Yes, it’s still going. If you have been following this series, I advise you to wash your hands before reading any further. Your palm is likely to land with some impact on your forehead in the course of reading this.
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One of the major, and frequently repeated pieces of evidence that Lipton cites for his ideas was the case of a man who, in the 1880s, drank cholera-infected water and lived. I covered it rather dismissively and, it turns out, all too briefly.
A new review of Lipton’s book by Jakub Micko deals in more detail with this important aspect of Lipton’s claims and, as those who are familiar with Lipton will already be suspecting, it completely demolishes Lipton’s argument.
…
First, we can recall Lipton’s account:
One of [Robert] Koch’s critics was so convinced that the Germ Theory was wrong that he brazenly wolfed down a glass of water laced with vibrio cholerae, the bacteria Koch believed caused cholera. To everyone’s astonishment, the man was completely unaffected by the virulent pathogen. (p. 125)
Lipton continues to claim that science has dogmatically accepted Koch’s (and Pasteur’s) germ theory, and failed to research why this man was “completely unaffected”.
If it is claimed that this bacterium is the cause of cholera and the man demonstrates that he is unaffected by the germs. . .how can he be “incorrect?” Instead of trying to figure out how the man avoided the dreaded disease, scientists blithely dismiss this and other embarrassing “messy” exceptions that spoil their theories. Remember the “dogma” that genes control biology?
Lipton returns to this incident repeatedly throughout the book.
…
And now, Jakub Micko’s account of what happened to this man, whom Jakub has identified as one Max von Pettenkofer. (Lipton failed to identify him.)
If he [Lipton]had done more research he would have learnt Pettenkofer did get violent diarrhea and likely didn’t die because he had cholera as a child thereby having protection…
Be still my face-palming hand…
….So Pettenkofer “avoided the dreaded disease” because he was immune. And he was “completely unaffected” as long as you don’t consider “violent diarrhea” to be a noteworthy symptom.
Jakub very kindly shared the source for this information in a commenton one of my reviews. The article(from a Munich university’s history of science archive) states:
[Pettenkofer] stubbornly refused to accept that the bacterium Vibrio cholerae – identified in 1884 by his rival Robert Koch – was the sole cause of cholera. In his own work, he placed far greater emphasis on non-biological factors, such as soil type and the nature of the groundwater reservoir. This is the context in which, some years after Koch’s discovery of the real culprit, Pettenkofer drank the draught mentioned above. Fortunately, it resulted only in a violent bout of diarrhea. Most probably, he escaped more serious damage because he had been infected with V. cholerae as a child and retained sufficient immunity to the bacterium.
Clearly Pettenkofer was being dogmatic, and immediately got violent diarrhea because of it and maybe learned his lesson. But 140 years later, Lipton is still babbling dogmatically about it, though noticeably without drinking cholera to prove it.
Lipton claims that:
(a) scientists accept germ theory merely out of dogmatism (b) scientists refuse to research this incident (c) if scientists did research it, they would find that Pettenkofer’s case supports Lipton’s claim that the mind can somehow — he never says exactly how — overcome cholera; and (d) that this supports his more general claim that thoughts can somehow — he never says exactly how — heal many other illnesses too.
As shown above, scientists did in fact research it, and Lipton didn’t. And their research showed that Lipton’s hero merely demonstrated immunity in accordance with modern virology, and got a fully deserved bout of violent diarrhoea while doing it. Well done yet again Dr Bruce.
…
Koch’s brilliant work has since been easing suffering, preventing illness and saving millions of lives. Here in Germany the Robert Koch Institute has been advising the government on how to deal with the coronavirus and has been, by all reasonable standards, highly effective. Dr Bruce Lipton, however, with his Ph.D in cell biology, still thinks Robert Koch was wrong and is still using this 140 year old case of diarrhoea to support his claims.
Lipton’s deadly and insanely stupid quackery is far more dangerous for people hoping to avoid illness with COVID-19 than is his cancer quackery. Cancer sufferers at least have a chance of protecting themselves if they can read the book critically or do some research. The friends, family and neighbours of Lipton fans however, have no such protection.
…..”I had coronavirus and I was completely unaffected. I could travel on buses and trains, eat in restaurants and visit friends for a week or so, and then I decided to lie down on my stomach and gulp for air for a few days, but I had no symptoms at all. Sadly my weak neighbours must have believed in the virus because so many of them are now sick or dead.”
I have noticed an up-tick in people looking for information on Bruce Lipton and I assume this must have something to do with the Coronavirus and COVID-19. A brief check and I see that he is indeed contributing his ideas to the discussion. Clearly many people are trying to figure out if there is any merit to his claim that you can use thoughts to “control your biology”, so I will offer a brief summing up of my exhaustive 77 post review of his book The Biology of Belief.
…
Sadly, Lipton’s book The Biology of Belief fails entirely, and in the most ridiculous manner, to provide any support for his claims. It is baffling that someone with a Ph.D in biology can get so much basic factual information in his chosen field so wrong. Worse, the argument that he constructs doesn’t even connect up with the case he is trying to make. Unsurprisingly, the result is so incoherent, contradictory, and confusing that even Lipton frequently confuses himself and forgets what his own teachings are, and more than once winds up demolishing the case he was trying to make.
In order to make the summary that follows a little clearer, I will start with an analogy.
Lipton — a cell biologist who once co-authored a highly technical research paper — is like someone with a detailed knowledge of a particular New York subway station. He knows all the exits, all the stairways and passages, the dimensions of the platforms, and even has a detailed knowledge of the door-opening mechanism on the trains. After talking about all this, authoritatively and in exhaustive detail, he suddenly claims that you can take the Number 27 line and travel directly to a particular station in Paris….. Or Mars…. It’s all possible, thanks to quantum physics and epigenetics.
Our subway expert has gotten horribly confused as soon as he tries to switch from one level to another, and steps outside his narrow field of expertise.
That may sound like I’m exaggerating, but Lipton’s errors are indeed of such orders of magnitude. He proposes that cells, (the subway station in the analogy), are each individually controlled by the brain and can be ordered to start, stop, do this, do that, simply by thinking about it. This is because each cell has its own brain, which is somehow — he never says how — connected directly to the brain in your head.
So you can drink typhoid-infected water, and if you don’t believe you’ll contract typhoid you won’t. As proof, he repeatedly tells of a man in 1880 who drank typhoid and was “completely unaffected”, as he did not believe in the existence of the germs. Lipton uses this case to attack biologists:
Instead of trying to figure out how the man avoided the dreaded disease, scientists blithely dismiss this and other embarrassing “messy” exceptions that spoil their theories.
But Lipton does not identify the man or provide any references. In fact, the man was a certain Max von Pettenkofer, and although he really did consume typhoid bacteria, Lipton gets every other detail about it wrong. Scientists did not “blithely dismiss” this incident, but rather studied it more thoroughly than Lipton himself did. And Pettenkofer was not “entirely unaffected”, but became severely ill, suffered from what medical historians report as “violent diarrhoea”. And it wasn’t “mind over matter” that stopped him dying, but rather, the fact that he had already had typhoid as a child and was probably still partially immune.
This kind of mistake happens to Lipton several times in the book– he cites a case, gets the details completely wrong, and correcting the mistakes shows the case to demolish the claims he was trying to support. But his audience won’t know, unless they research the whole thing themselves. A complete failure for Lipton, and a deadly mistake for those who don’t realise he is often lying to them and concealing the checkable details, or simply too stupid and ignorant to realise how far out of his depth he is.
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And yes, Lipton really does claim that each cell in your body literally has its own brain. His proof of it is the spectacular centre-piece of his book. It’s one of many places where he, the self-proclaimed founder of a New Science, “over-turns mainstream biology”.
Mainstream biology, Lipton explains, believes that the brain of the cell is the nucleus. You see, the cell is a tiny image of a human being, with its own nutritive system, waste-removal system, and all the other things that an individual person has. Biologists of course, do not believe anything of the sort. Biologists do not think the cell has a brain. It is embarrassing even to have to point this out. The human brain of course has about 86 billion cells, with about 300 trillion connections, making it the most complex thing in the known universe. A single cell is indeed complex. Nevertheless, it is still at least 300 trillion times less complex than your brain. Isn’t it….
And of course, no structure in the cell is functionally similar to the brain. What’s more, just because you draw analogies between certain parts of the cell and certain parts of the body as Lipton does, it does not mean that all parts of the cell must therefore have all the characteristics that a human being has — as Lipton idiotically assumes. (Here Lipton gets a basic biological concept, homology, completely wrong by confusing it with “analogy”.)
But okay, let’s give the guy a chance. We will follow him as he attempts what he hopes is the spectacular central argument of his book.
What would happen, Lipton asks, if someone were to have their brain removed? Of course, they would immediately die. Therefore, according to modern biology, if you remove a cell’s brain, the cell will die too.
Lipton:
In retrospect, scientists should have known that genes couldn’t provide the control of our lives. By definition, the brain is the organ responsible for controlling and coordinating the physiology and behavior of an organism. But is the nucleus truly the cell’s brain? If our assumption that the nucleus and its DNA-containing material is the “brain” of the cell, then removing the cell’s nucleus, a procedure called enucleation, should result in the immediate death of the cell.
And now, for the big experiment… (Maestro, a drum roll if you please).
The scientist drags our unwilling cell into the microscopic operating arena and straps it down. Using a micromanipulator, the scientist guides a needle-like micropipette into position above the cell. With a deft thrust of the manipulator, our investigator plunges the pipette deep into the cell’s cytoplasmic interior. By applying a little suction, the nucleus is drawn up into the pipette and the pipette is withdrawn from the cell. Below the nucleus-engorged pipette lies our sacrificial cell – its “brain” tom out.
But wait! It’s still moving! My God… the cell is still alive!
(Biology of Belief, p.64)
There are a large number of problems here.
As Lipton correctly points out, the nucleus is full of DNA. What biology would predict — and would have predicted since the late 1800s — is that if you remove the nucleus, the cell will fail to replicate. No biologist since that time would be in the least surprised by Lipton’s demonstration. There is even biological term, enucleated, for such cells.
This is a central argument for Lipton, and it has already failed. Biologists don’t think cells have a brain, not the nucleus, nor anything else. Therefore removing it and not killing a cell does not overturn biology. And far from being a revolutionary new discovery thanks to the brilliant Doctor Lipton, it is a procedure that is carried out routinely and even has its own wikipedia page.
But Lipton is so excited about all this that he wants to push it even further, and “solve” the next (completely non-existent) problem: what, then is the brain of the cell?
Let’s put the membrane to the same “brain” test to which we put the nucleus. When you destroy its membrane, the cell dies just as you would if your brain were removed.
The above footage is of membrane-less cells extracted from a fruit fly embryo.
Let’s put this clearly. Lipton fabricated the idea that biologists think cells have brains. He then fabricated the idea that they think the cell’s brain is the nucleus. Wrong on both counts. Then he staged a demonstration to “disprove” the latter non-existent claim, according to his own entirely fabricated standards. And he failed.
He failed even by his own entirely bogus standards to disprove a claim he fabricated himself and attributed to his opponents.
And then he made it even worse, with another demonstration to “prove” his own entirely specious claim that “the membrane is the brain of the cell” and failed again — even according to his own self-defined and entirely fabricated standards.
For someone who thinks he’s knows so much more about biology than his colleagues, and that he is revolutionising their field and exposing them as dumb frauds, that is a spectacular degree of both ignorance and incompetence.
…
The main claim of Lipton’s book is that the mind, especially affirmations (mentally repeating “positive” words) can cure cancer. People who buy the book, including cancer sufferers hoping to cure themselves, assume he is presenting scientific evidence that supports this claim. But despite all the technical jargon, complicated babbling about cell biology and vicious accusations about “materialistic science” being nothing more than a blindly dogmatic ideology, he never in fact even attempts to back up that central idea. Instead he blandly mentions the idea in passing, and assumes that his readers already agree.
Even more bafflingly, he declares that negative beliefs held in the subconscious need to be consciously overruled or they will cause cancer. Here is the passage, on page 127.
You can repeat the positive affirmation that you are lovable over and over or that your cancer tumor will shrink. But if, as a child, you heard over and over that you are worthless and sickly, those messages programmed in your subconscious mind will undermine your best conscious efforts to change your life.
This is difficult to achieve as the subconscious is, he declares, “millions of times more powerful than the conscious mind”. He promises to outline a solution for this terrifying weakness:
We’ll learn more about the origins of self-sabotaging subconscious programming in Chapter 7, Conscious Parenting, and how to quickly rewrite them.
