Olmsted,
Thanks for the review. I have no particular background in quantum theory (I’m a community pharmacist) just saw this movie by streaming it on Netflix, thought it OK for the first few minutes before the pseudo-science bable started, then spent the rest of the movie trying dope out which group produced this turdblossom. TM? L.Ron Inc.? No. Someone I’ve never heard of before, Ramtha. Next time I must bring my bag o’gold.

Another way to describe the reason for this movie is as if two salesmen are working a car dealership lot. One is openly the salesman; the other is pretending to be a customer. The pretend customer casually meets real customers in the lot and discusses his thoughts about the cars and how good they are and at a great price. He softens up the real customer and pretends to be interested in the exact same car as the real customer. The real customer rushes to the salesman to get that great deal before someone else snaps it up. This movie is like that. It takes many apparently unconnected experts who reach the same conclusion that this is truth. Then the viewer can purchase the books, tapes, courses, seminars, etc. — because you need this truth in your life right now.

Enter such debate with data (e.g., crime-rate stats, as suggested) in hope of serving those in your audience who are given to reasoned analysis instead of snake-oil, or further honing your debate skills. But your time may be best spent on other endeavors. “New age” fundamentalists, like their monotheistic brethren, have little use for reasoned analysis; they traffic in the dogma of hunches and the perceived superiority of their feelings.

The author of the review did not “pass judgment on others” but instead criticized and refuted (or “passed judgment” upon) weak hypotheses passed off as established theories or fact. Rather it’s your assertion that “all of you are unhappy with your own lives,” that smacks of mean-spirited judgment. Then again, that’s what God does best.

Your review, as it addresses the nature of atoms near the top, does not provide a contradictory theory – it assumes the reader will generate their own opposition – and goes on to link the reasonable idea that “Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies” (as we once found out with electrons) with religious and spiritual beliefs a paragraph later; again relying on the reader’s prepositions to “know” how the universe works.

Please, don’t start quoting the Einstein known to us by the scientific community – as if you looked into his belief system, which mainstream science likes to say it’s based on, you would see that he had a firm belief in god, and talked about a consciousness that we could tap into that was of “higher” intelligence and provided him with great insight.

As I am trying to address aspects of the scientific merit of this review by John Olmsted, I will not choose to make the media that he uses to convey his message a main point, like he did concerning the documentary. However, I will point out that the visual display of faces and images in his review also has a “subjective” value upon the reader. In other words, people feel more emotionally attached to faces, and thus this triggers a greater emotional response and serves to break up our attempts at logical processing of his written word.

As for the cancer rallying- cry against taking responsibility for your own health (as this presentation of quantum physics would like you to do) – I’m sure if you did the research, you would find that those that took responsibility for their own emotions and mental well being had a much better rate of survival then those to resigned to giving their personal power of recovery over to their allopathic doctors. I also believe that this review is dipped in fears…of the new and unknown, so the arguments about the documentary using fear – well, are irrelevant, and hopefully both fears can be ignored and the documentary watched from a “non-fearful point of view“. The mentioning of this author using a child with Down’s syndrome, and him being a, “mental health therapist specializing in issues of learning, attention and the brain”, I could see why a documentary like this would upset him, just as it would any of us with an autistic child. However, an emotional response is an emotional response, and is still triggered by past memory, or association, no matter the credentials that are worn on one’s chest.

The 2nd “review” is made by a guy named Skeptico – of course he has a inclination in which he would see the film. As does a writer for the site http://www.skeptic.com – I guess this kind of “criticism” comes with the field of being a sceptic, just as being an open minded quantum physicist would leave you open to attacks that seem to be more emotional or belief system – based than on current scientific responses. Admittedly, I do not have time to go into the second critical article, as I have to attend to my own needs; but I will leave you with this objective question – what is the nature of a critical review if it is written from the mind state of one who has prior claim to being a sceptic?

I am afraid that my review of the limited scientific evidence that Olmsted provided is, in nature, lacking. I don’t recall Ramtha’s recovery program was never mentioned as being the answer, the authors of the documentary were merely calling for a broader perspective of reality -something that has always, and naturally, met with resistance.