Tim Freke & Richard Cox, UFOs, 9-11, Climate And Truth |391|

Once again, Tim Freke exposes himself as a disingenuous Huckster.

Kudos to Alex for trying to pin him down on admitting Conspiracies exist. A heroic effort.

Listening to Freke dance like a mad fool to avoid admitting anything is wrong with the Climate Scam or Official 9/11 was hilarious.

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Geeze man. You say the worst things about the guests.
 
I don't hear him being disingenuous at all.
It was the same mad dance he did to avoid admitting he is a Materialist in the interview I linked to above.

He is terrified of offending the Boomer Hippies nearing death who provide his revenue stream, even if he must mischaracterize evidence and and feign ignorance to do it, just like Noam Chomsky does on 9/11, and just like Degrass Tyson does on UFOs . It's disingenuous. It's cowardly shilling for money.
 
This is such a gorgeous, fun, exciting interview! I just want to applaud before coming back and responding much more. To me this is Alex at his best and powerful interviewees standing in their truth, no better convo to be had, imo!

Just wanted to clap out loud a little! (Which apparently is causing snowflakes to melt now and so a non-offensive way of clapping called 'jazz hands' is being pushed, if you haven't heard the latest Richie Allen show, who sometimes reminds me of a less handsome, less courageous, less charming version of Alex, but still every bit as interesting and thought-provoking!) :)
 
I enjoyed it as well and I downloaded a couple of episodes of these gentlemen’s Podcasts to cbeck them out. (I have a 45 hour drive, yes 45 hours, ahead of me so I’m hunting for shows!)

Alex I’m with you on the thought of “emergent consciousness.” I feel very strongly that consciousness precipitated the formation of our planet and, likely, shaped the evolution of life forms partly (if not completely) on this planet. This was either the result of our conscious or subconscious intent (along with that of the other life forms), or through a form of “extended” consciousness either consciousnesly or subconsciously or through a combination of the aforementioned. I don’t believe that these “random” mutations of Neo-Darwinism were random at all, if in fact there were even genetic mutations in the first place. This idea also fits in nicely with Sheldrake’s morphic resonance. I don’t think that the creation of this universe, this planet, and consciousness are things that “just happen” on accident. I’ve always thought that philosophy absurd.



On the whole evolution question I've personally found Perry Marshall book (Evolution 2.0) and wider work informative. Marshall is an engineer* who accepts evolution but does not believe it can have come about through random mutation. Furthermore – that the level of information required right at the start implies a 'creator' of some sort.

*He claims if randomness could lead to increased functionality then we would be using it in engineering and has offered a financial prize for anyone who can demonstrate this – based on the Randi prize.

I wonder if anyone here has come across his work and have any thoughts?
 
I couldn't make up my mind whether Tim Freke was a monistic Idealist or a dualist. On investigation I found a podcast (https://timfreke.podbean.com/e/idealism-vs-emergent-spirituality/) where I discovered that though once an Idealist, he calls his current philosophy "emergent spirituality" (so that isn't just a phrase he mentioned in the interview with Alex).

Anyway, In the podcast I've just linked to, he has a debate with David Websdell, who regards himself as an Idealist. I was surprised that neither of them seem to be aware of Bernardo Kastrup, particularly Websdell, who thinks of himself as holding to a philosophy (Idealism) that "dare not speak its name". He's apparently unaware that Bernardo -- also an idealist -- is getting a fair amount of traction in the scientific press, including a number of fairly recent articles in Scientific American.

I find Tim's philosophy very confusing; I don't really know what he is saying, and at times, he speaks almost like a materialist. He throws in the word paralogical, which is a form of reasoning not dependent on logic, and constantly flits about from this to that without seemingly being able to describe what his philosophy actually is in coherent terms. Maybe he does somewhere and I just haven't found it? If so, please do let me know.

I'm with him that evolution seems a fact, but am convinced that Darwinism can't explain it (except at very low levels, such as speciation events, though not at the higher levels of the formation of body plans). I also agree that evolution seems to occur at all levels in all realms: in organic forms as well as in ideas and culture and so on. How there could possibly be anything more fundamental than consciousness I just can't see from his line of argument.