Sadly, he has talked himself into such a hysterical state of incoherent blithering, that by the time he gets to Chapter 7, he forgets to say anything about it. Luckily for him though, absolutely none of his readers have noticed this.
If you think I am exaggerating all this, go ahead and read the book! It’s all in there, albeit it in a form that is so incoherent and jargon-filled that nearly all its readers give up after a couple of pages and simply assume it says whatever they want it to say.
Or check what I’m saying by reading some of the 77 blogposts I wrote, going through the book page by page. He frequently tries to impress his readers by including lengthy blocks of highly complex lecture notes that seem to have been copy-and-pasted into the text. Readers glance at these and assume they must be the complicated scientific justification for his assertions — muscle reflexes in cloned endothelial cells, the evolutionary history of slugs, and the like — but they don’t link up at all with his arguments.
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Here is a very brief run down of a mere half a dozen of Lipton’s stupidest errors.
1. He claims that modern biology is an ideological dogma, blinded by an adherence to Darwinism. But modern medicine has little if anything to do with Darwinian evolution (with the obvious and spectacularly successful exception of immunology). He sides instead with Lamarck, in a controversy which flared up briefly in the 1870s and was decisively cleared up in favour of Darwin in the 1890s and confirmed by every single relevant finding ever since. And Lipton gets Lamarck’s ideas wrong, ascribing natural selection to Lamarck instead of Darwin.
2.He claims that something known jokingly in genetics as The Central Dogma is wrong. It is true that there are two versions of this: a good one, and an slightly simplified one which leads to some confusion as it doesn’t account for retro-viruses. Geneticists who are unaware of the better version sometimes get excited about “over-turning the central dogma!”, when really they’ve only shown the simple model to be outdated. Initially I thought Lipton was making this error in his book, and devoted two complicated blogposts to it. Given that quite a few geneticists have fallen into this trap, I was prepared to cut Lipton some slack on it, but then I realised he doesn’t know what the Central Dogma is! He thinks it’s genetic determinism. But this idea, associated with eugenics, was exposed as pseudo-science in 1930s. Later versions of it which accompanied the discovery of the structure of DNA were swiftly dispatched by zoologists who pointed out that even Aristotle’s biology 2500 years ago had a more complex understanding of the biology of behaviour!
…So that is what Lipton is referring to each of the dozens of times he complains about “genetic determinism”. (Even more stupidly, he commits exactly this error himself when he advises parents to toss their baby into a swimming pool and watch it instinctively “swim like a dolphin”. Don’t that! Your baby might instinctively perform the brachiatingmotion that looks like swimming, but it hasn’t developed the necessary musculature and will drown.)
3. He claims that it is due to fractals that the cell is a miniature replicate of a human being, with all the same attributes and skills. Fractals — repetitions of a form at various scales — does apply in the odd case, (for example one part of the lung is structured partly in such a manner), but it does not apply to whole humans, and doesn’t occur throughout the entire body through every scale! In the Middle Ages some theologians believed that male semen contains tiny little human-seeds that simply expand when planted in a womb, but there is nothing like this idea anywhere in modern biology, apart from Lipton’s weird notion that “the cell” is also such a case.
4. Lipton claims that modern medicine has refused to utilise advances in physics. I will simply invite the reader to recall any medical intervention they’ve experienced which involved some kind of a machine. (Lipton realises the absurdity of this claim himself when he includes a scan of a cancer tumour, but dismisses it as a “rare case” of medicine using modern technology.) Lipton himself mentions the discovery of X-rays in 1895, but fails to realise that where physicists swiftly lost interest in that particular phenomenon, medical science immediately began using it for diagnosis.
5. Lipton claims that the reason modern medicine rejects modern physics is because biology is ideologically committed to “Newtonian physics”. Baffling as this claim is in itself — the inverse square law of gravitation is rarely if ever invoked by medical practitioners — Lipton gets Newtonian physics wrong. He thinks it is “linear thinking”…
…and is incapable of dealing with any occurrence that is not sequential. By this measure, a map of the New York subway lines would have been too complex for humans to construct until the advent of quantum physics. (Yes, Lipton’s argument really is that simplistic.) Moreover, Lipton clearly never heard of Newton’s invention of calculus.
6. Even more stupidly — and this is really gobsmacking — Lipton thinks that this…
Figure from Biology of Belief, p.105
…is quantum physics.
Yes, that is really what he thinks quantum physics is! I am not joking!
And modern medicine’s rejection of it makes anything more complex than A->B->C is incomprehensible to a modern medical doctor.
And he pushes this stupidity even further of course, with an absolutely hilarious attempt at explaining the equation E=mc2. He fails completely, despite taking five runs at it, wherein he devises five different and completely wrong versions of it. Even that is too hard for him, and he is too stupid to realise — despite having dedicated the book to Einstein.
…
I am only scratching the surface of this man’s spectacular and hilariously stupid mistakes. But horrifyingly, the book is aimed at cancer sufferers who are often scared or desperate, and it is way too complicated for even his most loyal fans to penetrate beyond a page or two, so they take it on trust that cancer or any other illness can be healed via “mind over matter” as he promises.
Anyone who recommends this book has not read it. Any such person deserves to lose all credibility and never be trusted again on any matter pertaining to science, health, or reality. Nor should they even be trusted on information about alternative medicine, as Lipton’s descriptions of treatments like homeopathy, acupuncture, and all the other modalities he name-checks are just as inaccurate as his everything else!
I say to anyone who claims to have read this book and wants to defend it, go right ahead — comments are open. Otherwise stop recommending this deadly dangerous book.
To the dozen or so people who have somehow managed to keep up with this entire series, my sincere thanks and sympathy. I couldn’t have done it without knowing someone was reading it.
I might do one more post summing it up, and as a spin off project I might write about some the deranged lunatic scammers who wrote blurbs for this book, as long as its fun. This post is pretty dull. It’s Lipton’s big finale, but he fluffs it. I’m sure he was leading up to say that each human is like one cell in the whole collective body of the earth and that by transforming ourselves we can save the earth, but just forgot to say it. He still manages to cram in a few more of his extraordinarily stupid comound errors and says some more very silly things. And of course, the example he presents to make his in fact demolishes the case but he is too stupid to realise it.
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Now Lipton is going to try to prove that his “fractal evolution” not only occurs, but has more explanatory power than the neo-Darwinian modern synthesis (which includes Darwinian natural selection, plus population genetics). This will be difficult for Lipton. Every species on earth is a living example of tens of thousands if not millions of pieces of evidence for the modern synthesis, while for fractal evolution he hasn’t offered a single case, nor even said exactly what it is.
Nor for that matter has he said what evolution is — I spent more time explaining in the above parentheses than Lipton has said about it in the whole book, despite having babbled on endless about page after page, chapter after chapter. There is a reason for this omission — he doesn’t know what evolution is.
The exciting, esoteric world of fractal geometry…
Factual error. It’s not esoteric. Lipton thought it deals with “other dimensions” but it doesn’t and Lipton is a fool. It uses a different definition of “dimension” as noted by @sclmw in the comments to the previous post. As he points out (and as illustrated in the video he linked to, “fractals are a different way to describe dimensions where shapes can be defined as having a fractional number of dimensions.” (He has also written an informative article about how fractals are really used in geometry.)
Lipton’s sentence continues:
—…[fractal geometry] provides a mathematical model that suggests that the “arbitrariness, planlessness, randomness, and accident” that Mayr wrote about is an outmoded concept.
This both a factual error and a deliberate lie, and I covered it in post 72. Lipton pulled the usual Creationist trick of cutting off the other half of the quote. Mayr in fact continued to explain why in fact it isn’t random at all.
In fact, I believe it is an idea that does not serve humanity and should, as rapidly as possible, go the way of the pre-Copernican Earth-centered Universe.
Again, Lipton still hasn’t noticed that natural selection involves selection, and thus is not random.
Once we realize that there are repeating, ordered patterns in Nature and evolution…
…which occur rarely and have nothing to do with fractal geometry except as an imperfect analogy….
….the lives of cells, which inspired this book and the changes in my life, become even more instructive.
Go on, Dr Bruce, tell us yet again why you’ve been inspired to live out your life your life like a bacterium.
For billions of years, cellular living systems have been carrying out an effective peace plan that enables them to enhance their survival as well as the survival of the other organisms in the biosphere.
Well that statement was pretty fucking goddam stupid, wasn’t it. Yes, he really thinks cells sat down and mapped out a peaceful survival plan using fractals and quantum physics while eschewing the neo-Darwinian modern synthesis.
Imagine a population of trillions of individuals living under one roof in a state of perpetual happiness.
I’ll cut half a page of rhetorical flourishes about the human body being exactly this population of happy cells.
This happy that Lipton keeps talking about is the “positive energy” of the law of attraction. It is also the reason that every single photo of Lipton that he has published shows him giggling in a strange and silly manner. Like all law of attraction fans, he thinks a good life is one where you are always just as happy as your liver cells are.
Clearly cellular communities work better than human communities— there are no left-out, “homeless” cells in our bodies.
Well go and join an ant colony then, Dr Bruce.
But for those who don’t want to be happy all the all the time, and who sometimes choose negativity, he has some terrifying news — CANCERRRRR!!!!!!!
Unless of course, our cellular communities are in profound disharmony causing some cells to withdraw from cooperating with the community. Cancers essentially represent homeless, jobless cells that are living off the other cells in the community.
Here’s a more accurate metaphor, Dr Lipton. Cancer cells are the ones who just don’t know when to shut up and switch themselves off. Just like you.
Then he veers off and recounts his idiotic version of the evolution of the cell — yet again. again. But this time he says that billions of years ago the cells started to run out of space, just like humans are today. He blabs on about this idea for half a page, crammed full of technical jargon, and then says this:
The end result was humans, at or near the top of the evolutionary ladder.
…Um, What? Read that again.
At or near the top of…??????????
Of course — if the non-existent evolutionary ladder exists, then it must also have some extra rungs!
And who will get there? Of course — it will be the gaggle of spiritual scammers depicted at the end of the previous post. But how will they get there?
Will it be by using Lipton’s fractal evolution?
Similarly, I believe that the stresses of the increasing human population will be responsible for pushing us up another rang on the evolutionary ladder.
How???
We will, I believe, come together in a global community.
How???
The members of that enlightened community will recognize that we are made in the image of our environment, i.e. that we are Divine…
What does that mean???
…and that we have to operate, not in a survival of the fittest manner, but in a way that supports everyone and everything on this planet.
How???
[New subheading] Survival of the Most Loving
How???
[Rhetorical question]…Isn’t Darwin right that violence is at the core of life?
Factual error. Darwin said no such thing. He studied the role of cooperation in evolution at great length. Lipton is 150 years out of date.
Isn’t violence the way of the natural world? What about all those documentaries that show animals stalking animals, animals snaring animals, animals killing animals?
Well that does actually happen, doesn’t it.
Don’t humans possess an inborn inclination to violence?
Yep, a primitive one, as well as a primitive inborn inclination to enjoy snuggling up to others and keeping warm. This really isn’t complicated, Dr Bruce.
The logic goes: Animals are violent, humans are animals, and therefore humans are violent. No! Humans are not “stuck” with an innate, viciously competitive nature any more than we are stuck with genes that make us sick or make us violent.
Lipton is very excited about this. Modern evolutionary theory is wrong, and his fractal evolution is right! And he is going to prove it by babbling at great length about a study by primatologist Robert Sapolsky.
We can skip it entirely though, because the study accords perfectly with modern evolutionary theory. It also has nothing whatsoever to do with Lipton’s ‘fractal evolution’.
He babbles incoherently for several pages about genes, and then finally gets to some concrete advice for how you can improve your evolution:
Join communities of like-minded people who are working toward advancing human civilization by realizing that Survival of the Most Loving is the only ethic that will ensure not only a healthy personal life but also a healthy planet.
Ahhh, yes, I guess that would fix it, wouldn’t it. Well done Dr Lipton, it was quite a struggle, but you got there in the end.
Remember those under-prepared, under-appreciated Caribbean students who banded together, like the cells they studied in their histology course, to form a community of successful students? Use them as role models and you will help ensure a Hollywood ending not just for individuals mired in self-sabotaging beliefs, but also for this planet.
What???
A Hollywood ending???
My goodness, I wasn’t expecting such high-flown rhetoric, but we are almost at the end now. Time for one final piece of advice:
Use the intelligence of cells to propel humanity one more rung up the evolutionary ladder where the most loving do more than just survive, they thrive.
