The Quantum Prophets

Richard Dawkins, Deepak Chopra and the Spooky Truth About Their Battle over God

By: Tom Roston

Narrated by: Tom Pile

Length: 4 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

Richard Dawkins and Deepak Chopra are two of the most famous Big Thinkers of our time. And yet their deeply acrimonious, decade-long battle over God, human consciousness and "quantum healing" has gone unchronicled until now. Dawkins, a best-selling author and evolutionary biologist who coined the term "meme", has staked his name on the cause of militant atheism. Chopra, a mind-body guru with a global following that has included the likes of Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga, has increasingly set his sites on the scientific status quo.

Author Tom Roston seeks to uncover what lies beneath their provocative war of ideas in this intimate story of his search to understand his own spirituality and science's hard questions. He travels from Toronto to California to the Quantock Hills in Somerset, England, to Puebla, Mexico, chasing these two alternately fascinating and infuriating men, wrestling with their ideas, and coming up with his own.

Tom Roston is a veteran journalist who began his career at The Nation and Vanity Fair magazines, before working at Premiere magazine as a senior editor. He is now a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The New York Times. He writes a regular blog about nonfiction filmmaking on PBS.org. He lives with his wife and their two daughters in New York City.

Cover design by Evan Twohy.

©2014 Tom Roston (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Very interesting ....

The narration was okay. Spoken as in reflective thought. It was okay as it has a pondering drawl to it that I think was intentional and is the technique the author wanted.

The subject material : This could have been shortened a good bit and still be on point. Still the same old story; materialistic versus dualistic (dualism) thinking. Nothing new was presented to me.

I am a Metaphysicist (Bachelor's of Metaphysical Science working on a Masters : (heavy on science and psychology.)) And I am still in the dualism camp. And too, somehow something of us survives a bodily death. Its nature is still elusive is my thinking.

This book does explore what is thought of this subject as it explores champions of both camps.

Well done.

Reality verse fairytales

Chapter 1 life, death, and the author's personal meaning.

Chapter 2 is GARBAGE......because it is all about Deepak Chopra. A scientific sell out. You can believe in anything you want to it is your choice. Scientology says "you can believe in anything you want to even if it's a rock....." But why the hell would you believe in a rock, a cult or deepak?? Chapter 2 gets 1 star.

Chapter 3 is pretty good because it discusses the life of Richard Dawkins. So chapter 3 gets 4 stars.

Th author seems to be pro-chopra and pro-fairy tails....so he gets 1 star.

Chapter 4 the author scores some points with me after questioning why Chopra makes so much from his scientific/spiritual products. And in chapter 4 the issue of "meaning" and people's need for it dawns on me. Can you be a mindful meditator without having a belief system or can you just consider it a useful behavioural modification technique?

Some interesting points made

I have heard of Chopra (didn’t know much about him) and had no clue about Richard Dawkins. So I found this Kindle Single to be very interesting and informative on the philosophies of these two individuals. I may not agree with everything either one of them says but they do bring up some thought provoking points and questions.

Popularizers versus Pragmatists

Describes the popularized battle between militant atheist Dawkins and militant transcendentalist Deepak Chopra, both of whom are internet protagonists most visible in the battle raging about belief in a God versus a pure materialistic universe. An alternative more pragmatic approach is that based on the improbability of finding a universe like the one we live in, see Simon Rees, Just Six Numbers, on Audible,about how life and our universe couldn’t exist if the six numbers tuning the standard model were changed by only a few percent; and the book not yet on Audible Counting To God by Douglas Ell. These are not militants in an argument, but more pragmatic technical observers,one an atheist British cosmologist, the latter a dual MIT PHD and lawyer who came to believe who details, among other things, how academia has virtually stifled the battle of ideas described in Roston’s book by making it impossible to become a tenured professor while holding a belief in any design for the universe. The standard “religion” now taught on campuses is Scientism, the belief in a material only universe that got here by chance followed by Darwinian evolution. It’s improbability and internal contradictions are ignored. These latter authors both stand aside from the argument, choose to continue searching. If you do or don’t want to believe, don’t argue, but just enjoy the wonder of the universe, and the miracle we’re allowed to appreciate and participate in because of the miracle of our consciousness.

Comparison of 2 world beliefs

Helped me to understand who Chopra is, where he stands with Christianity and his explanation of thought intermingled with God and science.

Excellent

Loved the banter and discussion. I felt that it was engaging and an easy day listen

Remove the "s" from "prophets"

Glad I did not pay for this, but I pushed through... because I'm stubborn.
There is no parallel to be made between the Dawkins and Chopra... one is a scientist and an educator, the other a guru and a con artist. It is also questionable that the author accepted money from Chopra foundation.
Also it is obvious that's Tom Roston was upset that Dawkins denied him an interview.
Tom Roston should follow Daniel Day Lewis advice.

Author wrote this book to attack individuals such as D. Chopra.

Author on a hate and diss mission against individuals such as Chopra. Wish I hadn't purchased this mess.

Decide what you want to write about

This book is all over the place. The author can’t decide what he wants to write about and ends up being catty about everyone and everything. Do you want to explore the difference between these two men and their ideas? Do you want to debate the existence of god? Do you want to debate the validity of religion? Do you want to talk about the difference between science and religion? Do you want to explore The nature of consciousness? These things are so confused in this recitation it doesn’t make any sense. It is heartbreaking, because it’s obviously written by a man adrift.

What an insecure writer

I finished the book just to make sure it’s guy is a dumb insecure person. You cannot go from one who is unrealistic, like Chopra, who gets his life spreading lies to one that is standing on reality.