What the #$*! Do We Know!?

[Mighty_Emperor]

aka What the Bleep Do We Know!? (I'm unsure if the actualy title has fuck in it - I assume not) although the working title may be more accurate Sacred Science.

IMDB:
www.imdb.com/title/tt0399877/

Some worthies speak about it:

The minds boggle

The year's most unexpected indie hit in American cinemas - a film about quantum physics - is about to open here. But how are ordinary mortals to judge its assertions about the nature of matter, mind, and the universe? We asked some of Britain's best scientific brains to give us their verdicts

Monday May 16, 2005
The Guardian


A wedding photographer in a state of post-divorce triste, Amanda (Marlee Matlin), starts a search for meaning. But science keeps colliding with her spiritual quest as What the Bleep Do We Know!? - a film by William Arntz and Betsy Chasse - interrogates a range of talking-head savants about whether the physical world its heroine sees around her is quite what it seems, and whether mind and emotion can influence matter. Mysteries (and apparent miracles) of physics and neurology unfold: European explorer ships, it is said, were invisible to native peoples because they had never seen a ship before; a basketball lesson in the behaviour of matter is conducted by a precocious child called Reggie; and, most surprising, photographs of water crystals published by one Masaru Emoto of Japan are shown as evidence that the structure of water can be changed by good or bad thoughts.

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Richard Dawkins

This film is even more pretentious than it is boring. And it is stupefyingly boring - unless, of course, you are fooled by its New Age fakery, in which case it might indeed be - as many innocent dupes have stated - "life-changing". The one redeeming feature is the enigmatic charm of the deaf heroine, whose depressive journey down the rabbit hole of life is punctuated by gobbets of bogus sagacity from a dozen talking heads. But no amount of charm could redeem the unforgivable phoniness of the script.

Over-use of the word "paradigm" is a pretty good litmus for inclusion in the scientific equivalent of Pseud's Corner, and the film's "expert" talking heads score highly. Perhaps the leading one is "Ramtha", a dead warrior from Atlantis who addresses us (in a fake accent) through his "channeler", a woman called JZ (Judy) Knight, founder of the Ramtha Cult which sponsored the film. Thirty-five thousand years in the grave have not dulled Ramtha's business sense: he charges $1,000 per counselling session. Poor JZ has her work cut out.

The authors seem undecided whether their theme is quantum theory or consciousness. Both are indeed mysterious, and their genuine mystery needs none of the hype with which this film relentlessly and noisily belabours us. Not surprisingly, we get no enlightenment on either topic, nor on the alleged connection between them. Instead, we are told that indigenous peoples were "literally" unable to see early European vessels arriving off their shores - presumably because the ships lay outside their "paradigm". We are told that "All emotion is holographically imprinted chemicals"; that "Each cell has a consciousness"; and that "God is the superposition of all the spirits from all things".

What drives me to despair is not the dishonesty of the charlatans who peddle such tosh, but the dopey gullibility of the thousands of nice, well meaning people who flock to the cinema and believe it.

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· Richard Dawkins FRS is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. His latest book is The Ancestor's Tale.

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Clive Greated

Bleep raises thought-provoking questions about science and its relationship to spirituality and metaphysics. Present thinking on neurology and addiction are covered in some detail but, unfortunately, early references in the film to quantum physics are not followed through, leading to a confused message. Scenes of the lad wanting to play basketball with Amanda may lead people to think that quantum properties, which describe matter at a very small scales, are equally applicable at large scales. In reality, quantum effects at large scales are extremely small and the motion of an object like a basketball is almost perfectly described by classical physics.

Masaru Emoto's photographs of water, which Amanda comes across after missing the underground train, are even more confusing. Pictures we are shown from his dark-field microscope are presumably of tiny frozen water droplets. These patterns are dependent on the complex structure of ice and are influenced by any suspended matter in the water so it is hardly surprising that he obtained lots of interesting shapes. The idea that he can change these by thought processes or by sticking messages on bottles is ridiculous though.

Another point I question is that Bleep seems to rule out the marrying of institutional religion with modern physics. In fact many religious people find that concepts of time and space, put forward by Einstein, support their religious beliefs.

