One of the more bizarre of modern phenomena is the rise of the rabid "anti-spiritualist".
They may call themselves atheists, skeptics, rationalists,etc but their goal seems to be to destroy any notions of human (or other) spirituality which they class as "woo" (the equivalent of nonsense) in order to dismiss it and make any discussion of it seem as foolish.
Recently I have become aware that Deepak Chopra has, in particular, been singled out for great outpourings of hatred by these "anti-spiritual" folks. They claim he is guilty of the great crime of being "pseudoscientific" because he uses scientific sounding words like "quantum" in a context they disapprove of. And in so doing so he promotes the idea that we have greater power over our own health and life (through the power of our consciousness) than conventional materialistic thought would suggest.
For this crime he is viciously attacked and vilified with no mercy.
I find this all quite bizarre.
Consider this: those who identify as atheist or rationalist and who are, in fact, committed physicalists/materialists (believing that only the physical level of existence exists) consider themselves the "rational" group.
Clearly this cannot be the case as their comments show they are, in fact, driven by blind fury, instead. To see this in action just read the comments section below a popular Deepak Chopra YouTube video. You will see that these "haters" who think themselves "rational" are driven by blind emotionalism
rather than anything resembling logic, rationality (or maturity).
When I visualise this group I imagine angry teenage boys and young men with the emotional maturity of teenage boys. This is because of their complete lack of social skills or perspective. They are rude, dismissive and judgmental like ill-tempered young boys.
This is a shame and it does the secular movement no good at all. After all, many in the anti-religion/secular movement are reasonable human beings. And yet, the absolute preponderance of ill-mannered and rude adherents gives their movement a very poor name, indeed!
They may call themselves atheists, skeptics, rationalists,etc but their goal seems to be to destroy any notions of human (or other) spirituality which they class as "woo" (the equivalent of nonsense) in order to dismiss it and make any discussion of it seem as foolish.
Recently I have become aware that Deepak Chopra has, in particular, been singled out for great outpourings of hatred by these "anti-spiritual" folks. They claim he is guilty of the great crime of being "pseudoscientific" because he uses scientific sounding words like "quantum" in a context they disapprove of. And in so doing so he promotes the idea that we have greater power over our own health and life (through the power of our consciousness) than conventional materialistic thought would suggest.
For this crime he is viciously attacked and vilified with no mercy.
I find this all quite bizarre.
Consider this: those who identify as atheist or rationalist and who are, in fact, committed physicalists/materialists (believing that only the physical level of existence exists) consider themselves the "rational" group.
Clearly this cannot be the case as their comments show they are, in fact, driven by blind fury, instead. To see this in action just read the comments section below a popular Deepak Chopra YouTube video. You will see that these "haters" who think themselves "rational" are driven by blind emotionalism
rather than anything resembling logic, rationality (or maturity).
When I visualise this group I imagine angry teenage boys and young men with the emotional maturity of teenage boys. This is because of their complete lack of social skills or perspective. They are rude, dismissive and judgmental like ill-tempered young boys.
This is a shame and it does the secular movement no good at all. After all, many in the anti-religion/secular movement are reasonable human beings. And yet, the absolute preponderance of ill-mannered and rude adherents gives their movement a very poor name, indeed!