Blue Sky Nonsense: reviewing “Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity” pt. 1: The Quantum Sea of Light

Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity by Don MacGregor (book sources)

Zero Point Field

Zero point energy! We've had most of the other quantum-woo tropes, so I guess it's no surprise that we get this one too. Inexhaustible energy! Misunderstandings of what renormalization is! Invisible webs connecting everything to everything else!

A new wrinkle that I haven't seen before: the claim that the zero-point field contains a permanent record of everything that has ever happened in the universe. Huh, didn't see that one coming.

Our (or rather MacGregor's) sources for all this are once again Lynne McTaggart (who remember is just a journalist), Bernard Haisch, and Ervin László, though this time when referring to László's claimed nominations for the Nobel, MacGregor does at least mention that it's the Peace prize. (The nominations for Nobels are not made public for 50 years, and the nomination process for the Peace prize simply allows anyone from a long list of qualified positions to send in suggested names. Got a couple of friends in government or who are professors of social science or philosophy? You too could be nominated for the Peace prize!)

(An aside: several names in this chapter are misspelled, making it harder than usual to track down the actual researchers. Whether this is MacGregor's error or McTaggart's is not clear.)

Blue Sky Nonsense: reviewing “Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity” pt. 1: Morphic Fields and the Works of Christ

Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity by Don MacGregor (book sources)

Fields and Forms

Fields are all around us, yes. MacGregor again harps on about the possibility of unknown forces—while it might be too strong a statement to say these are ruled out, a good deal of effort has been expended by experimental physicists to measure the absence of such things in highly sensitive ways. The gambit of “we don't know that there aren't other forces, so it's totally OK to propose (without evidence) that such unknown forces exist and have major macroscopic effects” is a hallmark of pseudoscience.

Blue Sky Nonsense: reviewing “Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity” pt. 1: Epigenetics, Healing and Prayer

Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity by Don MacGregor (book sources)

“Epigenetics” is the new “quantum”.

— dozens of blog commenters

Biology and Energy Fields

If you ask an actual biologist about what “fascinating new insights” there have been in the field recently, you'll likely get a long and varied list; but one thing that won't be on it is “energy fields”. MacGregor, though, has swallowed the pseudoscience hook, line and sinker:

Blue Sky Nonsense: reviewing “Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity” pt. 1: Quantum Reality and God as Consciousness

Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity by Don MacGregor (book sources)

(Headings in italics are mine, rather than referring to the book.)

Quantum Science and Consciousness, and The Primacy of Consciousness

MacGregor jumps right in the deep end by claiming—before even getting more than 2 pages in—that a “new paradigm suggests that the prime mover in the universe is not matter, but consciousness”. He identifies quantum measurements—i.e. ‘wavefunction collapse’—as necessarily involving conscious minds and presents this as if it were the established and only interpretation of QM that exists. He quotes Max Planck (“This mind is the matrix of all matter”) but via a secondary source that seems to misplace the occasion of the statement. Otherwise the only scientist referenced is Goswami.

Blue Sky Nonsense: reviewing “Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity” pt. 1: Introduction

Blue Sky God: The Evolution of Science and Christianity by Don MacGregor (book sources)

To say that I am not the target audience for this book would be a massive understatement; I was lent it by a family member who wanted my opinion on the ‘Science’ parts. Theologically, this is a book in the much-parodied liberal Anglican tradition (Episcopalian for those in the US); people such as Karen Armstrong, John Selby Spong, Marcus Borg and J.A.T. Robinson feature notably in the bibliography. Obviously I do not propose to criticize it from a theological perspective; but I may have something to say about the ethical consequences of some parts.

Estranged Notions: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will: A Review of Alfred Mele’s “Free”

Today's post:

Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will: A Review of Alfred Mele’s “Free”

Feser attacks a strawman here by focusing on Libet's original experiments only, and completely ignoring the subsequent investigations along similar lines; the Wikipedia article Neuroscience of free will gives a useful summary.

The other issue of course is that “free will” is not exactly a well-defined concept, and “do we have free will” appears to be a wrong question.

(I hadn't previously noticed that Feser had written for that odious organ the City Journal, which seems to exist to distill out the worst of allegedly-‘intellectual’ conservatism and concentrate it in one steaming pile.)

Estranged Notions: Why Materialism and Dualism Both Fail to Explain Your Mind

Today's post:

Why Materialism and Dualism Both Fail to Explain Your Mind

While the previous article in this series was useful—not in the sense of having correct and applicable positions, but in the sense of putting up clear targets to demolish—this one simply descends back into drivel by not merely failing to justify its position but actually resorting to the irrational and anti-intellectual appeal to “mystery”.

Estranged Notions: Whatever Happened to the Soul?

Today's (technically yesterday's) post:

Whatever Happened to the Soul?

You can probably guess the content from the title alone...

Estranged Notions: The Self-Defeating Argument About Intelligence

Today's post:

The Self-Defeating Argument About Intelligence

Estranged Notions: Exorcising Epistemology

Yesterday's post, in which Becklo fails to contribute anything meaningful to the debate on consciousness:

Exorcising Epistemology

Estranged Notions: Exorcizing the Ghost from the Machine?

Today's post:

Exorcizing the Ghost from the Machine?

This is a pretty good response to the recent drivel from Schultz about consciousness.

Estranged Notions: Atheism and the Personal Pronoun

Today's post:

Atheism and the Personal Pronoun

More lame attempts to ‘refute’ materialism using trivial arguments about consciousness.