Deepak Chopra: Richard Dawkins is a bad scientist and his arrogance pisses me off

A new book details the years-long, highly acrimonious feud between self-help guru Deepak Chopra and evolutionary biologist and skeptic Richard Dawkins.

According to Salon.com, Tom Roston's book The Quantum Prophets: Richard Dawkins, Deepak Chopra and the spooky truth about their battle over God, explains that the longstanding rivalry between the two men began at the 2002 TED Conference and culminated in a public debate in 2013. In an interview with Roston, Chopra explained that Dawkins' "arrogance" continues to bother him.

“With Dawkins, I am just pissed off. I am pissed off by his arrogance and his pretense of being a really good scientist. He is not,” Chopra told Roston. “And he is using his scientific credentials to literally go on a rampage.”

When Roston said that this kind of resentment is surprising coming from a man who purports to teach millions of others the secrets of inner peace, Chopra, surprisingly, agreed.

“I totally agree," he said. "It’s my last challenge. It may be a very strange psychological issue.”

Roston went on to say that perhaps Chopra's resentment of Dawkins and his attacks on people of faith around the world is based in the history of their respective countries.

Chopra's parents grew up under British colonialism, which Chopra called "two hundred years of enslavement." It instilled in him a mistrust of high-handed British pomp and snobbery and of “these Oxford and Cambridge pseudo intellectuals. India has a habit of aping them. There are more fans of Dawkins in India than anywhere else. It’s the postcolonial hangover.”

Dawkins has accused Chopra of being a swindler whose practice of "mind-body wellness" bilks millions of people around the world by dazzling them with "magical language" and "bullshit."

The two men debated in Pueblo, Mexico in 2013, both coming away calling themselves the winner.

“I have to let it go,” Choprah told Roston this year. “I have to recognize it. Mexico should have been the finish.”

Watch the debate from Pueblo in 2013, embedded below via YouTube:

[image of Deepak Chopra via Facebook.com]