And that’s the end of the book.
Isn’t it….
No it isn’t there’s a fucking addendum, isn’t there! Lipton just keeps babbling for another 10 pages…. but I won’t cover it. It’s just a long advertising screed promoting Lipton’s mate Rob, who runs the Psych-K scam — that mind/body technology that Lipton probably got scammed into buying shares in. Maybe I will write something about this Rob character if he’s ridiculous enough.
The End…
…kinda… unless do do some kind of summing up, but that could easily turn into another dozen posts, so maybe I won’t.
Welcome to the — really — second last post in this series.
Along with Lipton’s constant attacks on Descartes, “genetic determinism”, and “Newtonian” biology, (each of which he gets more or less completely wrong), the other great opponent he repeatedly singles out is Charles Darwin — and of course he gets all the fundamentals of evolutionary theory completely wrong as well.
Well maybe that’s not entirely fair. He did manage to get one aspect of natural selection half right, but he attributed it to Lamarck instead of Darwin. And had Lamarck really believe it, it would have demolished the rest of Lamarck’s theory, (a theory to which Lipton still ascribes).
So now it’s Lipton’s turn to out-do Darwin and the whole of modern evolutionary theory. He is about to map out his own ideas.
Fractal Evolution— A Theory We Can Live With
And with that sub-heading, it’s clear that Lipton has already made made his first factual error.Creationists always make this one too. He thinks the “theory” of evolution means “speculation”. In fact in fact it is “theory” in the same way that aerodynamic theory is theory — it’s a body of knowledge with practical application.
I’ve explained why I am now a spiritual scientist. Now I’d like to explain why I am an optimist.
(Anyone feeling depressed about the current state of the world avert your eyes now!)
The story of evolution is, I believe, a story of repeating patterns.
And with that sentence Lipton has demonstrated that he really doesn’t have a clue what evolution is. The entire point of evolution is that patterns get replicated with occasional error. Without, there is no variation, no new species, and no evolution.
We are at a crisis point, but the planet has been here before. Evolution has been punctuated with upheavals, which virtually wiped out existing species, including the best-known casualties, the dinosaurs. Those upheavals were directly linked to environmental catastrophes just as today’s crisis is. As the human population increases, we are competing for space with the other organisms with whom we share the planet. But the good news is that similar pressures in the past have brought into being a new way of living, and will do so again.
Ok… I guess the change from T-Rex to battery chicken could be called a “new way of living”, but I don’t think T-Rex’s would see it as “better”.
We are concluding one evolutionary cycle and preparing to embark upon another.
Factual error. There’s no such thing as an “evolutionary cycle”. And even if there was, it would not include “evolutionarily” getting hit by a giant meteor.
As this cycle comes to an end…
Factual error. Lipton thinks evolution is somehow pre-programmed or designed, as well as all being about humans.
…people are becoming understandably apprehensive and alarmed by the failures in the structures that support civilization. I believe, however, that the “dinosaurs” that are currently raping Nature will become extinct.
Yes, Lipton really thinks that “the dinosaurs” brought about their own destruction by “raping Nature”, and thus somehow attracting that meteor. He believes in the ‘law of attraction’.
The survivors will be those who realize that our thoughtless ways are destructive to the planet and to us.
Does anyone at all have the faintest idea what he is talking about? How will these “dinosaurs” kill themselves without killing the rest of us?
How can I be so sure?
Yes — HOW????
And here is his answer:
My certitude comes from my study of fractal geometry.
Um….. What?
Here’s a definition of geometry, which will explain why it is important for studying the structure of our biosphere.
And he’s off on another copy-and-paste lecture note rant, blabbering on at some length about Euclidean geometry, before telling us he didn’t need to tell us all of that because–
…Euclidean geometry does not apply to Nature.
Factual error. Yes it does. Or it can. When Eratosthenes calculated the earth’s circumference in 276 BC, using a stick and measuring the length of its shadow on the same calendar day first in Athens and then in Alexandria, he was using, effectively, Euclidean geometry.
For example, you cannot map a tree, a cloud or a mountain using the mathematical formulas of this geometry.
What??? Of course you can. It would just get very complicated.
In Nature, most organic and inorganic structures display more irregular and chaotic-appearing patterns.
Exactly. Like I just said — it would get complex, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t map out their structures. It’s just a question of what kind of resolution you want to go to. It couldn’t show atoms, but at that level you can’t see the structure of a leaf or whatever, either.
And how would being able to do this save the world from catastrophe?????
These natural images can only be created by using the recently discovered mathematics called fractal geometry. French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot launched the field of fractal mathematics and geometry in 1975.
Ok, maybe that would make it easier, I guess, but remember — it doesn’t just have to be better: it has to kill off the bad guys and let the good ones live as well! I have no idea where he is going with this or why he is even talking about it.
Like quantum physics, fractal (fractional) geometry forces us to consider those irregular patterns, a quirkier world of curvy shapes and objects with more than three dimensions.
What???? What the fuck??? Name a natural (or even Natural) object that has more than three dimensions.
And as noted, curvy shapes are not too “quirky” for Euclidean geometry. Anyway, here is Lipton’s explanation of fractal geometry. I know nothing about math, so I won’t comment on it. (Comments are open for those who do!)
The mathematics of fractals is amazingly simple because you need only one equation, using only simple multiplication and addition. The same equation is then repeated ad infinitum. For example, the “Mandelbrot set” is based on the simple formula of taking a number, multiplying it by itself and then adding the original number. The result of that equation is then used as the input of the subsequent equation; the result of that equation is then used as the input for the next equation and so on. The challenge is that even though each equation follows the same formula, these equations must be repeated millions of times to actually visualize a fractal pattern. The manual labor and time needed to complete millions of equations prevented early mathematicians from recognizing the value of fractal geometry. With the advent of powerful computers Mandelbrot was able to define this new math.
Inherent in the geometry of fractals is the creation of ever-repeating, “self-similar” patterns nested within one another. You can get a rough idea of the repeating shapes by picturing the eternally popular toy, hand-painted Russian nesting dolls. Each smaller structure is a miniature, but not necessarily an exact version of the larger form.
Here’s a video explaining this a bit more clearly than Lipton does. But note that while it shows nice harmonious patterns developing….
Screen shot from video showing a “stable” fractal (Source: “Numberphile”, linked above)
….it also shows how with a mere flick of the wrist, these structures also explode catastrophically!
Screenshot from video showing an unstable fractal ‘exploding’
Fractal geometry emphasizes the relationship between the patterns in a whole structure and the patterns seen in parts of a structure. For example, the pattern of twigs on a branch resembles the pattern of limbs branching off the trunk.
Ok, nice. And?
The pattern of a major river looks like the patterns of its smaller tributaries. In the human lung, the fractal pattern of branching along the bronchus repeats in the smaller bronchioles. The arterial and venous blood vessels and the peripheral nervous system also display similar repeating patterns.
What’s the point here?
Are the repetitive images observed in Nature simply coincidence?
Oh for heaven’s sake. What about all the images that aren’t repetitive???
I believe the answer is definitely “no.”
Oh my god. This is just an ‘Argument from Design’ from Medieval theology.
To explain why I believe fractal geometry defines the structure of life, let’s revisit two points….
Um, no, let’s not. Let’s cut this short.
If you fool around with fractals like the guy in the video does, sometimes you come up with something that looks like a fern. In other words, it is analogous to a fern. All it means is that if you want to draw something that looks like a fern using a fancy mathematical program; or if you want to do some rough calculations about the growth rate of a fern, fractal geometry might help you a bit.
It doesn’t mean that nature follows the laws of geometry. That’s what Plato believed 2500 years ago.
But Lipton is going to push on.
First, the story of evolution is, as I’ve emphasized many times in this book, the story of ascension to higher awareness.
Factual error #1: emphasising that it “is” doesn’t make it so. Factual error #2: as far as I can recall, he hasn’t made this claim even once in this book, let alone try to argue that it is! Factual error #3: evolution is driven by selection acting upon variations within a population. It does not miraculously “ascend”. Factual error #4: this idea is similar to but less sophisticated than the idea of Great Chain of Being or Scala naturae of Plato and Aristotle. The only people who support this kind of idea today are racists like David Duke and idiots like Bruce Lipton.
Second, in our study of the membrane, we defined the receptor-effector protein complex (IMPs) as the fundamental unit of awareness/ intelligence.
Indeed he did define it as that, but he initially put “intelligence” in inverted commas, and simply removed them, thus declaring the analogy real.
But go on, Dr Bruce.
Consequently, the more receptor-effector proteins (the olives in our bread and butter sandwich model) an organism possesses, the more awareness it can have and the higher it is on the evolutionary ladder.
This is just utter rubbish, even by Lipton’s own atrociously stupid standards. Ok, we can pretend cells can be “intelligent”. But that means that the cells themselves are all just as intelligent as each other. A liver cell in a mouse is not necessarily “more complex” than a liver cell in a human. This means that there is no “evolutionary ladder” among cells — neither in reality nor even in Lipton’s stupid version of reality.
However, there are physical restrictions for increasing the number of receptor-effector proteins that can be packed into the cell’s membrane….
And he’s off again on yet another cut-paste-lecture-note rant, with nanometers, phospholipid bilayers and Integral Membrane Proteins, and argues that cells needed to get bigger to “expand their awareness”. And that this is the point of evolution.
Evolution, the expansion of awareness, can then be physically defined by the increase of membrane surface area. Mathematical studies have found that fractal geometry is the best way to get the most surface area (membrane) within a three-dimensional space (cell). Therefore, evolution becomes a fractal affair.
Let’s restate that: in the one or two cases where evolution might have involved a fractal increase in the surface area of a membrane, fractal geometry might be useful for calculating that increase. In all the tens of billions of other cases, it isn’t.
Repeating patterns in Nature are a necessity, not a coincidence, of “fractal” evolution.
That sentence is both meaningless and ungrammatical. Clearly this is all getting too fractal for Lipton’s editor.
The strikingly beautiful, computer-generated pictures that illustrate fractal patterns should remind us that, despite our modem angst and the seeming chaos of our world, there is order in Nature and there is nothing truly new under the sun.
But what about the way patterns explode? Maybe when the sun finally explodes that will also be fractal, but it doesn’t give me hope or mean that God designed it.
And then, incredibly, unexpectedly, Lipton states specifically the reason why he has been babbling on about all this, and why it gives him hope.
Evolution’s repetitive, fractal patterns allow us to predict that humans will figure out how to expand their consciousness…
Well, it has been said that a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education.
…in order to climb another rung of the evolutionary ladder.
And what will this super-race look like? Believe it or not, a rather odd bunch of spiritual supremacist con-men think this race already exists! Let me introduce to you your new spiritual over-lords!
Only three more posts to go in this series. I know I said that about 6 posts ago, but I mean it this time! All that’s left is some loose ends to tie up about how to get yourself reincarnated as a TV set; to be followed next time by trashing the last of Lipton’s many copy-and-paste lecture-notes-rants; and then finally dealing with some product-placement and cross-promotion he tacks on at the end of the book. on. And then we’re done!
But for now, Lipton is still hypothetically dead and trying to get himself reincarnated.
…
One of the repetitive themes of this book is how horrible it was of Rene Descartes in 1650 to say the body is a machine, and his accusation that modern biology is simply a continuation of that idea.
But then Lipton himself suddenly tells people to conceive of their own body as a television set!
For Descartes the soul had the qualities of being rational and immortal. For Lipton the soul is analogous to the single anonymous wavelength of a TV broadcast.
For Descartes the soul communicated with the brain by connecting with the pineal gland by means of a highly complicated anatomy, which turned out to be pure fantasy — which instantly sunk his entire theory. Had he studied the available anatomy books more closely, he would have instantly seen his error.
For Lipton the soul communicates with the body via “identity receptors” embedded in the cell membrane, which work like a TV antenna, and “download” the self into each of our 37.2 trillion cells. These are likewise pure fantasy, and likewise has immediately sunk his entire theory. But unlike Descartes, Lipton has a Ph.D. in cell biology, access to electron microscopes and all of modern technology, and also 450 more years of biological research than Descartes had. And yet he has made exactly the same kind of mistake.
And he hasn’t realised it.
Surprisingly though, Lipton does realise in the next page or two that his analogy of the body as a TV set is problematic. He introduced the idea that organs transplanted from one body to another continue to “download” memories and habitual behaviours from the soul(/TV broadcast) of the donor, and transmit these to the recipient.