Despite these caveats, this is a feel-good film with nice photography and super computer animations. I hope it develops into a cult movie in the UK as it has in the US. Science and engineering are important for our future, and anything that engages the public can only be a good thing. Take your friends and family to see the film and have fun yourself pondering the issues.

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· Clive Greated is Professor of Fluid Dynamics in the School of Physics, University of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

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Simon Singh

I have spent my entire working life either doing science or conveying its meaning and beauty to the public. Consequently, I despise What the Bleep Do We Know!?, because it distorts science to fit its own agenda, it is full of half-truths and misleading analogies, and some of its so-called scientific claims are downright lies. Worse still, having achieved cult status in America, this film has already duped millions into mistaking pure claptrap for something of cosmic importance.

For example, WTB explains how quantum physics implies a crucial role for the observer in any experiment - so far, so good, except it requires several years of study to appreciate the subtlety and true significance of this statement. However, WTB is not too bothered about the truth. The water experiment is junk pseudo- science of the worst kind and has never been replicated by a mainstream scientist. Nevertheless, WTB carries down its illogical path by suggesting that if observing water changes its molecular structure, and if we are 90% water, then by observing ourselves we can change at a fundamental level via the laws of quantum physics. Thanks to WTB, this kind of ridiculous balderdash is being peddled by the likes of Drew Barrymore on the David Letterman Show.

And if you are still considering going to see this film, then please bear in mind the credibility and motives of the interviewees in the film. John Hagelin, one of the PhD physicists, is from the Maharishi University of Management. Take my advice and do not see this film. I repeat, do not see this film. I repeat again, do not see this film. If you do, then you will leave the cinema misinformed, £8 poorer and having wasted two hours of your life.

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· Simon Singh has a PhD in particle physics from Cambridge University. He is also the author of The Code Book and Big Bang, and reviews What the Bleep Do We Know!? for Front Row on BBC Radio 4, Thursday, 7.30pm.

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Joao Migueijo

Combinations of science and spirituality would be so much improved by simply dropping the science ... Such is sadly the case with this film, which is horrendously tedious even before we get to its substance. Its meat, alas, only makes matters worse. It would be unwise to condemn total lunacy; it has an important role in society, that of keeping us human. But to deliberately misquote science to gain credibility sounds desperate and badly backfires.

The list of examples is endless. You'll learn that God is a quantum superposition and our divine free will a quantum effect. And the collapse of the wave function is obviously the reason the paranormal works. That's why mass meditation was "scientifically" proven, according to the film, to have reduced crime in Washington DC. If you're still not convinced just look at the gleaming "micro-photographs" of water, with its molecular structure much improved by the blessings of a Zen Buddhist monk. It reminded me of an outbreak of diarrhoea at the Sanctuary of Fatima in Portugal that was eventually traced to pilgrims drinking blessed water.

Overall, if you manage to stay awake, you'll be exposed to such ludicrous extrapolations from microphysics that you may emerge expecting electrons to have vaginas.

One can see how the current US political situation came to exist (Ban guns to cut crime? Nah ... just say "Om"). And one can also understand why the political status quo has such a vested interest in suppressing quality education for the masses. America has long been the land of misinformation, ignorance and prejudice. This is abundantly confirmed by a film, which against all appearances, is actually very mainstream.

What the hell do we know? Please just give us unadultered old-style underground lunacy - it's so much more entertaining.

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· Dr Joao Migueijo is reader in theoretical physics at Imperial College, London.What the Bleep Do We Know!? is released on Friday.

www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1484603,00.htm

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

And it got a mention in Bad Science last week:

Literate molecules

Ben Goldacre
Thursday May 12, 2005
The Guardian

• Nobody is inviting me to any premieres for the US hit docudrama What the Bleep Do We Know!? — in cinemas next week — so all I know about it is the Telegraph magazine article that reader Ken Joy sent me. The film features the work of Dr Masaru Emoto, who, the article reports, has a PhD from the Open International University. But it doesn't mention that we bullied Channel 4's Dr Bannock into rescinding a similar doctorate.

