In a recent lecture, Deepak Chopra - a physician turned popular new age guru - had this to say about belief:
“Belief is a cover-up for insecurity. We only believe in things we’re not sure of. You don’t have to ask me to believe in the laws of gravity or electricity, so why should I have to believe in God if God is real? If we have faith in the religious experiences of the great founders of the world’s religions, like Christ or Buddha or the many other luminaries, then we must ask ourselves, ‘Can I have the experience on which this faith is founded?’” [source]
And here is what one person asked in response to what Chopra believes about belief:
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/qySx8tSs8BQ&hl=en_US&fs=1?rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999(hat tip to Aggie Catholic and Beckwith for the clip)
Despite the astuteness of that member of the audience and the fact that most children would have caught the same contradiction, somehow there are still many “educated” adults that fall for this stuff. Very sad, indeed.
What’s almost as disappointing is that this is the kind of nonsense that passes for nonsense these days. At least in the old days it seems like nonsense had to meet some kind of standard. These days it’s like they’ll let just about anybody make a living being a heretic.
There is some comfort in these modern day religious fads, though. Whether it is various aspects of protestantism, a new atheism, or some new age profundity, they are all just new dogs learning old tricks…young pups caught up in a perpetual cycle of canine procreativity. Chesterton had the perfect quote in his day. And it is just as true today:
“At least five times with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist sceptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died.” - G. K. Chesterton
I love being Catholic.