The reported cases are of course entirely spurious — so recipients of pig heart valves need not worry about unusual behavioural changes. But the claim raises a problem for Lipton’s TV set = body analogy, because TV sets don’t “upload” the TV’s personal experiences and send them back to the TV station for storage.
To be fair, Lipton admits it:
While the TV analogy is useful, it is not a complete one because a television is only a playback device.
We haven’t quite gotten to the part where he says the above quote yet, but we can note it in advance. And we can ignore the routine factual error (of course it’s not a ‘playback device’) and note that this is an important problem for Lipton to solve. There’s a lot riding on this analogy. He’s using it to explain the (non-existent) transference of memories from a transplanted organ to the recipient, which he in turn uses as a “model” for immortality and reincarnation…. Which in turn seems to be an important aspect of his cancer quackery– you don’t really die; and you get a new body.
Even though the body of the person who donated the organs is dead, their broadcast is still on. They are, as I realized in my flash of insight while mulling over the mechanics of the cellular membrane— immortal, as I believe we all are. Cells and organ transplants offer a model not only for immortality but also for reincarnation.
He returns to his idea that the thing that makes a recipient’s body accept or reject a transplanted organ also “download” the soul of a person and all their memories and behaviours in the cell.
….Yes — Lipton thinks your soul is downloaded into each of the 37.2 trillion cells in your body. And each cell not only receives all of your memories and behaviours, but it can also transmit these back up to your brain. Remember that he thinks the brain connects directly to each of the 37.2 trillion cells in the body.
Ok, let’s grant him that the “identity receptors” do exist, and they do download (and upload) his soul and all its contents.
This means that if someone kindly donates a kidney to someone else, then part of the donor’s self will now be squished inside the recipient’s body, and will sit there, transmitting the contents of the donor’s soul to the recipient, and also uploading new information from the recipient to the donor’s soul(TV station).
And that proves reincarnation.
….Because….
Consider the possibility that an embryo in the future displays the same set of identity receptors that I now possess. That embryo will be tuned into my “self.”
……….Ummm…………… Ok. We’ve granted that the non-existent “identity receptors” do exist, and the soul is an entity that is simple enough to be picked up by them, if they are correctly tuned, and that this is such a simple process that organ donors also donate access to their soul as well the use of their heart kidney or pig’s heart and soul.
And now we are banking on the possibility that if an identical set of these (non-existent) “identity receptors” arise by pure chance, then…..
My identity is back but playing through a different body.
There are currently nearly 8 billion human bodies alive on earth today. The chance of one of them being capable of downloading the soul of Bruce Lipton is at the very least one in 8 billion.
If it was lower, then there would be cases of the same soul inhabiting two bodies, which thankfully doesn’t happen.
So Lipton has just demonstrated your *best possible* chance of getting reincarnated is one in 8 billion.
And that’s ignoring the fact that the mechanism that has to spontaneously generate for it doesn’t exist. …As I mentioned last time, Lipton’s analogies have not been kind to him so far in this book.
Sexism and racism become ridiculous as well as immoral when you realize that your receptors could wind up on a white person, a black person, an Asian, or a male or female.
Great, but what if they wind up on a sea slug?
Because the environment represents “All That Is” (God) and our self-receptor antennas download only a narrow band of the whole spectrum, we all represent a small part of the whole… a small part of God.
Christ almighty. He even fails at theology. “God” isn’t eternal and infinite, but so limited that He has to broadcast re-runs.
Another new Subheading appears out of nowhere.
Earth Landers
This is where he deals with the problem that TV sets don’t upload the TV’s thoughts and behaviours. He suggests another analogy:
So a more complete way of understanding our relationship to Spirit is to compare a human to the Martian rovers “Spirit” and “Opportunity” or the other NASA landers we have sent to the Moon and Mars.
This is just pure laziness from Lipton. Why the heck didn’t he just go with this analogy from the start? Anyway, he blithers on about the Mars rover for a while, explaining how it too has “senses”, but can also upload information and send it back to earth(/the soul). Thus:
You and I are like “Earth landers” who receive information from an environmental controller/Spirit. As we live our lives, the experiences of our world are sent back to that controller, our Spirit.
An “environmental controller/Spirit”.
So this is what Lipton means when he’s been saying “the environment” controls genes. Isn’t it?
But then the whole thing is dependent on your “identity receptors” getting replicated and attached to something in the first place. Then your genes — which according to Lipton must only carry the very basic outline of the body — don’t influence your character at all.
But in his excitement about epigenetics, he’s been constantly saying that the *thoughts of our parents* are also “the environment”, and they do affect our genes!
Then he adds Karma to the growing list of things that “identity receptors” receive and transmit:
So the character of how you live your life influences the character of your “self.” This interaction corresponds to the concept of karma.
…And this must also change the “identity receptors” themselves too, if it “changes the character of your “self”“. This is not going well for Lipton, but he blabbers on obliviously.
In the end, these cellular insights serve to emphasize the wisdom of spiritual teachers throughout the ages.
“Cellular insights”? What is he talking about? And whatever they are, they have nothing whatsoever in common with any spiritual tradition whatsoever. Then he suddenly blurts this out:
Each of us is a spirit in material form.
Hang on. What???? We’re a fucking Mars rover or a TV set. The only thing that makes us our “self” is some little non-existent antennas on our cells. On that model we are very clearly not “spirit in material form”.
Anyway, he’s done with TV sets and Mars rovers now. He’s going to try yet another analogy and see where it gets him.
A powerful image for this spiritual truth is the way light interacts with a prism.
No, that isn’t a powerful image for that “spiritual truth”. It’s not even in the same ball park. A prism is not light in material form. It’s fundamentally different from it. But there’s no stopping him now.
When a beam of white light goes through a prism, the prism’s crystalline structure diffracts the exiting light so that it appears as a rainbow spectrum.
Factual error. It refracts, not diffracts. (I spotted that all by myself! Yay!)
Lipton gives a garbled and totally inaccurate version of this phenomenon:
Each color, though a component of the white light, is seen separately because of its unique frequency. If you reverse this process by projecting a rainbow spectrum through the crystal, the individual frequencies will recombine, forming a beam of white light.
And then tries to relate it back to God and “identity receptors”:
Think of each human being’s identity as an individual color frequency within the rainbow spectrum.
So now the body is a prism and it separates out your unique wavelength/identity.
If we arbitrarily eliminate a specific frequency, a color, because we don’t “like it,” and then try to put the remaining frequencies back through the prism, the exiting beam will no longer be white light. By definition, white light is composed of all of the frequencies.
What on earth is this man talking about?
Many spiritual people anticipate the return of White Light to the planet. They imagine that it will come in the form of a unique individual like Buddha, Jesus or Muhammad.
Um, dude, in noneof the multitude of versions of Islam is Mohammad coming back.
However, from my newly acquired spirituality, I see that White Light will only return to the planet when every human being recognizes every other human being as an individual frequency of the White Light.
Somehow he’s gotten from organ transplants to this. I don’t know how, and neither does he.
He keeps on babbling until he gets to the end of the section. The next sub-heading starts in the next post. We are on page 193.
I really don’t whether Lipton really means to offer reincarnation as a cancer cure or not. What is clear is that he is advising his readers that death is really not such a big problem as everyone makes out. That is the attitude he expressed in the previous post.
Usually, when an author takes readers on a guided visualisation, they don’t suddenly spring on them an imagined experience of their physical death. But that is exactly what we saw Lipton do last time. He gave readers an analogy, whereby they were to consider their body a television set, with their “self” is the image on the screen. Next they were to imagine waking up one morning and finding their body dead. But no worries — the analogy would rescue them.
This is a stupid move at the best of times, but then he completely and utterly screwed up the analogy that was supposed to rescue them.
One of the strangest errors here was that half way through it he forgot that the TV set was supposed to be “the human body” and said instead that it was “the cell”. Okay, so now it’s only one cell that has died — not so bad. But then the human body is 37.2 trillion TV sets, and not one. And your “self” appears on every single one of them.
Then he switched back to the whole body being one TV set — and his readers are back to being dead again, and hoping for the analogy to rescue them. Which of course, it doesn’t. Lipton says that “you” are not the TV but the broadcast. But “you” think you’re the TV, because of your Newtonian dogmatism.
So the broadcast is “still present” in the environment, regardless of whether the TV is working or not.
Just as in the TV analogy, if my body dies and in the future a new individual (biological “television set”) is born who has the same exact set of identity receptors, that new individual will be downloading “me.” I will once again be present in the world.
That sentence, as it stands is — wonder of wonders — accurate, in the context. IF a new individual is born “with exactly the same set of identity receptors” then, yes, Lipton Mark II would indeed be among us again. And here’s the good news, if NOT, then no Lipton Mark II. The bad news: same for “you”: especially bad for those of Lipton’s readers wanting help curing their cancer.
Only Lipton could attempt to prove the existence of reincarnation by trying to cross the lowest possible bar, (by asserting that because an analogy can be made, it must be true), and then have the analogy blow up in his face.
But as always with Lipton, there are other problems. Lipton has a gift for these compound errors…. My god, how to unpack all this?
The “identity receptors” that Lipton claims are present in each cell, analogous to a TV antenna, don’t exist. So there is even less chance of an identical collection of them spontaneously being replicated in a fetus at the appropriate time. And that’s a good thing — imagine what would happen if this happened before the original was dead? What’s more, the idea that “identity receptors” could be replicated destroys something far more valuable even than eternal life: the uniqueness of each individual.
Anyway, this is Lipton’s view of the the human soul. It’s a broadcast that is always being transmitted — somehow, he doesn’t say how — into “the environment” until it is picked up by the appropriately tuned “self receptors”. No, not picked up, but “downloaded”.
Supporting evidence for my belief that an individual’s broadcast is still present even after death…
And of course, Lipton’s supporting evidence” is going to ruin the whole mess even more, and he won’t even notice.
….comes from transplant patients who report that along with their new organs come behavioral and psychological changes.
He cites the example of someone who had a heart transplant, and then started eating chicken nuggets, drinking beer and riding a motorbike. Of course, this is because the heart came from an 18 year old man who like beer and chicken nuggets and died in a motorbike crash… and who now finds part of his self suddenly existing again inside the rib cage of a middle aged woman. Such a comforting thought.
The accuracy of memories that accompany these transplants is beyond chance or coincidence.
Factual error. No they’re not.
One young girl began having nightmares of murder after her heart transplant. Her dreams were so vivid that they led to the capture of the murderer who killed her donor.
This is all powerful evidence for the science of the New Biology that Lipton is founding with this book. Or it would be if he provided the evidence, which sadly for the would-be practitioners of this New Science, he forgets to do.
It is worth pointing out too, that IF this evidence turns out to be bogus, then that means that organ transplants prove the exact opposite: that cells are interchangeable and not bound up with an individual person. According to this site, there are about 136,000 organs donated each year, so that must mean at least a million new cases of organ-transplant memories since Lipton wrote this book, and it would be a normal part of medical practice to deal with the phenomenon.
But for Lipton it’s real, and all that remains is to speculate about how it all works. He offers up the existence of “cellular memory” — introduced as always within a protective casing of inverted commas, which will be surgically removed once the notion has been established.
One theory about how these new behaviors become implanted into the transplant recipient along with the organ is “cellular memory,” i.e. the notion that somehow memories are embedded in cells.
What is going on here? The cells not only “download” the self with their (non-existent) “self receptors”, but they also somehow also record the memories that are stored among the 300 trillion neuronal connections in the brain.
In other words, as well as doing all the work of, say, a muscle cell in the left ventricle of the heart, that cell also has “self receptors” that not only “download” the “self” of that person, that cell also records *all* the experiences, thoughts, emotions, memories, fantasies, dreams and behaviours of that person — all while obeying its orders from the brain to ‘now, pump…now, pump… now, pump…” — because, remember the brain also has a direct line of communication to every cell in the body and can get it to change at will.
Okay, reading further, I realise I have that wrong. I’ve heard so much from creepy New Age healers in the past, that I thought Lipton was going to go down that path too. But he isn’t. And I will admit my error and let Lipton himself chastise me for it:
Yes, cells can “remember” that they are muscle cells or liver cells, but there is a limit to their intelligence. I do not believe cells are physically endowed with perception mechanisms that can distinguish and remember a taste for chicken nuggets!
Ok, so no cellular memory!
Wow. All you cellular memory healers out there, Dr Bruce Lipton Ph.D. dismisses your claims!!!