• The article, by "health and beauty writer" Kathy Phillips, credulously reports how Emoto photographed molecules of water from the Fujiwara dam in Japan through a microscope. A pretty strong microscope to photograph molecules, you might think. Then he had the water blessed: "When photographed, the water molecule had transformed into a beautiful snowflake shape." Nice. "[Jars of] water photographed after positive words such as 'love' and 'thank you' was [sic] taped to them overnight produced beautiful patterns," writes Phillips. "Those with words like 'you make me sick', 'war' or 'hate' attached, resulted in fractured, wild shapes."

• The point of all this, in the film, is that the troubled lead character covers herself in hearts and lies in the bath, because she is made of water, and this affects her in a similar way and makes her feel better. But to me this tells a deeper story about alternative therapies: about intellectual laziness, and how self-centred we can be. After all, how indulgent do we have to be, to put humans at the centre of the universe, and say that if we bless water, then by our human aesthetics its shapes will become "more beautiful", that water will read whatever language we write. Perhaps, that's what still most unsettles people about science, that we are no longer at the centre of the universe.

• But more than that, how sad to let the field of mind-body interactions, the effect of mood on the body, and on health: to let that be monopolised by people like Emoto. There is the huge, fascinating field of psychoneuroimmunology: it presents us with an intellectually challenging, incomplete story, rather than a simplistic, complete one involving nice words on a jam jar. There's a fascinating and reasonably coherent story about how stress hormones, such as cortisol, can affect depression, illness, and even addiction, through interaction with the amygdala and other parts of the brain. There's nothing wrong with thinking positively, and there's no reason to think it won't work, but why retreat into nonsense?

www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/stor ... 65,00.html

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

The DVD release has really bulked things out but that might not be a good thing:

Dance, Ramtha, Dance!

‘What the Bleep’ Is Longer and Loonier than Ever Before

BY ANNIE WAGNER

web exclusive

I’ll give them this: The What the BLEEP franchise is pretty damn clever. Following the same basic strategy of those Lyndon LaRouche pamphlets distributed by glassy-eyed college dropouts on Broadway and the Ave, BLEEP (which made $11 million on its initial release) plants recognizable academic jargon into intentionally convoluted and hard-to-follow arguments, then takes a left turn into lunacy. The filmmakers put a bunch of anonymous talking heads on a screen and bide their time as the supposed experts hit up fancy concepts like “grand unified field theory” (ooh) and “neuropeptides” (aah). You may not have a clue what they’re talking about, but gee do they sound smart. The next thing you know, you’re nodding sagaciously as the “experts” explain how your cells are addicted to negative emotions and that if you really wanted to, you could change the pH of a little white box with your mind.

The first What the BLEEP (a ridiculous narrative-”documentary” hybrid) came out in 2004. You might have thought that this directors’ cut would have afforded the filmmakers the opportunity to refine or withdraw some of the original film’s more reckless claims. No such luck. What the BLEEP!? Down the Rabbit Hole—padded with an extra hour of crude cartoon animation and all-new pseudoscience—doesn’t make responsibility a top priority.

The filmmakers (all of whom are affiliated with the New Age sect Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, or RSE, in Yelm) decided not to remove footage of David Albert, a philosophy professor at Columbia University and one of the film’s few legitimate academics, who has publicly denounced the distortion of his views through selective editing. Dumb move. They also retain the testimony of Miceal (sic) Ledwith, one of “Ramtha’s Appointed Teachers.” According to Willamette Week and Salon, Ledwith, who used to be known as Monsignor Michael Ledwith, resigned from his post as president of Dublin’s Maynooth College after a seminarian accused Ledwith of sexually abusing him as a boy. This revelation gives the personal-responsibility shtick he preaches in the film (“If we’re victims, we should ask ourselves, have I a victim mentality?”) a certain je ne sais—barf. Then there’s the chiropractor and the paranormal researchers and the transcendental-meditation advocate… Suffice it to say, you’re not going to learn anything about quantum physics from this film.

