| | Dawkins is in his element talking about the stupid pseudo-science film hit called, "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" It pretends to be a documentary made of so-called science experts right out of the yogi school of mysticism.
Here is the full crtitique of the film by Dawkins. (More to be posted on SOLO science).
This film is even more pretentious than it is boring. And it is stupefyingly boring - unless, of course, you are fooled by its New Age fakery, in which case it might indeed be - as many innocent dupes have stated - "life-changing". The one redeeming feature is the enigmatic charm of the deaf heroine, whose depressive journey down the rabbit hole of life is punctuated by gobbets of bogus sagacity from a dozen talking heads. But no amount of charm could redeem the unforgivable phoniness of the script.
Over-use of the word "paradigm" is a pretty good litmus for inclusion in the scientific equivalent of Pseud's Corner, and the film's "expert" talking heads score highly. Perhaps the leading one is "Ramtha", a dead warrior from Atlantis who addresses us (in a fake accent) through his "channeler", a woman called JZ (Judy) Knight, founder of the Ramtha Cult which sponsored the film. Thirty-five thousand years in the grave have not dulled Ramtha's business sense: he charges $1,000 per counselling session. Poor JZ has her work cut out.
The authors seem undecided whether their theme is quantum theory or consciousness. Both are indeed mysterious, and their genuine mystery needs none of the hype with which this film relentlessly and noisily belabours us. Not surprisingly, we get no enlightenment on either topic, nor on the alleged connection between them. Instead, we are told that indigenous peoples were "literally" unable to see early European vessels arriving off their shores - presumably because the ships lay outside their "paradigm". We are told that "All emotion is holographically imprinted chemicals"; that "Each cell has a consciousness"; and that "God is the superposition of all the spirits from all things".
What drives me to despair is not the dishonesty of the charlatans who peddle such tosh, but the dopey gullibility of the thousands of nice, well meaning people who flock to the cinema and believe it.
· Richard Dawkins FRS is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. His latest book is The Ancestor's Tale.
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What drives me to despair is not the dishonesty of the charlatans who peddle such tosh, but the dopey gullibility of the thousands of nice, well meaning people who flock to the cinema and believe it.