…
A quick search reveals this guy, “Dr” Alexander Lloyd, who bases his whole theory of health and illness on cellular memory. He likens cell memories to signals sent out by cell phones, which send these signals to the hypothalamus, whereupon a fear response closes down the cell. He says “If the cell remains in this closed state long enough, the odds skyrocket that it will unmask a disease gene….” Well Lipton would set him right on that. Cells don’t broadcast, rather they download!
Lloyd continues: “…In fact, Dr. Bruce Lipton says that this is the only way you can have a disease manifest in your life.”
This really is a microcosm of the whole massive scam. They cross-promote each other without even realise they hold completely contradictory views, even by their own hilariously stupid standards.
…
….Anyway, Lipton just cited two cases and two whole books arguing that “the accuracy of memories that accompany these transplants is beyond chance or coincidence.” How does it happen then?
Psychological and behavioral memory does make sense if we realize that the transplanted organs still bear the original identity receptors of the donor and are apparently still downloading that same environmental information.
“…if we realise…”?????
He means “if we agree for no reason…”
Even though the body of the person who donated the organs is dead, their broadcast is still on.
Well that’s almost what I just accused him of saying, except that the it’s even stupider. Instead of the cells storing the memories, they just “download” them from a central memory bank. But how did those memories get uploaded to the bank? And how do those memories then get transplanted into your immortal “self”????
The TV set which is your body, is now responsible for uploading your thoughts and memories and behavioural habits to the TV station!!!
Lipton actually knows what an epilogue is (even if he can’t decide whether or not to capitalise it or treat it as a separate chapter rather than a subheading). He even told his readers what an epilogue is: “An epilogue is generally a short section at the end of the work that details the fate of its character… in this case moi.”
But then he starts introducing new material — which doesn’t belong in an epilogue at all does it, Dr Lipton. You know that — remember?
So now, in the middle of the epilogue, he suddenly starts talking about human leukocytic antigens. Why? Because they are some kind of coating on certain proteins in the immune system. They detect foreign substances and reject them. They were discovered by researchers trying to figure out why some organ transplants don’t work — these are the things involved in rejecting an organ transplant.
Ok, but what has that got to do with anything?
Well, Lipton wants to make it clear to his readers that all humans are unique. Ok, but I learned that on Sesame Street. Why use something as complicated as human leukocytic antigens — of which absolutely none of his readers have ever heard — to explain such an obvious point?
Well, because he thinks that human leukocytic antigens….. Um…. Well…. Um….. I’d better let him explain it….
He treats his readers to yet another burst of copy-and-paste lecture babbling:
A well-studied subset of these receptors, called self-receptors or human leukocytic antigens (HLA), are related to the functions of the immune system. If your self-receptors were to be removed, your cells would no longer reflect your identity.
He blabs on about all this for another page and half, until he gets to the point:
So far scientists have never found two individuals who are biologically the same.
Lipton is very excited about this revelation. He babbles about it some more until he reveals a further revelation.
While scientists have focused on the nature of these immune-related receptors….
Bah– those dogmatic fools!
…it is important to note that it is not the protein receptors, but what activates the receptors that give individuals their identity.
Um….. Nope. And Nope, And WTF????
What is he doing? Is he saying that human leukocytic antigens give humans their sense of self?
No. No, he isn’t saying that. Rather he is saying that scientists, because of their materialistic Newtonian bias, believe that. Which they don’t. Of course they don’t. They do not.
Nevertheless, Lipton ascribes that belief to them, and then sets out in his usual brilliant fashion to refute that non-existent belief.
Each cell’s unique set of identity receptors are located on the membrane’s outer surface, where they act as “antennas,” downloading complementary environmental signals.
Factual error. What happens here is chemical reactions and not information transfer.
This is an important distinction, and Lipton, with a Ph.D in biology, should know it, and know that he needed to apply it here. But he didn’t. And it will derail the train-wreck he is attempting to pull off. (Trust me– that apparently clumsy wording is intended.)
These identity receptors read a signal of “self,” which does not exist within the cell but comes to it from the external environmental.
Factual error. Completely wrong. And they’re not identity receptors either.
As Wikipedia puts it: The immune system uses the HLAs to differentiate self cells [recognised cells] and non-self cells. Any cell displaying that person’s HLA type belongs to that person and, therefore, is not an invader.
But for Lipton, the receptors don’t do anything much at all. Rather all things in its environment are somehow marked self or non-self.
I think what has happened to Lipton here is that he noticed the terminology of “self” and “non-self” used in the literature, and gotten excited that it might be a good metaphor for something. Then before figuring out what that metaphor might be about, and how it might work, he forgot that it was only supposed to be a metaphor and started taking it literally.
I think that’s what happened to him.
Consider the human body a television set.
Um…… What??????? I wasn’t expecting that. What??????? What???????
You are the image on the screen.
Whaaaat????????????????????????
Um……………… Ok, so the TV is the body, and the ego, or the mind, or the “you” identity, is the image on the screen….
But your image did not come from inside the television.
Um, what? The image is on the surface, and being perceived by someone watching it from the outside, otherwise it’s just a bunch of flashing pixels.
Your identity is an environmental broadcast that was received via an antenna.
What? Your identity is the broadcast itself???? Then who is watching it???
One day you turn on the TV…
Who is “you” in this analogy???
Well, ok… I guess turning on the picture is analogous to waking up, is it?
…and the picture tube has blown out.
What?????
What is that analogous to???? Jesus Christ!!! Is this some horrific personality disorder????
Your first reaction would be, “Oh, #*$?!! The television is dead.” But did the image die along with the television set?
This is physical death!!!!
The TV set is the human body! He just said it a moment ago! You wake up and your body is dead! Holy shit! And how the hell did you wake up if your body is dead???? How did you wake up????
Um………. Ok, so your body is dead and the “you” that was projected on its screen is gone with it.
To answer that question you get another television set…
WHHAAAAATTTT???????????????????
It’s your body!!!!!! Your body is dead!!!!!!!! It’s DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How the hell are you going to walk to the TV shop, get another TV-body, and carry it home? Who or what is the “you” that does that?
….Ok, he’s done me. I wasn’t expecting anything as insane as this…. Thank god I’m not in a restaurant or I’d be looking up about now and seeing a row of concerned and puzzled faces staring at me.
Um… Well… Ok…. Let’s play along. You wake up and realise that your body is dead…. So “you” get another body somehow, from the TV shop — which I guess is your mother? Then what?
…you get another television set, you plug it in, turn it on and tune it to the station you were watching before the picture tube blew out.
I’m really quite speechless.
So your immortal soul is a TV station, and your body is interchangeable. In other words, your body is not unique at all. Not only is your body generic, but your fucking goddam immortal soul is generic as well!
So what the fuck happened to the uniqueness of your body?
He started off saying your body is unique, and he’s wound up saying it’s the same as a fucking TV set that can be thrown away and replaced with another one!
This exercise will demonstrate that the broadcast image is still on the air, even though your first television “died.”
No — your first television — your first body — didn’t “died” — it fucking died! It’s dead and dumped on the scrap heap. You don’t have a body. And your “you” has disappeared with it. That’s quite a predicament.
The death of the television as the receiver in no way killed the identity broadcast that comes from the environment.
No, you fucking moron, the “identity broadcast” came from a fucking TV station. And people built that — human beings. TV sets don’t build TV stations. And they broadcast exactly the same programs to millions and millions of TVs. To any TV that’s plugged in.
And that’s your soul, Dr Lipton?
And they don’t just broadcast to TVs. They do it so that human beings can watch the TVs. Who is the viewer in this metaphor, Dr Bruce???? Who????
Are the TVs simply watched by other TVs?
You haven’t thought this out very well at all, have you.
In this analogy, the physical television is the equivalent of the cell.
WHAT???????????????????????????
Read that again.
In this analogy, the physical television is the equivalent of the cell.
In this analogy, the physical television is the equivalent of the cell.
But you just said it was the body! At the start of the paragraph! — “Consider the human body a television set.”
That was 2 minutes ago and you wrote it yourself, you idiot!!!!
What the fuck. Okay. In this analogy, the physical television is the equivalent of the cell from now on.
So now your body is not like a TV set, but like a collection of 37.2 trillion tiny TV sets. Yes, that sounds much more sensible.
The TV’s antenna, which downloads the broadcast, represents our full set of identifying receptors and the broadcast represents an environmental signal.
Hang on, no. 37.2 trillion antennae download your soul into your body’s cells 37.2 trillion times and you, Dr Lipton, you experience your soul like that.
Because of our preoccupation with the material Newtonian world…
Now the guy who tells us that the human body is a bunch of TVs and the soul is an environmental signal set starts lecturing us about our materialism.
…we might at first assume that the cell’s protein receptors are the “self.”
No. No one has ever assumed that. NEVER. And not because of their supposed materialism.
That would be the equivalent of believing that the TV’s antenna is the source of the broadcast. The cell’s receptors are not the source of its identity, but the vehicle by which the “self” is downloaded from the environment.
And let’s look at that now. The “environment” — from where you “download your self” — is a TV station that broadcasts programs which are you self, but each program is unique, but can be picked up by any TV set — or rather 37.2 trillion TV sets which are identical and tuned to the same station, which is really you. You’re not the 37.2 trillion TV sets, and you’re not watching any of the TV sets — the programs can all experience themselves somehow as long as the TVs sets are all working. But if all the TV sets break down, “you” — the TV station — can walk down to the TV shop — your mother, who is not a TV, because TVs don’t give birth to other TVs — or maybe your mother is the factory that makes the TVs?…. You, the TV station, walk down to the TV shop to get another TV — or another 37.2 trillion TVs and plug them all in somehow, because that’s what TV stations do, and the picture, which you think is you even though you’re a TV station and not a picture, flashes back onto the screen, or onto the 37.2 trillion screens, depending on which paragraph you’re in.
When I fully understood this relationship I realized that my identity, my “self,” exists in the environment whether my body is here or not.
Right at the moment, Dr Bruce, my indifference to the existence or non-existence of your body is also increasing.
Just as in the TV analogy, if my body dies…
And now he’s flipped back to the TV being the body again, and not a single cell.
…and in the future a new individual (biological “television set”) is born who has the same exact set of identity receptors, that new individual will be downloading “me.”
So after Lipton’s dead, another body will be born and instead of being a unique individual with its own dreams and aspirations, it will start downloading the same old Station Lipton that is jabbering on here. That poor sod.
I will once again be present in the world. When my physical body dies, the broadcast is still present.
Yep, America’s Funniest Home Videos will still be jabbering on somewhere in the cosmos… But look at that again: “If my body dies, and a new individual is born with the exact same set of identity receptors…” Yes — IF. And given that there’s no such thing as “identity receptors” that broadcast won’t be picked up by anything at all. This is what happens when you try to use an analogy to get yourself reincarnated.
And worse still, come to think of it, the chance of another new baby Bruce/TV set with identical “identity receptors” being born is something Lipton himself precluded earlier with the fact that biologists have never found identical humans.
My identity is a complex signature contained within the vast information that collectively comprises the environment.
And with that, we can end on a rare happy note. While matter/energy can’t be destroyed, information, like the “complex signature” of Lipton’s soul, can — and indeed will — be obliterated with no problem at all.
Lipton has been building up to this. I mean, how could anyone use an affirmation to make them feel better about themselves without first debunking population genetics and the neo-Darwinian synthesis?
As I’ve all too frequently mentioned, Lipton promised to explain how to overcome the problem that the subconscious is (according to him) “millions of times more powerful than the conscious mind”, and will derail any affirmation you throw at it. He has of course, located a serious difficulty with affirmations. Saying something like I trust in the process of life. I am safe, to yourself can merely confirm the existence of fears about the future. You can wind up denying the feelings, while also cementing them in place, rather than learning to deal with them and allowing them to change.
Lipton, to his credit, is one of very few New Age authors who highlights this danger even to the point of vastly overstating it.
But not so much to his credit is that his solution so far has been to tell people to start dealing with it while they’re still in the fetal stage. That really hasn’t been much help to anyone.
And now he adds another solution — to attack Charles Darwin.
…
He continues his history of science from last time.
If the Spirit/ Science split needed any more reinforcement, it got it in 1859 when Darwin’s theory of evolution made an instant splash.
This is only true if one accepts Descartes belief that spirit and matter are split in the first place, and Lipton does accept that, though he thinks he’s against it. It is not true if one accepts the Romantic philosophers’ ideas about spirituality residing in the wildness of nature, rather than the authoritarian, hierarchical creator/designer God of Descartes and Lipton.
Moreover, many theologians accepted evolution as a fact, and realised they’d be better off embracing it rather that fighting it. (By a nice coincidence, 1859 was not only the year Darwin published The Origin; it was also the year that the Catholic Church removed Copernicus from their banned books list.)