If you are dragged to see the interminable What the BLEEP!? Down the Rabbit Hole by some supremely gullible friend, there are odd moments of hilarity to savor. The hokey “experiment” conducted by a Japanese “researcher” named Masaru Emoto, for example, made the new version, despite ridicule from scientists and journalists. In his study (which, needless to say, was neither double-blind nor published in a peer-reviewed journal), bottles of water were affixed with labels like “Chi of Love” and “You make me sick I hate you.” Then the bottles were frozen and the resulting ice crystals examined under a microscope. According to some lady in the movie, who is inexplicably delivering a lecture in a windy subway tunnel, the crystals from the "love" bottle were beautiful, and the “hate-sick” crystals were not. The only difference I could discern was that the love crystal was dyed blue, and the hate-sick crystal was dyed puke green. But what the bleep do I know?

And then, of course, there’s Ramtha himself, the 35,000 year-old Lemurian warrior who is “channeled” by a superrich, puffy-faced blond woman from Yelm named JZ Knight. Ramtha appears in the film, speaks in a wacky brogue, and puffs away on a Sherlock Holmes–style pipe. But sadly, he does not dance. Whatever put this idea into my head, you might ask? Quoth the press notes: “Noted parapsychologists Ian Wickramasekera and Stanley Krippner of Saybrook Graduate School repeatedly observed that while JZ Knight is channeling Ramtha, her brain-wave state shifts from beta (a normal waking state) to delta (deepest sleep). Although operating from delta, Ramtha is able to talk, walk, eat, drink, and dance using JZ’s lower cerebellum.” God, would I shell out to see two and a half hours of that. Dance, Ramtha, dance!

www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=29460

 

[Graylien]

I finally got round to watching this yesterday (the director's cut) and was rather disappointed by it. The talking heads always seemed on the verge of saying something really interesting, but never quite got around to it. And both the acting and the animation segments were embarrassingly bad.

I had forgotten all about Ramtha being in it, and spent the entire film thinking she was a Phd like all the other talking heads - so I guess my critical faculties aren't as sharp as I thought they were. She really didn't seem to be saying anything noticably more outrageous than any of the 'legitimate' scientists, though.

 

[MrSnowman]

I think that "The Secret" is a 'better' version of this film, as it explains the whole 'law of attraction' and visualisation thing on a much more practical level, as opposed to what turn out to be Ramtha-inspired teachings.

Both would appear to carry the same message though, that essentially, the key to success in life is to ditch the 'pseudo-pride' a lot of people take in maintaining too modest an opinion of themselves, and try to turn anything and everything into a positive. Sounds weird, but it's worked for me, so hey.

 

[OneWingedBird]

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics has this to say of it:

Marlee Matlin plays an anxiety-ridden photographer, Amanda, who wanders about pondering quantum physics. What brilliant acting: we became anxious just watching her as we too wondered about quantum physics—especially if the scientific version of it had anything to do with the movie. Okay, we normally like to stick to pretty mundane stuff like Newtonian mechanics, Maxwellian electromagnetism, principles of engineering, simple logic, verifiable history, statistical data, and verifiable observations, so, what the bleep do we have to say about a New Age "quantum mechanics" propaganda film? Well, it turns out, a lot.

Let's start with verifiable history. In the movie, neuroscientist and pharmacologist Candace Pert tells a wonderful fable about Native Americans not being able to see Columbus's ships when they were offshore. According to Pert, "We only see what we believe is possible. We match patterns that already exist within ourselves through conditioning." Supposedly, these seafaring Native Americans couldn't see the ships because the sailing-ship pattern didn't match the Native Americans' dugout-canoe pattern. On the other hand, neither Columbus nor any of his men could see the shore—that is until 2:00 am on the day they went ashore.1

According to the movie, the local shaman went to the water's edge day after day and could see ripples in the water made by the ships but not the ships themselves. He was troubled by this and after days of staring, finally saw the ships (maybe because it was the morning they arrived). Of course, no one else in the tribe could "see" the ships until he did.

