“We should be open minded,†offers Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins early on in this two part documentary series, “but not so open minded that our brain falls out.†Dawkins is on a rampage against that which cannot be proven scientifically, he’ Mike Munro with a science degree, cornering charlatans and religious zealots. No one is safe, faith healers, new age mystics, spiritualists; they all wither under his rapidly blinking gaze and relentless questioning. There’ an inherent violence in his approach, it’s like watching a nature documentary as the lion circles the gazelle. Whilst the gazelle thinks he’ fine, both the lion and the audience know that he’ lunch meat. It makes us question our own culpability as these poor new agers come back to Dawkins with comments like “I know it’s real, I’ve seen some amazing things,’ or “I know it’s not measurable but if you ask people they’ll tell you it helps.’ This is where you do that mental countdown where you watch his furiously blinking eyes and you just know he’ preparing himself for the kill. Yet out of the blue something amazing happens. Deepak Chopra. Suddenly Dawkins has come up against someone who is his intellectual equal. “There are fundamentalists in science,†Chopra offers, having apparently assessed the situation relatively quickly, “science has become so arrogant in its premise that it has got all the answers in its mechanistic approach.†To his credit Dawkins leaves this rebuttal in, and it makes you thirst for a debate between the two – or at the very least more screen time. The two documentaries, Slave to Superstition and The Irrational Health Service have Dawkins questioning the logic of the new age and alternative medicine, which now receives government funding, and to be honest it’s like watching someone steal candy from a baby. Perhaps the most interesting point, the notion of the placebo, with Dawkins suggests may account for many of the perceived gains from alternative medicine is never fully explored. Yet it is thought provoking, thoroughly entertaining and strangely comforting not in the least because Dawkins is such an intellectual bully who refuses to pander to fools.
Extras:
Nothing
Bob Baker Fish