Darwin’s theory spread across the globe like today’s Internet rumors.
Factual error. It spread because biologists realist it explained a vast amount of otherwise puzzling phenomena. Aka Occam’s razor.
It was readily accepted because its principles dovetailed with people’s experiences in breeding pets, farm animals and plants.
Half true at best. But Lipton fails to say that Darwin said instead of a farmer selecting which animals to breed, nature itself does it. Darwin realised that such natural selection is merely much slower than artificial selection, not goal directed in the manner imagined by creationists (i.e. nearly everyone) until then.
Darwinism attributed the origins of humanity to the happenstance of hereditary variations, which meant that there was no need to invoke Divine intervention in our lives or our science.
Utter rubbish. Lipton is an ignoramus.
Factual error #1: Darwin didn’t know about genetics or random mutation.
Factual error #2: Lipton leaves out natural selection, without which evolution would not occur — there would just be random variation within species. This is a rookie error made by all Creationists, but Lipton is an even bigger dimwit, as he actually knows about natural selection. In fact he already mentioned it — but he ascribed the idea to Lamarck instead of Darwin. The useless idiot.
Modern scientists were no less awed by the Universe than the cleric/ scientists who preceded them, but with Darwin’s theory in hand they no longer saw a need to invoke the Hand of God as a grand “designer” of Nature’s complex order.
Again, having left out non-random natural selection — i.e. Darwinism — Lipton makes scientists look like dogmatists following some vague unidentified ideology.
Preeminent Darwinist Ernst Mayr wrote: “When we ask how this perfection is brought about, we seem to find only arbitrariness, planlessness, randomness, and accident…” [Mayr 1976]
As always, for every quote used by a Creationist, there is an equal and opposite rest of the quote. Mayr was not conceding the point but rather setting up an explanation for how the appearance of design arises so compellingly in nature.
The fact that Lipton has dug out the quote and then misrepresented it, shows that in this instance he is clearly lying.
While Darwinian theory specifies that the purpose of life’s struggles is survival…
Factual error. Reproduction is more important from a gene’s point of view than survival. A peacock’s tail-feathers are not much use for avoiding foxes. Every single biologist on the planet — bar one — knows this.
And that utterly stupid error of the most basic biology invalidates the rest of the sentence, and every other sentence for the rest of this epilogue.
[While Darwinian theory specifies that the purpose of life’s struggles is survival,] it does not specify a means that should be used in securing that end.
WHAT???????? Animals — individual animals — follow their instincts and whatever they’ve learned. They just live their life and don’t have anything personally to do with evolution. That all happens at the population level, over very many generations.
Apparently, “anything goes” in the perceived struggle because the goal is simply survival— by any means.
What an ignoramus this man is. He’s spent one third of the book attacking genetic determinism without knowing what it is; one third on quantum physics without knowing what that is; and the other third attacking Darwin without knowing what he said.
Factual error. Darwin never said that animals either do or should be focused on nothing but survival by any means. Why do some parents and some siblings sacrifice their lives for their kin? Darwin explains it. Why do some animals, even across species, team up and work together? Darwin explains it. Why are the males of some species so brightly coloured even though it attracts predators as well as mates? Darwin explains it. Why can we feel such a deep and mysterious kinship with our fellow creatures? Darwin explains it — all life is one. But that’s not good enough for Lipton who seems to have gotten his biology from Hitler, not Darwin.
Rather than framing the character of our lives by the laws of morality, the neo-Darwinism of Mayr suggests that we live our lives by the law of the jungle.
Again, utter rubbish. Mayr did not say that at all. Read the book you quoted from, dickhead.
Neo-Darwinism essentially concludes that those who have more deserve it.
And again, utter rubbish. That’s 1930s Social Darwinism, which was neither social nor Darwinian. The appalling eugenics from the early part of the 20th century was based on selective breeding not natural natural selection. It neither needed nor used any of Darwin’s actual ideas.
He goes on to blame Darwin for poverty and slavery, and then suddenly starts a new section.
We Are Made In the Image of the Universe
On that early morning in the Caribbean, I realized that even the “winners” in our Darwinian world are losers because we are one with a bigger Universe/God.–
Um… What??? So being one with the universe makes you a loser? I don’t think he meant to say that. His editor has obviously nipped out for a smoke.
He marches bravely on, stating that as a cell receptor receives a certain chemical, that means it is the mirror image of that chemical. Then he gets to what he calls his “aha moment”, though to everyone else it’s a “WTF??? moment”.
This means that every protein in our bodies is a physical/electromagnetic complement to something in the environment. Because we are machines made out of protein, by definition we are made in the image of the environment, that environment being the Universe, or to many, God.
This is one of the few clear pieces of logical reasoning in the book. And of course it’s utterly stupid. The first sentence again:
This means that every protein in our bodies is a physical/electromagnetic complement to something in the environment.
Factual error. Proteins don’t “complement” things in the environment. For everyone else, one’s own proteins are part of the environment.
Because we are machines made out of protein…
As Descartes would have said…
…by definition we are made in the image of the environment…
Factual error. Regardless of what the hell he means by that, proteins are not “in the image of the environment”. This is a protein:
Lipton’s image of God
In what way is that “in the image of the environment” for Christ’s sake?????
…that environment being the Universe, or to many, God.
Lipton has a special talent for errors of scale, and this is another big one. Okay, so your cheeseburger is God. Fine. Can we stop now?
No we can’t because having proven the Bible correct, Lipton goes back to attacking Darwin, this time for destroying the environment. He rants on for a while and then gets back to his cells again, and realises that individuals are unique. Yay! Another fact.
What makes each person’s cellular community unique? On the surface of our cells is a family of identity receptors, which distinguish one individual from another.
And then, believe it or not, he suddenly launches off on another copy-and-paste lecture-note rant. This is supposed to be the epilogue, summing up, not introducing vast swathes of new and complex information. He goes on for a page and a half using organ transplants to establish that people really are unique.
Yes — he was really talking about organ transplants to convince people that we are all unique. I won’t quote any of it.
And after he’s done with organ transplants, it all gets much weirder than I was expecting from this book. Much weirder.
Having initially expected to be finished with this series about 65 posts ago, and having expected to get through the Epilogue in post, I can now say, probably accurately, that the Epilogue will require three posts. This might also be wrong. Materialistic science still can’t explain how Lipton can get so many things wrong in such a small space. But with the concepts of quantum time dilation and quantum entanglement, physicists have shown….
He’s previously hinted at the contents of the epilogue: “I submit in the epilogue of this book that human intelligence can only be fully understood when we include spirit (“energy”) or what quantum physics-savvy psychologists call the “superconscious” mind.”
So that’s where he’s trying to get to. Maybe this “superconscious” mind will soon shed its inverted commas, enter literal reality, and solve that problem he forgot to fix up in Chapter 5 — how to stop the subconscious, “millions of times more powerful” than the conscious mind, from stopping affirmations from working and making his already useless affirmations even more useless.
And maybe not. Let’s see.
Deep breath. Cue Caps lock for some reason:
SPIRIT AND SCIENCE
He begins with a quote from Albert Einstein. Unusually for a spiritual book, it’s not an outright fabrication, but merely doctored to alter its meaning:
The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the power of all true science.
— Albert Einstein
The original translation was, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
So that’s only four significant alterations in the space of two sentences. Not bad, given the usual fun and games spiritual hucksters have with Einstein. (I won’t bother to chase up the original German, but will note that the differences can’t be down to language. The second is about inspiration and the creativity; Lipton’s subordinates science to the mysterious.)
We’ve come a long way since Chapter 1, when I faced my panicked medical students and started my journey to the New Biology. But throughout the book I have not strayed far from the theme I introduced in the first chapter— that smart cells can teach us how to live.
Not strayed far???? What the hell have epigenetics, quantum physics and affirmations curing cancer got to do with “smart” cells telling us how to live?
Now that we’re at the end of the book…
No we’re not — there’s still fifteen pages to go!!! On average that’s another 7 or 8 posts!!!! …Ok, I’ll calm down….
…I’d like to explain how my study of cells turned me into a spiritual person.
No it didn’t, it made you into a complete gibbering… Ok, ok….
I also want to explain why I am optimistic about the fate of our planet, though I concede that optimism is sometimes hard to maintain if you read the daily newspaper.
It is worth noting that the book is from 2004, and that elsewhere he predicted that the world would end in 2012, but that the catastrophic “final hoo har” (yes, that’s what he called it) would be a breakthrough experience, a paradigm shift, wherein all the good ones survive — just like a cancer sufferer needs to hit rock bottom before figure out how to defeat their cancer (using the techniques he forgot to explain in the previous chapter).
But anyway, on with Lipton’s message of hope.
I’ve specifically separated my discussion of Spirit and Science from the preceding chapters of the book by entitling this section the Epilogue…. When the awareness that prompted this book first came into my head twenty years ago, I saw something in it that was so profound it immediately transformed my life. In the first instant of my big “aha,” my brain was reveling in the beauty of the newly envisioned mechanics of the cell membrane. A few heartbeats later I was overtaken by a joy that was so deep and wide, my heart ached and tears flowed from my eyes. The mechanics of the new science revealed the existence of our spiritual essence and our immortality.
Yep, E coli is a many splendid thing.
For me, the conclusions were so unambiguous I instantly went from non-believer to believer.
One of the lamest appeals to authority (his own) that I’ve ever heard.
I know that for some of you the conclusions I am going to present in this section are too speculative.
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Conclusions drawn in the previous chapters of the book are based upon a quarter of a century of studying cloned cells and are grounded in the astonishing new discoveries that are rewriting our understanding of the mysteries of life. The conclusions I offer in this Epilogue are also based upon my scientific training — they do not spring from a leap of religious faith.
How the hell can you base conclusions on “scientific training” instead of science? We are about to see, I suppose.
I know conventional scientists may shy away from them, because they involve Spirit…
Indeed they do, because biologists spent at least 400 years looking for a life force. They made absolutely no progress whatsoever. Anyone who wants to start it all up again risks making exactly the same mistakes and wasting exactly the same amount of time and contributing exactly the same amount of nothing to science.
…but I am confident in presenting them for two reasons.
The first reason he gives is, bizarrely, Occam’s razor. We can skip over his explanation of it, to where he says:
The new science of the magical mem-Brain in conjunction with the principles of quantum physics offer the simplest explanation that accounts for the science of not only allopathic medicine…
Factual error. Most medicine and physiology deals with basic chemistry, not quantum physics. And of course, the cell membrane is not a brain, as Lipton himself already unintentionally established. (Recall that he argued that the membrane must be the brain of the cell as cells can’t live without a membrane. But he was wrong: they can. Thus even by his own strupid logic, the membrane is not the brain of the cell.)
…but also for the philosophy and practice of complementary medicine and spiritual healing as well.
Lipton, being an ignoramus, is trying to use Occam’s razor without knowing how to. It is not a giant dragnet that trawls the ocean floor for whatever it can pick up, but rather an incisive way of excluding unnecessarily complicated explanations. In every instance in this book, Lipton has ignored the simplest explanations, because they would have sunk his theories every single time. That’s what happened, for example, to his “proof” that the cell membrane is the brain of the cell.
Also, after so many years of personally applying the science I have outlined in this book, I can attest to its power to change lives.
Kinda vague for a testimonial, don’t you think? He recalls how–
…I ran wild-eyed into the medical library because the nature of the cell’s membrane that was “downloaded” into my awareness in the wee hours of the morning convinced me that we are immortal, spiritual beings who exist separately from our bodies.
This is Lipton using Occam’s razor.
I had heard an undeniable inner voice informing me that I was leading a life based not only on the false premise that genes control biology…
Well in this case, this mysterious source of information may have been telling him the truth. It is entirely possible that Lipton is such a moron that he was indeed living his life according to the utterly false and in fact meaningless idea that “genes control biology”. But where did he get that stupid idea from? Certainly not in any biology class.
…but also on the false premise that we end when our physical bodies die.
Factual error. The only people in the position to know whether that premise is true or not are dead.
I had spent years studying molecular control mechanisms within the physical body and at that astounding moment came to realize that the protein “switches” that control life are primarily turned on and off by signals from the environment… the Universe.
Again, an error of scale.
As vast an error of scale as can be.
The entire universe is not involved in switching on a gene. It can’t be. How can stars that blew up long before the earth was formed and whose light still hasn’t reached us reach down into someone’s kidneys or small intestines and flick a switch in a single cell, and then, in perfect sequence, flick another in another cell?