The story is a bit sketchy since it's over 500 years old and the Native Americans involved never had a written language. Okay, they could have passed the tale along through oral traditions, but their people and culture were decimated by disease, slavery, intermarriage, and overall mistreatment shortly after the Spaniards arrived. The Native Americans could have related the story to the Spaniards who, of course, were humanitarians and would have wanted to preserve all things Native American; except, there was a language barrier. Yet, somehow, through it all, the tale survived.

The fable is reminiscent of the P-59's saga: the story of the first military jet aircraft to fly in the United States—an aircraft that apparently no one could see. The date was 1942; the location was Muroc Army Air Field (today Edwards Air Force Base). Whenever it was on the ground, the P-59 was fitted with a fake propeller for the sake of secrecy. Unfortunately for secrecy, at the local watering hole, test pilots mixed with P-38 pilots stationed nearby. After slugging down a few drinks, the test pilots bragged about flying a propellerless aircraft and were immediately labeled as liars by the P-38 crowd—fighting words for sure. Subsequently, test-pilot Jack Woolams decided to put them in their place, not with his fists but with something far more effective. 2

He rented a gorilla suit and took off wearing it along with a big cigar protruding from his mouth and a derby hat on his head. Once airborne, he found a lone P-38 pilot, pulled alongside, giving the P-38 pilot a clear view of the jet and gorilla suit, then waved, much to the shock of his intended target. The next day when queried at the local watering hole, not a single P-38 pilot had seen an "escaped gorilla" or knew anything about it. The explanation: why of course, it must be that P-38 pilots could only see what they believed was possible. Yeah, right. Apparently, the P-38 pilots never again questioned the possibility of propellerless aircraft, let alone the honesty of test pilots.

Although the events are not even a century old, already there are more than one version of the Jack Woolams tale. All are slightly different. One version relates that there were multiple sightings of the gorilla-piloted jet and that the base psychiatrist talked several P-38 pilots out of believing what they saw.3 Who knows? The fact is, that even if someone sees and believes a phenomenon, it doesn't mean they will honestly talk about it. And if they do, it doesn't mean that the details will be perfectly remembered in the historical record—especially if there isn't one.

If we weren't fully convinced of the fallibility of our sensory perceptions, chiropractor Joe Dispenza pipes in to tell us that brain scans show the same area lighting up when we actually look at something as when we close our eyes and remember it, therefore the brain can't tell the difference. Eyes open, eyes closed, no way to tell the difference, and to think, all this time we thought we could, particularly while driving.

What about other observations like the claims of Dr. Masaru Emoto who was cited in the movie for his photographs of "water"? According to the movie Emoto set out containers of water with various labels—"love and appreciation", "You Make Me Sick, I Will Kill You", etc.—affixed to them, then photographed their structure through a microscope the following day. The photos revealed structures amazingly related to the labels. For example, "love and appreciation" had a beautiful snowflake form while "You Make Me Sick, I Will Kill You" had an ugly disjointed appearance.

Although not discussed in the movie, the photos were actually made of frozen water drops 4. Also not discussed were Emoto's "experiments" with names like "Adolf Hitler" and "Mother Teresa" as well as labels with the same term in different languages. Emoto's "Adolf Hitler" ice picture looks like a messed up drawing of the globe, representing global conquest. The "Mother Teresa" photo is more pleasing, but a bit lopsided. "Thank you" in English and its translation "Arigato" in Japanese both look snowflake-like but slightly different. How exciting: according to Emoto's body of work, water apparently not only knows about humanity's current events and history but how to read in just about every human language. Gosh, why do we humans waste so much time in school?

The movie says humans are "90% water"—it's actually more like 75% water—and if a label can alter water just imagine what it can do to people! At one point Amanda starts drawing little hearts all over her skin and becomes almost giddy with self love in the process. Imagine what this could do for the tattoo industry. Just think of all the other possibilities: We could put messages like, "sober up and get a job", on liquor bottles and turn drunks into upstanding citizens. We could engrave, "love thy neighbor" onto the grips of handguns and lower the homicide rate. How about writing, "remain seated and be nice" on airliner seat-cushions; it would eliminate hijacking. Emoto's data certainly explains the behavior of students who prepare for tests by writing information on their arms and hands. It's not cheating, it's educating their internal waters.

