Stupidity Running Ramthant

This sort of rant shouldn't have to be written. It's been done before I-don't-know-how-many times, by I-don't-know-how-many better thinkers than me.

If there's one thing that pisses me off, it's New Age claptrap. Let me rephrase that: it pisses me off when New Age claptrap claims to be somehow superior to contemporary science. In reality, such talk often betrays a complete misunderstanding of science. What's especially disturbing about it is its popularity, sort of a Scientology Lite.

Case in point: Water, a documentary film about the substance. In the trailer, our announcer tells us (in deep, dramatic tones, of course) about how essential water is for life and how we the people have so many different uses for it. True enough. But - and here's where the credibility gap yawns wider than the Grand Canyon - he informs us that water "acts outside all physical laws of nature." (Seek to 1:00 if you don't believe me.)

Acts outside all physical laws of nature? Holy Trevi fountain, Batman! You're playing with fire! It's such an obvious fallacy, I'd be surprised if nobody pointed it out.

Have the filmmakers ever heard of fluid mechanics? Apparently not.

Do they have a perspective on what "physical laws of nature" means? Nope. Physical laws are those regularities which govern the behavior of matter. It's the way things are - nature.

Water is about as natural as can be: hydrogen, oxygen. Physical elements. And the relations among the atoms are as common as can be. You can find this stuff in any chemistry book. True, water does have remarkable properties, but supernatural? Come on! If you really believe water defies all physical laws, you don't know anything about fluid mechanics (see above), you haven't opened your eyes to the plain facts around you, and you probably also think bumblebees defy the laws of aerodynamics.

Do the filmmakers understand what science is all about? Not in the least. To say water acts outside all physical laws is to presuppose we understand everything there is to know about physics. But we don't. If you think science is a finished product, think again. Science is a form of inquiry, making rigorous use of the same forms of reasoning that every human being has in their noggin. It is not the body of knowledge that results from inquiry, it is the process itself. What that means is knowledge evolves over time. Einstein's theories of relativity - do they overturn science? Of course not, they're products of scientific inquiry. And that inquiry is highly rigorous, not to beat you down but to identify and test factors of an event.

What this means is, science generally takes baby steps. That manifests itself in at least two ways. (a) Relatively slow progress. Those baby steps may accumulate in a giant leap forward in an overall theory, but you can't forgo the baby steps on that account. We're making much more progress now than before, but that's because we've honed the technique, we're training to do research, and doing a lot more of it now than before. Oh yeah, and we've got more people to do it - overpopulation has its upside. (b) Relative ignorance. We don't know the half about the physical universe. Seasoned scientists are painfully aware of this, which is why they keep doing research.

So - is water a wonderful substance? Yes. Has it got strange properties? Sure. Is it magical? I don't think so. The hyperbolic gobbledygook that productions such as Water purvey is the kind of thing that makes scientists look kind of laughable, when they deserve a lot of respect. I don't deny that there is a mystical dimension to scientific inquiry - far from it, I think science does bring us closer to huge questions of cosmological and theological import. I'm simply annoyed when somebody reads a few pop-science books and concludes that they know What It's All About. It pisses me off that they think their armchair's a better place to see these things than in the trenches. That's pretty damn arrogant.

Think I'm exaggerating? These are the same folks who made the annoyingly-titled What the Bleep Do We Know!?, and they're members of Ramtha's school of enlightenment. What do we know? Well, sit back and let Ramtha tell you.

What does our friend Ramtha say? "You are God."
What do I say? "That is Horseshit."

"God" is a highly vague name, and there are numerous ways to interpret it, but it's practically impossible to avoid the sense of somehow being superior to all else. What's a God worth if (s)he can't beat Mother Nature? If the filmmakers are going to attribute supernatural powers to water, how much more to themselves?

"Oh, but it's not just us; you too are God." Of course!

See? I make water!

Dude, spare me; calling any one of us God - calling all of us God, for that matter - is an insult to God.