Who was it who was the first person whose mind was brilliant enough to conceive of the magnitude of Lipton’s error? Ah yes, Dr Einstein (to whom this book is dedicated!!!), and his relativity theory. Lipton, to his credit, has at least recognised some kind of affinity.
The fact that science led me to spiritual insight is appropriate because the latest discoveries in physics and cell research are forging new links between the worlds of Science and Spirit.
Factual error. He has tried throughout this book to say what he means by this and to give evidence for whatever it is, but as we’ve seen he’s failed in the most hilariously stupid and deadly dangerous ways every single time.
These realms were split apart in the days of Descartes centuries ago. However, I truly believe that only when Spirit and Science are reunited will we be afforded the means to create a better world.
Factual error. Descartes proposed that two otherwise separated realms (living spirit and inanimate matter) were in fact united in the human soul. Lipton is doing exactly the same thing. In fact it was Darwin who separated spirit from matter by relating biological adaptations to habitat rather than to God — thereby seeing nature as an autonomous kingdom, not slaves to a divine overlord; and not with one species closer to that overlord than another.
A Time of Choice
The latest science leads us to a worldview not unlike that held by the earliest civilizations, in which every material object in Nature was thought to possess a spirit.
Factual error. It doesn’t.
The Universe is still thought of as One by the small number of aborigines who survive.
Factual error. It isn’t. Sounds like Lipton read and believed Marlo Morgan, who invented her own tribe of “real” Australian Aborigines and said they believe in New Age divine oneness.
It should also be noted that a certain “relativity theory” by a Swiss-German physicist demonstrated that the universe is not “one” at all, and that there is no absolute space and time as Newton, Descartes, and all other believers in divine oneness, thought exists.
Aboriginal cultures do not make the usual distinctions among rocks, air and humans; all are imbued with spirit, the invisible energy.
Factual error. “Aboriginal cultures” is such a vague term that to ascribe attributes to it is pure racism — born albeit of even purer ignorance.
Doesn’t this sound familiar? This is the world of quantum physics, in which matter and energy are completely entangled.
Factual error. No it isn’t. That’s not what entanglement means.
Then attempts a brief history of the science/spirit split, but gets confused. Strangely, he blames Copernicus for separating science and spirit, but forgets to say why.
Then he gets to Descartes again, whom he does not recognise as the fellow into whose dualistic bed he has jumped.
A century later French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes insisted on using scientific methodology to examine the validity of all previously accepted “truths.” The invisible forces of the spiritual world clearly didn’t lend themselves to such analysis.
Factual error. In fact, Descartes invented a spirit world and then analysed how it connects with the physical body. But he made some foolish anatomical errors that immediately made all his speculations implausible. Just like Lipton has 450 years later!!!!!!!!!!
In the post-Reformation era, scientists were encouraged to pursue their studies of the natural world and spiritual “truths” were relegated to the realms of religion and metaphysics.
Factual error. Scientists were very often vitalists of some kind up until the late 1800s or so, for the most part. All avenues of inquiry were exhausted and contributed nothing to scientific knowledge. Just like Lipton 200 years later.
Ok, so I didn’t get as far through this as I thought I would. But at least we got up to the part where the final assault on Darwin is about to begin. It will be up soon.
Initially, I was expecting to do half a dozen posts on this at the very most. But here we are at post number 70, and well over 100,000 words (longer than the book itself!), and yet still only on page 178 of this stupid book. I contend that this is the only way to cover it. As evidence I cite the fact that while a few have criticised Lipton, absolutely no medical practitioner and no biologist have even attempted to recount his central thesis or explain any of his ideas. (Nor have his fans — they are equally baffled.) As we have seen, Lipton himself doesn’t know what his own ideas are and gets them wrong.
Thus I contend that I could not possibly have reviewed this book in any other way than quoting a chunk of it, and trying to figure what in god’s name he is really saying. In every instance, this has taken at least two and often four or five revisions before a long enough journey outside the ballpark could be made to identify his actual meaning.
And we’re still not done. But this post will get us to the end of chapter 5, which is also the end of the book, bar the epilogue, which we can get through in one more post.
Lipton, it may be recalled, has promised, at least half a dozen times at various places in the book, to clear up some loose threads in this chapter. The most important is a difficulty with using affirmations to cure cancer, which he explicitly identified, namely it doesn’t “always” work.
Of course, there is neither evidence nor any plausible mechanism by which affirmations can ever cure cancer. The technique could be a part of a stress management program and thereby have positive effects, but there are profound weaknesses in it too: dividing emotions and thoughts into “positive and negative” is infantile and inaccurate; and it can backfire as it can wind up implicitly reinforcing one’s psychological weakness.
Lipton, despite citing hundreds of studies, doesn’t deal with any such problems. (In fact he never even attempts to argue the case for using affirmations. Instead he assumes his readers use the technique and accept its efficacy as fact.) He identifies one problem with it, however: that the subconscious is “millions of times more powerful than the conscious mind”. This is what makes it look like affirmations don’t work. And this is why people give up “too soon” and become “positive thinking drop outs”. He is specifically referring to cancer sufferers with that. (He had just shown a PET scan of someone with a tumor on their breast.)
And he promised to explain how to overcome this problem in Chapter 5. So far he has only said that the problem can fixed in childhood by programming the fetus or even the gamete, to have only “positive” beliefs. With epigenetics. Somehow.
But for those who have already passed through the fetal stage and have read this far to find out how to cure their cancer, he has so far said nothing.
Has he simply forgotten what he promised them?
We’ll find out.
…
Lipton has been on a long-winded, non-sequiturial and environmentally deterministic rant about lack of touch being the cause of all violence. He cites about dozen studies.
These findings provide insight into the violence that pervades the United States. Rather than endorsing physical closeness, our current medical and psychological practices often discourage it.
Factual error. He provides not one example of a medical or psychological authority saying don’t touch your kids and don’t let them play. He is probably thinking of the 1930s, but maybe not. Who knows? Has anyone in their lifetime heard medical authorities in the US talking like that?
From the unnatural intervention of medical doctors in the natural process of birthing…
Again we see Lipton’s intelligent design creationism showing through: “unnatural interventions” in “natural” child birth. Had he been paying attention in biology class, he would have known that giving birth is inherently dangerous. Had he been paying attention during the birth of his own children he might have learned that it can be a bit less painful and far less dangerous with the availability of medical staff. (That said of course, there is much to criticise about birthing practices, but he makes no valid points about it whatsoever.)
…for example, separating the neonate for extensive periods from the parents into distant nurseries…
Again, he’s back in the 1930s. And the lunatics who introduced it were radical behaviourists – i.e. environmental determinists, not “genetic determinists”. The practice was ultimately debunked by those who recognised that the need for touch is an instinctive need. Had there been “Darwinistic” obstetricians, as Lipton claims are ubiquitous, they would have stopped the practice immediately.
…..and the advising of parents not to respond to their babies cries for fear of spoiling them. Such practices, presumably based upon “science,” undoubtedly contribute to the violence in our civilization. The research regarding touch and its relationship to violence is described in full at the following website:http://www.violence.de.
Again, the fools who gave out this advice (in the 1950s and 60s?) were environmental determinists, like Lipton.
And again no link to the miscreant authorities who Lipton claims still hand out this advice today. (Instead there’s that HTML link in the text, which his editor, had she been awake, would have switched to a reference. Lipton managed till now to do that himself — clearly even he is getting exhausted by this unrelenting babble.)
Then he launches into yet another tirade in which he claims — entirely without evidence — that the later success of some impoverished children in Romania who were given up for adoption is due to the biological parents having practiced “conscious conception” before and during pregnancy, and not due to genes or the practices of adoptive parents.
He thinks this is a knock out blow for the (non-existent) genetic deterministic geneticists, but of course it is not supported by the studies he cited, and moreover it completely contradicts the argument he just made about babies needing touch.
But what about the Romanian children who come out of deprived backgrounds and become what one researcher called “the resilient wonders.” Why do some children thrive despite their backgrounds? Because they have “better” genes? By now you know that I don’t believe that.
It is surprising how little he knows about the nature-nurture controversy, for someone who according to the studies he cites, must actually have encountered at least the basics. “Better” genes? Only eugenicists ever used that kind of talk, and outside of white supremacists and Royal Families, there’s none of those left.
The lesson for adoptive parents is that they should not pretend their children’s lives began when they came into their new surroundings.
This is the closest Lipton gets in the whole chapter to saying something sensible. Also, remember that food doesn’t grow in the supermarket.
We skip a lot more veering about from topic to topic from Lipton and pick it up again here:
They [adoptive parents] may not realize that their children did not come to them as a “blank slate” anymore than newborns come into the world as blank slates, unaffected by their nine months in their mothers’ womb.
Again, the genes — those things that Lipton previously claimed makes it a good idea to toss babies into swimming pools so they can instinctively “swim like a dolphin” rather than drown — have disappeared again.
According to Lipton, the resulting blank slate only gets written on not even by the environment, but by epigenetically transmitted and deterministic affirmations.
Better to recognize that programming and to work, if necessary, to change it.
HOW????? HOW????? How do you “work to change it”??????? THATwas the whole freaking point of this chapter! It’s the subject of the whole book!!!!!!!
The subconscious is “millions of times more powerful” than the conscious mind, and he was supposed to be explaining how to overcome this problem. Instead he just says “change” the behaviours of your kids.
For adoptive and non-adoptive parents alike, the message is clear: Your children’s genes reflect only their potential, not their destiny.
WHAT??? So now genes DO do something after all — they preprogram potential. Which, as we’ve seen, they don’t! And it contradicts all his previous denials that they have any influence at all!
And of course what is missing any mention of the cases where genes DO determine fate. A mutation in the dystrophin gene, for example, means you will have muscular dystrophy, regardless of parental “misperceptions” prior to conception.
He blabs on some more, completely incoherently, and then says:
Here is my challenge to you. Let go of unfounded fears and take care not to implant unnecessary fears and limiting beliefs in your children’s subconscious minds.
Yes — the fears and limiting beliefs you implant in your children should only be the necessary ones. (Sleep well and deep, dear editor.)
Most of all, do not accept the fatalistic message of genetic determinism. You can help your children reach their potential and you can change your personal life. You are not “stuck” with your genes.
Um, you are stuck with your genes. They don’t change. Nor should they. If they were so easy to change our species wouldn’t have been able to evolve in the first place. Minor flaw in Lipton’s philosophy there.
—Take heed of the growth and protection lessons from cells…
Ah yes, the cells. I’d forgotten about them. Cells as a homologue for human anatomy: an idea ruined by the fact that Lipton doesn’t know the difference between a homologue and an analogue — a distinction that was cleared up for all biologists except Lipton in 1849.
…and shift your lives into growth whenever possible.
Um…. Dr Lipton…. this book was supposed to be about **stopping** the growth of cancer cells, not encouraging it. That’s quite a serious flaw, isn’t it.
And remember that for human beings the most potent growth-promoter is not the fanciest school, the biggest toy or the highest-paying job.
Stick that on your fridge. And then throw your fridge into a canal that is only 6 inches deep so everyone has to look at it on their way to work for the next 2 million years.
Long before cell biology and studies of children in orphanages, conscious parents and seers like Rumi knew that for human babies and adults the best growth promoter is Love.
Yep, not love, but Love, with a capital L. That’s the best growth promoter.
A lifetime without Love is of no account
Love is the Water of Life
Drink it down with heart and soul
And that’s end of page 180, and suddenly, the end of the book too.
And not a word about how to overcome the “millions of times more powerful” subconscious, which he promised more than half a dozen times throughout the book to explain in this chapter, and which is the whole point of his book — how to use affirmations to cure your cancer.
Probably only two or three more posts after this one and we will be done with this unexpectedly lengthy project. Normally book reviews are not longer than the book itself, but in this case there is no other option. In fact I have erred rather too much on the side of brevity. The one achievement I am rather proud of, however, is that I have gotten to post number 69 without ever having screwed up the numbering of the posts.
Anyway, I’m sitting in a pub on the Rhine, with a good German beer as a pacifier.
…
Lipton continues his bizarre and entirely uninformed assault on the supposedly Darwinian obstetric profession:
The importance of parental programming undermines the notion that our traits, both positive and negative, are fully determined by our genes.
Lipton has expended a great deal of energy on this fight against genetic determinism throughout the book. Sadly, his readers do not know that absolutely no geneticist whatsoever makes the claims that Lipton attributes to them. Nor are obstetricians especially known for their Darwinism (for heavens sake).
As we have seen, genes are shaped, guided and tailored by environmental learning experiences.
Factual error. “Environmental learning”, whatever that might be, does not “shape” or “tailor” the genes themselves — that is why there’s an “epi” at the front of “epigenetics”. Nor, of course, do the studies he cited suggest anything of the sort.
We have all been led to believe that artistic, athletic and intellectual prowess are traits simply passed on by genes.
Factual error. We have not “all” been led to believe any such thing. Only those who weren’t paying attention in high school biology could have wound up believing that.
But no matter how “good” one’s genes may be, if an individual’s nurture experiences are fraught with abuse, neglect or misperceptions, the realization of the genes’ potentials will be sabotaged.
Genes, of course, aren’t intrinsically good or even “good”, they just are — they just do what they do. From an evolutionary perspective, the effects of a mutation depends entirely on the environment in which the gene finds itself. How ridiculous that a fanatical environmental determinist like Lipton doesn’t know this.
Furthermore, genes don’t have any “potential” beyond coding for a protein when they are told to. The effects of the protein depend on a multitude of variables at each step of the way after that, helping construct an enzyme, which helps make an organelle or some tiny part of a cell, which makes a tiny part of some slightly larger structure.
Let’s clear this up before we go any further. Say a particular gene codes for an adrenaline receptor in a neuron. Two siblings have received two different versions of this gene from either parent. With one version, slightly more adrenaline gets dumped into a neuron than with the other. What is heritable then, is a tendency for slightly more adrenaline to course through the nervous system in one sibling than the other.
What effect this difference will have depends on a multitude of factors. What other emotional characteristics does this individual have? What kind of body — strong or weak? What other temperamental qualities? What kind of parents? What kind of community? What kind of culture? In a passive culture more adrenaline could lead to the person becoming dominant or violent; or it could make them over compensate and wander about all fake-holy and emasculated like the Dalai Lama — depending on their personality or physical strength. Or in a military culture the higher adrenaline level might not have any consequences at all, having been subsumed by training and discipline. Or the person might be physically gentle but ruthless in business; or industrious in charity work; or meekly submissive in all things apart from ruthlessly beating their children at Monopoly; or a pain in the ass neighbour who plays the drums too loud without ever finding the beat.
(Or maybe they’ll find themselves typing angrily away at their 69th post about a stupid book by a deranged cancer quack while tanking up on German beer.)
…And would it ever make any sense to talk about the gene having reached its “full potential” in any of the above cases, or any other time ever? (Lipton is not the only one guilty of this kind of talk.)
And the studies he cited had nothing whatsoever about “misperceptions” affecting anything at all.
…
More importantly, what exactly does Lipton mean by “misperception”? How does he define it? How *can* he even? His whole cancer quackery — affirmations — depends, effectively, on lying to oneself.
He is always babbling about mind over matter — for example telling the body that the poison it is imbibing is not really poison, or the hot coals are not really hot. That stupid idea is obviously a “misperception”. This is a serious flaw in his already atrociously flawed quackery. It undermines the whole basis of it, even by his own twisted logic.
But back to his stunningly ignorant account of genetics.
Liza Minelli acquired her genes from her superstar mother Judy Garland and her father filmmaker Vincent Minelli. Liza’s career, the heights of her stardom and the lows of her personal life, are scripts that were played out by her parents and downloaded into her subconscious mind.
Yes, Lipton really is so stupid that he thinks there are specific genes for film-making and acting, rather than genes that can support certain behavioural tendencies in a multitude of ways, in a multitude of possibilities.
If Liza had the same genes, but was raised by a nurturing Pennsylvania Dutch farming family, that environment would have epigenetically triggered a different selection of genes.
Factual error. Some kind of factual error. Did he really say that? I find it hard to believe that Lipton thinks genes (he probably means alleles) get “selected” *after* conception, after fetal development, and well into childhood? Into adulthood? Or when??? (Of course even before conception alleles are randomly shuffled into chromosomes, not selected.)
Whatever the case, Liza Minelli would still have a nice voice and people would be happy to hear her sing in the fields; she’d still be just as athletically gifted.
The genes that enabled her to pursue a successful entertainment career would have likely been masked or inhibited by the cultural demands of her agrarian community.
What??? The genes wouldn’t have been “masked”. They’d still be there, only their influence would have different effects due to the different environment. What she’d be missing might be some training at critical developmental periods, and a reputation and contacts opening a great many doors for her. Lipton’s misconceptions about genetics are encyclopedic.
Having made an utterly absurd case for environmental determinism overruling his own hysterically stupid version of genetic determinism, he uses another example to contradict his own belief in genetic determinism.
He follows that example with another, which completely contradicts the first.
A wonderful example of the effectiveness of conscious parenting programming is superstar golfer Tiger Woods. Although his father was not an accomplished golfer, he made every effort to immerse Tiger in an environment that was rich with opportunities to develop and enhance the mindset, skills, attitudes and focus of a master golfer. No doubt. Tiger’s success is also intimately connected with the Buddhist philosophy that his mother contributed. Indeed, genes are important— but their importance is only realized through the influence of conscious parenting and the richness of opportunities provided by the environment.
Instead of special “golfing genes” like Liza Minelli’s special “acting genes”, Tiger Woods simply has Buddhist epigenetics and the kind of crass environmental determinism that has made many a childhood miserable, driven by fanatical parents trying to inscribe their personal ambitions onto the supposedly blank slate of their child — free from any genetic predispositions.
So — are we born with preprogrammed “acting genes” that our parents can mask or deselect? Or are we born as blank slates that passively receive everything our parents scrawl onto our soul? Lipton answers yes to both.
Next he suddenly veers off into yet another avalanche of copy-and-paste lecture notes.
He turns to sibling differences as the final knock down for genetic determinism. Incredibly — especially for someone with a PhD in biology — he doesn’t seem to know that siblings don’t have the same genes. He also doesn’t realise it ruins his version of environmental determinism as well, of course — which would erase sibling differences.
From that pointless tangent, he veers off on another, about letting children play. And of course it contradicts all of the already contradictory things he has just said. Now parents don’t need to teach their children anything, but just let them play.
After some long-winded babbling, Lipton says this:
Another myth I’d like to address is that infants need lots of stimulation in the form of black and white flash cards or other learning tools marketed to parents to increase the intelligence of their children.
Factual error. Flash cards are to help word recognition for children, and are in fact useful to get children to focus on reading whole words rather than spelling words out letter by letter. This is how we read for the most part. (And also why I’ve been missing so many typos lately!) But parents are indeed probably better off leaving that kind of thing to teachers. Read to them and support any interest they have in reading and writing, but leave the systematic stuff for school.
Then he hares off on yet another tangent, babbling again about play, and works in some more product placement for an author who provided Lipton with a blurb for this book.
Michael Mendizza and Joseph Chilton Pearce’s inspiring book Magical Parent-Magical Child makes it clear that play not programming is the key to optimizing the learning and performance of infants and children. [Mendizza and Pearce 2001]
We can skip all this, but I’ll note that what he says also contradicts everything he has just said about preprogramming children and/or selecting their pre-programmed genes.
After that he launches yet another copy-and-paste avalanche about research into links between lack of touch for babies and adult violence. In as much as the research has merit, it also contradicts both Lipton’s extreme genetic determinism and his extreme environmental determinism.
I sense exhaustion in anyone who has read this far, and will pull the emergency brake. With the next post, up soon, we will finish this chapter, and have only the Epilogue to get through.
Lipton continues his attack on scientists, now turning obstetricians, who he claims are genetic determinists.
Consequently, Ob-Gyns are only concerned with a few maternal prenatal issues: Is she eating well? Taking vitamins? Does she exercise regularly? Those questions focus on what they believe is the mother’s principal role, the provision of nutrients to be used by the genetically programmed fetus.
As noted last time, Lipton fails to distinguish between heredity and genetics. (Heredity involves the inheritance of variable traits; genetics is the much broader study of how genes work to produce the particular protein they code for.) Lipton seems to think that geneticists believe genes influence behaviour as deterministically as they determine eye colour. And he thinks that the fact that genes get switched on and off by external signals proves that they are wrong. And he thinks that scientists and the entire medical profession side with geneticists in this dogmatic belief, simply because to admit it isn’t so would destroy their beloved godless Darwinism.
That is why he is attacking obstetricians. He sees them as ideologues in the struggle against the Truth Lamarckism (and quantum physics).
The Truth he is fighting for is the idea that genes are overruled by epigenetics, which itself is the delivery system by which — somehow, he doesn’t say how — parental thoughts and attitudes are transferred to and — somehow, he doesn’t say how — permanently encoded in the epigenetic markers that — somehow, he doesn’t say how — determine fetal development.
And obstetricians prevent you from knowing this out of loyalty to Charles Darwin. So all they do is ensure that a pregnant woman is eating properly and exercising regularly.
But the developing child receives far more than nutrients from the mother’s blood. Along with nutrients, the fetus absorbs excess glucose if the mother is diabetic, and excess cortisol and other fight or flight hormones if the mother is chronically stressed.
And what are the symptoms of chronic stress? Maybe poor nutrition and lack of exercise for example?
Lipton then dumps another copy-and-paste lecture notes avalanche about neurochemicals and stress hormones affecting a developing fetus. As always, this is exactly the kind of research he has just accused scientists of refusing to carry out as they are dogmatic anti-quantum Darwinists.
We can skip to where he says:
The new focus on the influences of the prenatal environment extends to the study of IQ, which genetic determinists and racists once linked simply to genes.
He follows this up with another cut-and-paste avalanche about studies showing that genes have varying effects on IQ, and that a pregnant mother who ingests alcohol or lead decreases the IQ of her child.
I doubt any genetic determinist or racist would have disputed those findings. More to the point, it just shows how important it is for obstetricians to monitor health — doesn’t it. But as always, Lipton doesn’t realise he is demolishing his own argument.
Then a new subheading.
Nature’s Head Start Program
You may be wondering why evolution would provide such a system for fetal development that seems so fraught with peril and is so dependent on the environment of the parents.
Lipton clearly fell asleep every time evolution was mentioned during his biology course, because — big surprise — he’s got this completely and utterly wrong. We can clear it up for him.
The standard neo-Darwinian perspective would consider the costs and benefits of a multitude of variables: a large brain (and cranium) vs the difficulty of getting through the birth canal without killing mother or child; long period of infantile dependency vs time to learn highly complex behaviours; and so forth.
A creationist/intelligent design perspective would argue that everything was designed by god. New Age spiritual folk would add the idea that everything will work perfectly as long as people act in accordance with their divine higher nature.
Lipton thinks he’s a Lamarckian but he’s an intelligent design creationist. And that is why he says this:
Actually, it’s an ingenious system that helps ensure the survival of your offspring.
Factual error. It’s largely an inevitable byproduct of evolution, resulting from millions of years of agonising death in childbirth, agonising success in childbirth, and fine tuned by the cumulative effects of differential survival minute physiological differences — which of course are inherited through genetics.
But Lipton thinks all that death misery and suffering that determined the course of human evolution didn’t happen. Instead, he thinks some kind of intelligent agent — he’s about to call it “Nature” — designed it all for the comfort of individual humans. Or rather the comfort of those humans who say the right affirmations.
Eventually, the child is going to find itself in the same environment as its parents. Information acquired from the parents’ perception of their environment transits the placenta and primes the prenate’s physiology, preparing it to more effectively deal with future exigencies that will be encountered after birth. Nature is simply preparing that child to best survive in that environment.
This is another buzzing stinging hive of factual errors.
The studies he mentioned dealt with subtle differences in IQ, and the detrimental effects of poison, malnutrition and stress. These are not evolutionary adaptations to suit babies to a very specific habitat, but rather the inevitable consequences of being a viviparous mammal.
However, armed with the latest science, parents now have a choice. They can carefully reprogram their limiting beliefs about life before they bring a child into their world.
And “positive” as that may sound to his readers, nothing in the dozens of scientific studies he cited said anything at all about “limiting beliefs” being transferred epigenetically.
And this book was supposed to be about how to reverse this stuff anyway! All he has said so far is that if your parents treated you badly you’re screwed, and now add to that, that you can only flourish in the kind of environment you were born into.
He has replaced his stupidly exaggerated ideas about genetic determinism with stupidly exaggerated about epigenetic determinism. And he thinks it is good.
James Arthur Ray: Motivational Torturer, star of The Secret, four deaths to his name, convicted of 3 counts of homicide. Current status: out of jail, trying to access your credit account
Spirituality is No Excuse 