War of the Worldviews - Where Science and Spirituality Meet -- and Do Not

Zusatztext 100368292 Informationen zum Autor Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow Klappentext Two bestselling authors first met in a televised Caltech debate on "the future of God," one an articulate advocate for spirituality, the other a prominent physicist. This remarkable book is the product of that serendipitous encounter and the contentious-but respectful-clash of worldviews that grew along with their friendship. In War of the Worldviews these two great thinkers battle over the cosmos, evolution and life, the human brain, and God, probing the fundamental questions that define the human experience. How did the universe emerge? What is the nature of time? What is life? Did Darwin go wrong? What makes us human? What is the connection between mind and brain? Is God an illusion? This extraordinary book will fascinate millions of readers of science and spirituality alike, as well as anyone who has ever asked themselves, What does it mean that I am alive?Perspectives The Spiritual Perspective DEEPAK Who looks outside, dreams; who looks within, awakens. -Carl Jung If it is going to win the struggle for the future, spirituality must first overcome a major disadvantage. In the popular imagination, science long ago discredited religion. Facts replaced faith. Superstition was gradually vanquished. That's why Darwin's explanation of man's descent from lower primates prevails over Genesis and why we look to the Big Bang as the source of the cosmos rather than to a creation myth populated by one or more gods. So it's important to begin by saying that religion isn't the same as spirituality-far from it. Even God isn't the same as spirituality. Organized religion may have discredited itself, but spirituality has suffered no such defeat. Thousands of years ago, in cultures across the globe, inspired spiritual teachers such as the Buddha, Jesus, and Lao-tzu proposed profound views of life. They taught that a transcendent domain resides beyond the everyday world of pain and struggle. Although the eye beholds rocks, mountains, trees, and sky, this is only a veil drawn over a vast, mysterious, unseen reality. Beyond the reach of the five senses lies an invisible realm of infinite possibility, and the key to unfolding its potential is consciousness. Go within, the sages and seers declared, and you will find the true source of everything: your own awareness. It was this tremendous promise that religion failed to deliver on. The reasons don't concern us here, because this is a book about the future. It's enough to say that if the kingdom of God is within, as Christ declared, if nirvana means freedom from all suffering, as the Buddha taught, and if knowledge of the cosmos is locked inside the human mind, as the ancient rishis, or sages, of India proposed, we cannot look around today and say that those teachings bore fruit. Increasingly few people worship in the old ways around the world, and even as their elders lament this decline, those who have walked away from religion no longer even need an excuse. Science long ago showed us a brave new world that requires no faith in an invisible realm. The real issue is knowledge and how you attain it. Jesus and the Buddha had no doubt that they were describing reality from a position of true knowledge. After more than two thousand years, we think we know better. Science celebrates its triumphs, which are many, and excuses its catastrophes, which are also numerous-and growing. The atomic bomb delivered us into an age of mass destruction that brings night terrors just to contemplate. The environment has been disastrously disrupted by emissions spewing from the machines that technology gives us to make life better. Yet supporters of science shrug off these threats as either side effects or failures of social policy. Morality, we are told, isn't the responsibil...

Product details

• Authors: Deepak Chopra, Deepak/ Mlodinow Chopra, Leonard Mlodinow
• Publisher: Harmony
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 02.10.2012
• EAN: 9780307886897
• ISBN: 978-0-307-88689-7
• No. of pages: 336
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 204 mm x 19 mm
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Miscellaneous