To our knowledge, Emoto's claims have never been independently tested by a reputable group nor been subjected to double blind testing: the standard procedure for eliminating experimenter bias. Double blind tests aside, there's not even an indication that any of the data points have been repeated. There's also no evidence that the results are uniform within the same water drop. It's unclear whether the photographed crystals were the only structure present or were part of some larger pattern. The James Randi Educational Foundation has offered a $1,000,000 prize to Dr. Emoto if his data can pass a double blind test.5 Alas, the mere thought of an evil the size of a million bucks would probably taint even the purest of water. If only we could be so tainted.

Then there's statistical data, a specialty of John Hagelin who triumphantly proclaimed that 4000 participants at the Maharishi University of Management had lowered the crime rate in Washington DC from June 7 to July 30, 1993 using meditation. (The movie claimed by 25%.) Never mind that the violent crime rate in Washington DC was higher in 1993 than any of the previous 30 years. Never mind that starting in 1994 the crime rate declined every single year until it was 49% lower by the year 2000. 6 Maybe the DC police took up meditation. In 1994 Hagelin received an Ig Nobel Peace Prize, the absolute pinnacle for "achievements that cannot, or should not, be reproduced", such as pseudoscience.

In a couple of places, "Morpheus junior" shows up on the basketball court to instruct Amanda on the nature of reality by asking profound questions like, "How far down the rabbit hole do you wanna go?" At one point he tells her that an object like a basketball could never actually touch her. Okay, on the atomic level we agree, but then he explains it by saying that when the surface of the ball and the surface it bounces against get close, the "electrons build up a charge and push the other electrons away before they touch". Maybe it's asking too much to suppose a kid would know about electric fields or Coulomb's law, but it would have made us feel better if he had at least known that the charge on an electron is constant. It does not "build up".

For amazement effect, "Morpheus junior" also explains that ordinary matter is mostly composed of empty space. Okay, we agree and are amazed every time we think about it. Physics is indeed an amazing subject. The empty space concept is not, however, some esoteric tenent of quantum mechanics that isn't presented until grad school. Rutherford established the concept in 1911 with his now famous experiments in which he bombarded gold foil with alpha particles. The empty space concept is commonly encountered in well-taught high school physics classes. Unfortunately, less than a third of the high school students in the United States even take physics and not all the classes offered are well taught.

The highlight of the movie has to be the repeated appearances by that world-renowned quantum physics wizard JZ Knight, or should we say Ramtha®, the 35,000-year-old spirit warrior from Atlantis and Lemuria, who is channeled through her. Knight was born in Roswell, New Mexico and should speak with a fairly standard American accent. In the movie, however, her speech sounds like the Hollywood version of an Eastern European accent—evidently a genuine Atlantian accent. It must be Ramtha® talking—wow.

He enlightens us by saying that "we have great technology from anti-gravity magnets [wow again] and magnetic fields of zero point energy". Zero point energy is "the irreducible minimum energy possessed by a substance at absolute zero temperature."7 The term comes from quantum mechanics and, without getting into all the details, indicates that even if a substance were cooled to absolute zero the electrons in it would have a minimal but non-zero velocity. So, in a sense one can say that we reside in a sea of energy.

However, it's not necessary to resort to quantum mechanics to understand that we reside in a sea of energy. Ordinary thermodynamics tells us that materials such as water contain a lot of thermal energy. If the water has a mass of 1.0 kg and is at room temperature, say 75°F (24°C) about 100,000 J of heat have to be removed just to cool it to 32°F (0°C). An additional 334,000 J have to be removed to freeze the water. To lower the temperature of ice from 32°F (0°C) to near absolute zero -460°F (-273°C), we must remove about 571,000 J. This gives a total heat removal of a little over a million joules of energy or about the amount of kinetic energy contained in 2080 .45 cal handgun bullets.

