra less so, though he makes a few good points that show the weaknesses of Mlodinow’s worldview, Naturalism.

The huge problem elephant in the room is Chopra’s ‘Spirituality” an Asian religious philosophical worldview, basically a non-organized Hinduism shorn of ritual and mythology based mostly in the Upanishads. He not so subtly fails to explain the central essence of his beliefs-- that all is God.

Though he hints at it by quoting the famous statement in the Upanishads that Reality is ‘THAT’; we humans are THAT! A famous rock group in the late 1960’s wrote a New Age song with that key line as its chorus.

In shocking contrast, Mlodinow’s “Reductionist” view diminishes the human species to only physical particles, though he tries to avoid the nihilism of many modern hard atheist/materialists by being civil in his responses and trying to present a humanistic view of the human species.

But he never explains how IF mind only comes from the brain, and the brain from mindless and meaningless evolution, and at the microlevel reality is deterministic, how in the cosmos can humans have any significance, how can “wonder” and “caring,” exist except as illusions, etc. How can humans have any worth, be more than particles moving about?

At the same time I was listening to the Audible version of this book, I read an intriguing review of British philosopher Christian List’s book, Why Free Will Is Real, and also listened to a deep interview with him by Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine.

Though, at times List is also unclear how one can avoid the opposite abysses of Scylla versus Charybdis—all is aware Mind versus all is meaningless atoms-- at least he does explain a middle way.

Like the famous astrophysicist George Ellis, and other non-reductionists, List explains the key is to realize higher-level activities in reality can’t be reduced to only microlevel atoms (like materialists and other reductionists attempt to do).

For instance, it’s the case of comparing physics at the microphysical level where only atoms are moving about with in contrast, the physicist at the conscious aware level wo is taking a break and deciding whether or not to have tea or coffee:-).

Or think how different only atoms physically determined reality is from at a far more complex different level, a psychologist helps an emotionally disturbed human to choose to change his destructive habits.

Or how different only atoms in a materialistic reality is from at the more complex level where an architect plans whether or not to use steel and glass on the front side of a new office building.

Obviously, the latter 2 examples of humans making choices can’t be reduced to only the movement of deterministic atoms from the Big Bang.

List’s view of reality is very different from both the “Conscious Mind of the Universe” of Chopra and the hard materialism of Mlovodov.

While Mldodov presents his case more moderately than such as Sam Harris with his podcast “Tumors All the Way Down,” the claims seem to be essentially the same-- only atoms are real, not human value and worth, and alternative and creative choices.

Those are illusions. And Jerry Coyne who claims that a human who “chooses” to murder or rape couldn’t have done otherwise since all atoms at the physical level of Reality determines everything.

Overall, though War of Worldview is worth the read, I was dissatisfied with both worldviews, would choose neither.

Evaluation: C+

Dan Wilcox

Are We Stardust?

Yes and no.

Often when various leaders say this, that we humans are “stardust,” it is meant in a sense of “how amazing!” A highly romanticized phrase giving validation to us as Homo sapiens.

Even the very informative science book on cosmology, The View from the Center of the Universe, speaks of how we humans are stardust. The physicist Joel R. Primack and co-writer Nancy Ellen Abrams explain:
“Stardust is thus part of our genealogy. Our bodies literally hold the entire history of the universe, witnessed and enacted by our atoms.”

Sounds impressive, especially since the claim is coming from a physicist, and the co-writers are professors at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

But wait, notice the personification in the sentence, “witnessed and enacted by our atoms.”

Think about it, atoms can’t “witness” anything. Only conscious, aware finite life can witness.

It’s true, if not for the cosmic creation and explosions of stars after the Big Bang, we wouldn't be here. The elements from which life—including us-- came were formed billions of years ago.

“The nitrogen in our DNA…the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.
Carl Sagan, “The Cosmic Connection” and Cosmos

And…

“the elements themselves (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc.) were synthesized, cooked up as it were, in the nuclear furnaces that are the deep interior of stars. These elements are then released at the end of a star's lifetime when it explodes, and subsequently incorporated into a new generation of stars -- and into the planets that form around the stars, and the life forms that originate on the planets.”
Michael Loewenstein and Amy Fredericks for "Ask an Astrophysicist"

Even classic rock singers wrote and sang of this: “We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon…” written and sung by Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock;” also crooned by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

But we aren't ‘stardust’ in the sense of consciousness, self-aware, reasoning, computing, creating, ethically choosing primates.

So saying we are stardust is like saying we are composed of atoms.

In a basic microscopic sense, yes.

It’s like saying the sentences of this article are squiggles of ink on a page, pixels on a computer screen…well, yes…but that’s a superficial observation, a basic surface statement of the means whereby we consciously communicate complex ideas, scientific observations, abstract reasonings, creative writing through a series of lines and dots.

Stardust made life possible on earth but that doesn't define what conscious life is. Except maybe for those who think our sense of “I,” our consciousness, is an illusionary quirk like the biologist Francis Crick states and the neuroscientist Sam Harris and other materialists claim.

If in contrast, we choose to think human beings are an aware, reasoning, mathematically computing, and an ethical-choosing species that has evolved into the image of Ultimate Reality, what then?

Do we think we know how consciousness exists within human beings?

Do we understand the nature of reality which "existed" before the "Big Bang," before time and space came into being?

I've no idea. I'm not a professional cosmologist. And, besides, the older I get the less I think I know;-)

But consciousness does seem to be inherent in existence, at least on this planet, not a cosmically accidental quirk. Not an absurdity in a meaningless, purposeless universe.

Probably, where ever life reaches a certain plateau of complexity, consciousness appears.

And that is the true wonder—our awareness and our ability to think, reason, question, mathematically compute, and create!

Not the interesting but basic fact that our unconscious bodies have chemical elements formed from exploding stars billions of years ago.

We are star-focused lovers of the universe...

Asking "How?" and "By what means?" and "Why?"

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox