{"id":7795,"date":"2024-06-10T16:03:09","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T20:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-new-atheism-and-the-delusions-of-science\/"},"modified":"2024-06-10T16:03:09","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T20:03:09","slug":"the-new-atheism-and-the-delusions-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-new-atheism-and-the-delusions-of-science\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Atheism and the Delusions of Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Church attendance has been steadily falling in the U.S. and other developed countries for decades, causing a rise in people who tell pollsters that they are unaffiliated with any organized faith. According to the Pew Research Center, about one in three adults identify as unaffiliated.<\/p>\n<p>This should be good news for confirmed atheists, and Pew has found that the number of atheists doubled in the U.S. between 2011 and 2021. However, this represents an increase from 2% to 4% of the adult population, still a statistical sliver.<\/p>\n<p>So with church attendance falling and the unaffiliated swelling in numbers, why has this benefitted atheism so little? The so-called New Atheism boasts some leading figures like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Daniel Dennett who are not only intellectuals but loud proselytizers. Their failure to convince people of their cause says a great deal about our current unease regarding God, religion, and spirituality.<\/p>\n<p>The drawbacks of the New Atheism come down to several propositions that the average adult, or even the highly educated, don\u2019t respond to.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>New Atheists denigrate anyone who believes in God, painting them as superstitious, ignorant, irrational, or outright deluded. Unsurprisingly, it is hard to convert people through insults.<\/li>\n<li>By extension, to the New Atheists, any spiritual pursuit is considered to be folly. Most people believe that spirituality is well-intended and might lead to something valuable.<\/li>\n<li>New Atheism puts emphasis on science as the only rational system of thought. Religion by contrast is condemned as irrational and a primitive throwback to an age of unreason. Yet obviously it is possible to be rational without being a scientist. Moreover, plenty of rational people believe in God or some higher power.<\/li>\n<li>Atheism is proudly individual and self-reliant, dispensing with the emotional support provided by religion. This stance strikes most people as sterile. Psychologically, it is very healthy to identify with a cause greater than yourself. The psychological benefit of organized religion is one of its most positive aspects, whatever you might think of religion\u2019s role in the modern world.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With these strikes against it, New Atheism is likely to remain in the wilderness, making tiny inroads but never a major contribution. Even a bright school child accepts that you can\u2019t prove a negative, and proving that God doesn\u2019t exist is just as hard as proving that God does exist. Both sides of the debate are dealing with an invisible, impalpable entity. In the modern secular world, a holy ghost is still a ghost.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a shame that the New Atheism doesn\u2019t incite more people to think more deeply about spirituality. It hasn\u2019t defined a narrative that offers help or hope. Across the board, New Atheists declare that science is the only viable way to understand reality, and this is simply deluded. In our current situation, science and religion have both lost the campaign to explain reality. The supernatural is easy to attack as superstition, but science is just as vulnerable to the opposite charge, the failure of pure rationalism.<\/p>\n<p>At its most basic, a position Dawkins unflaggingly promotes, science is about objective facts proven by empirical data. The physical world \u201cout there\u201d is a given. It is understandable through the laws of nature and the equations of abstract mathematics. In no way is <em>Homo sapiens<\/em> special in such a scheme, where evolution proceeds through random mutations, just as particle physics is random.<\/p>\n<p>What the New Atheism wants to dispel is the subjective world \u201cin here,\u201d because subjectivity is unreliable, personal, colored by emotions, subject to primitive impulses, idiosyncratic, and clouded by false memories and assumptions. (In my experience, these attributes closely apply to the New Atheists I\u2019ve met and debated against.)<\/p>\n<p>One can accept these criticisms\u2014any mature adult would\u2014without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Subjectivity is the source of all the highest values of humanity, including love, compassion, devotion, insight, curiosity, wonder, creativity, personal evolution, and higher states of consciousness.<\/p>\n<p>Because these values play no part in the New Atheism, it renders itself irrelevant. A pure rational person wouldn\u2019t remotely be anyone\u2019s ideal. Nor is it necessary to say that the highest values of humanity are bestowed by a divine supernatural being. In every culture, there is a conjunction of religion and subjectivity, which means that religion has the historical advantage of containing our highest aspirations.<\/p>\n<p>But we have to be honest, and organized religion has declined for a reason, or rather, many reasons. The modern secular world is based on science and technology. The Holocaust, world wars, and other catastrophes made it harder to believe in a benign God. Dogmas, priests, and absolute faith lost their hold, which is no bad thing.<\/p>\n<p>But science as a worldview is short-sighted and often mistaken. The world \u201cin here\u201d isn\u2019t empirical or physical. No matter how stubbornly you insist that the brain is the mind, this is a fragile assumption, like saying that a piano is music. A piano is an instrument for the mind to use, and so is the brain. The reason that the mind and consciousness in general are beyond the reach of science is the same as the punchline of an old joke, which goes, \u201cSorry, mister, you can\u2019t get there from here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You can\u2019t get to consciousness if you have only physical, empirical data to work from or if you attempt to squeeze subjectivity into the rules that apply to the physical world. There\u2019s a logical mismatch. People intuitively realize this. They don\u2019t say, \u201cI haven\u2019t made up my brain what to eat tonight.\u201d Indeed, the greatest civilizations, East and West, flourished for millennia without any knowledge of the brain. Its very existence depended on cracking open the skull.<\/p>\n<p>In everyday experience, we are aware of our minds instead, and this has worked out very well\u2014the human condition is a mental condition. Creativity occurs in consciousness, as does freedom of choice. The ultimate delusion of science centerson consciousness, in fact. The so-called \u201chard problem\u201d of consciousness arose because of a logical mismatch. There is no problem, certainly not a hard one, once you stop using the wrong lens to inspect consciousness. I have expanded all these ideas in my book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Future-God-Practical-Approach-Spirituality\/dp\/0307884988\"><em>The Future of God<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We exist, and we experience life. Begin with these two basic, irreducible truths, and reality unfolds from the right foundation. Of course, science plays its part. Just because the New Atheism makes science the enemy of subjectivity doesn\u2019t mean that the two are at odds. You can be spiritual and rational at the same time. Why not? In the end, the New Atheism is something to be grateful for. It provides a constellation of bad ideas that can be worked through and discarded. As an old axiom goes, once you have stripped away all illusions, what remains must be real.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DEEPAK CHOPRA<\/strong>\u00a0MD, FACP, FRCP, founder of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.choprafoundation.org\/\">The Chopra Foundation<\/a>, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chopra.com\/\">Chopra Global<\/a>, a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation.\u00a0 Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution for the last thirty years. He is the author of the forthcoming book,\u00a0<em>Digital Dharma: How to Use AI to Raise Your Spiritual Intelligence and Personal Well-Being<\/em>. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as \u201cone of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.\u201d \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.deepakchopra.com\/\">www.deepakchopra.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script','https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '816809932069504');fbq('track', 'PageView');<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Church attendance has been steadily falling in the U.S. and other developed countries for decades, causing a rise in people who tell pollsters that they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}