We can justifiably claim that a kilogram of water at room temperature contains about a million joules of thermal energy, relative to a kilogram of water at absolute zero. So how much of this thermal energy in the room-temperature water is recoverable for doing useful work on Earth, like say running an air conditioner? Roughly none. Why? The energy has a high entropy; in other words, it is in a dispersed rather than concentrated form. By analogy, water in a container is similar to energy in concentrated form. Spill the water on the floor and it becomes dispersed. Although some can be recovered and put back in the container, realistically much of the spilt water can never be recovered. Likewise, under the best of conditions—high temperatures—only a small portion of thermal energy can ever be recovered in the concentrated form of mechanical energy required for doing useful work.

The kinetic energy of the 2080 bullets described above is already in a highly concentrated form and can easily be converted to heat merely by shooting the bullets into a large sand bag. But once the conversion is made, the heat cannot, for all practical purposes, be converted back to kinetic energy. The energy is all still in existence but has become too dispersed to recover.

Disappointed with the restrictions imposed by ordinary thermodynamics, New Agers have jumped on the idea of zero point energy (ZPE) as a possible source of "free" energy. They say things like, "We want to let the general public know that [Zero Point Energy] is an active field and good progress is made towards validating this technology . . . ."8 But wait a minute, the words "progress is made towards validating" mean Zero Point Energy is not a technology but an idea or concept. Much that has been written on New Age–type internet sites about ZPE make it sound like a perpetual motion scheme—a possibility prohibited by the second law of thermodynamics.

So what does Ramtha® mean when he talks about "magnetic fields of zero point energy" being a great technology? Who knows, but it certainly sounds like a reference to perpetual motion schemes—how enlightening. Of course, if true, we'd likely have to throw out thermodynamics and everything that rests on its foundations: namely most of modern science. But, yippy-ki-yay, it'd be a ride. Ramtha®'s conclusion: since we already have all this great technology, all we're really lacking to make life wonderful is an improved concept of God, and he goes on to give us one.

Ramtha® 10 continues by telling us that quantum physics is "the closest science has ever come to explaining Jesus's interpretation[(?) Here the accent got a little thick.] that the mustard seed was larger than the kingdom of heaven." Is he referring to:

Matthew 17:20 where Jesus says, "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you."

Mark 4:31-32 where Jesus says, "[The Kingdom of God] is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, though it is less than all the seeds that are on the earth yet when it is sown, grows up, and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the sky can lodge under its shadow."

Or, Luke 13:19 where Jesus says, "[The Kingdom of God] is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and put in his own garden. It grew, and became a large tree, and the birds of the sky lodged in its branches."

Strangely, none of these11 sound like Jesus was implying that the entire kingdom of heaven is smaller than a mustard seed or that his words require quantum physics for an explanation. They're parables, designed to be understood by illiterate people living in a time when the term physics didn't even exist.

Most of the philosophical or scientific types participating in the movie seem satisfied with its content. This includes Ramtha® and one of his followers, chiropractor Joe Dispenza, along with one of Ramtha®'s employees Dr. Miceal Ledwith12, formerly a Professor of Systematic Theology in Ireland. Apparently the writers and directors—all Ramtha® students—are also happy. Yet, According to an October 2004 article in Popular Science one of the movie's featured experts:

David Albert, a philosopher of physics at Columbia University, is outraged at the final product..."I was taken," Albert admits. "I was really gullible, but I learned my lesson." Yet the real shame with this film is that it plays on people's fascination with science while distorting and misrepresenting that science.13

Dr Albert's views are essentially the exact opposite of those represented in the movie. He granted a four hour interview which was creatively edited. Albert describes it in an excellent Salon.com article14 as follows:

I was edited in such a way as to completely suppress my actual views about the matters the movie discusses. I am, indeed, profoundly unsympathetic to attempts at linking quantum mechanics with consciousness. Moreover, I explained all that, at great length, on camera, to the producers of the film ... Had I known that I would have been so radically misrepresented in the movie, I would certainly not have agreed to be filmed.

If you want an honest, scientifically-correct understanding of quantum physics you're not going to get it from this propaganda piece. On the other hand, if you want exceptional acting, scintillating dialog, insightful characterization, and a spell-binding plot, then, of course the film is just the ticket—at least, somewhere in a parallel universe . . .

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/