Comments on: Gah!

By: Jesse

Jesse — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:52:35 +0000

As a fellow athiest, this has raised some thoughts.

First off, I think people do create their own realities. Not by manifestation, but simply due to how they choose to interpret the world in their own minds. Ones realty is what is in someones mind, atleast thats how I see it in a simplified form.

But I think that might be beside the point I want to make. That point, or comment as it may be, is frequently people seem to have this desire to have all the questions of the world/universe/existence answered for them. And if there is not a clear answer they make something up (or let someone one else make one up for them). And in the case of what you were quoting, this person took some pseudo-science jargon and used it as some answer. I don’t see why people feel the need to *know* an answer to everything. I, personally, am perfectly content shrugging my shoulders and saying, “I don’t know.”

I feel no empty hole in me because of it.

…Assuming anything I wrote makes sense, or is even relevent to this…

By: sheepish

sheepish — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:11:27 +0000

Quite honestly, I have no idea what the hell those quotes are trying to say. But then again, I walked out on What the Bleep, so what do I know?

By: wolfa

wolfa — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:12:58 +0000

I agree with you about that aspect of creating your own reality. I don’t agree that creating your own reality means “manifesting” things to happen to you. Though I think we’re agreed here.

I think you’ve nailed it, too. This weird insistence that Using Magic Science Words makes things Real, instead of saying “look, this works, I believe this works, I don’t know why” — which is funny, because of the beginning of the quote where the author was talking about no longer needing logical reasons.

By: wolfa

wolfa — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:29:28 +0000

Sheepish, I think they’re trying to say that this kind of belief is better than regular religious belief cause it’s Scientific.

By: sheepish

sheepish — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 23:58:26 +0000

Oh. Ok. It’s so far disconnected from science that I somehow failed to catch that their invocations of Newton and quantum mechanics were intended to be Science. Take away message: shit happens, and if it happens at your own personal frequency or vibration, then you’re going to get pretty messy.

By: StyleyGeek

StyleyGeek — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:10:18 +0000

Oh I HATED that movie so much. It’s responsible for all the badness in the world. All of it. Well, most of it, anyway.

By: wolfa

wolfa — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:49:00 +0000

Sheepish, it’s unrecognisable as science unless you’re attuned to the Science-as-Religion speak. It’s so annoying.

Styley, I never saw the movie. And now that I read your review I . . . sort of want to, so I can bitch about it more effectively. Damn you.

By: parodie

parodie — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:04:33 +0000

Bad science + weird religion == wow, intense.

Where did you find this??

By: wolfa

wolfa — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:10:31 +0000

I didn’t want to link cause I was being so nasty about what are essentially religious beliefs, but it’s from selftaughtgirl dot com.

By: aqua

aqua — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:58:10 +0000

I haven’t seen the movie — and most likely I never will. I too have very little patience with this sort of thing. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical model that tries to explain and predict atomic and subatomic phenomena. Nothing more. This act of translation — of putting the math into English and applying it to things that it was never meant to be applied to — is just, like you said, gah! And a lot of physicists are guilty of this too, not just non-specialists.
I’m digressing. I guess what I wanted to say was that physics simply constructs models — it does not say anything about “reality,” whatever that nebulous thing is. A model works or it doesn’t work, and it is often replaced by subsequent models that work better — and by “work better” I mean they have more explanatory power. (A very Kuhnian way of looking at this issue, and surely this can be argued against, but there you have it). Even now, within mainstream physics, there are physicists who are trying to replace the quantum mechanics model. E.g. stochastic electrodynamics is one such contender, although it is still a rather marginal theory (though definitely mainstream, judging by the journals where these physicists publish their work).
Sorry for the long comment — I happen to be writing a paper on stochastic electrodynamics. Very interesting post, wolfa.