What, for one thing, is perception? For me, it's a faculty of consciousness apparently instantiated as what we call perceptive organs such as eyes and ears, etc. We live in a world of only apparent instantiation. The world of the "objective" is just the way things appear to our perceptions. We attribute causality to independently existing objects or "things", but they aren't causes, so much as appearances that we fit into our explanatory model of reality. The brain, for instance, doesn't cause consciousness, but is how the process of consciousness appears to us from a certain perspective -- Bernardo's "second person" perspective -- which we take as a part of objective reality. But actually, it's just how the processes occurring in Mind At Large (MAL) appear to our perception as its dissociated alters.

The whole idea of "subjective" and "objective" is misconceived. It presupposes subjectivity and objectivity, when there's actually just the one thing, namely consciousness, either that of the One (MAL), or of its dissociated alters ("organic beings", including ourselves). The world of the inorganic (apparently insentient objects and forces) is just our second-person perspective of the inner, first-person, workings of MAL, which appear to our perception as patterns and regularities that it is the purpose of science to investigate and model.

If the materialist agenda were simply to accept that we can only model reality (and then often only roughly) rather than dogmatically insist that the models are reality, we'd find ourselves in a saner place than we find ourselves within the paradigm of materialism. It's not so much that materialism is wrong, as that it's like a person with greatly defective eyesight imagining that he can see with 20/20 vision. He thinks his images are sharp, even crystal clear, when in fact they're often extremely blocky and vague.

It might be true that over time these images become a little clearer (i.e. that evolution of ideas occurs), but we're still a very long way from the truth. To make progress in science, at some point we're going to have to accept that materialism isn't the master of understanding from which all wisdom proceeds, but rather just a clumsy and fumbling handmaiden of truth. IMO, things will only start to become usefully clearer when science drops materialism, with which it's gone pretty much as far as it can go; currently, I think it's becoming an active impediment to making further progress.

Just as sterile religion may concretise around an initial genuine spiritual impulse, the initially exciting and fruitful impulse of science is now rapidly degenerating into sterility, into scientism. I'm not saying we have to drop science, only what has been for a few centuries its main guiding principle, namely materialism. Thanks to Bernardo, I can sense just a little light at the end of the tunnel.


I did quiz Tim on how his views differed from Idealism last year, I'll have to leave it up to you as to whether it holds up or not ;)


I've also interviewed David Websdell on his Idealism too. David is writing a book focusing on the direct experience of a conscious only view. He's gone through his exercises with me various times and I find them excellent. I'm planning on recording some more experiential stuff with him.


(The most interesting thing I recall was the insight that we have the same words for inner and outer experience. So we have 'heavy weights' and 'heavy feelings', 'bright lights' and 'bright minds' for example. Although we take this for granted, it's not obvious that this should be the case. Is it because we've evolved from a material world and have mapped the outer experience to the inner, or is it because there's an archetypal idea of heaviness that manifests both as emotion and weight? But I digress).

I can confirm they aware of Bernado Kastrup.
 
Once again, Tim Freke exposes himself as a disingenuous Huckster.

Kudos to Alex for trying to pin him down on admitting Conspiracies exist. A heroic effort.

Listening to Freke dance like a mad fool to avoid admitting anything is wrong with the Climate Scam or Official 9/11 was hilarious.

4QKdPIZ.jpg



Having known Tim for fourteen years I'd be fascinated if you could present evidence that he's being paid to aid in the promotion of climate change and/or a cover up of 9/11.

Failing that, will you be writing a retraction and an apology?
 
OMG! "Everything is a conspiracy, from where you buy the fucking buns . . ." Everything/Nothing,
ROFL!!! I"m sorry, but I'm just now listening to the whole thing and it's just too good to not reply in tandem!

Is this a question of naivete, or shillery as Charles Primero suggests, or whatever manner of agenda or conspiracy, or just human nature?

That Gnosis at the Deep Awakening Institute . . the way of coming out of all of this into something very deep . . .
"the secret to the ascent is to always look up . . ." So we are to explore deep while always looking up?

Has anyone been watching the Hulu series "The Path", this is exactly the plot.

Social engineering at every level, we participate, I include myself. Why is it better for consciousness that I spend my time 'always looking up' rather than needlepoint and quilting with my actual physical neighbors?

Yet isn't the same happening here, only with stories. We are basing current stories on past stories ad infinitum, without reliable evidence in most cases. We might as well go back to the fossils dug up in our own backyards before taking as gospel anything that's ever been written. Those who are not looking at the breath of the dragon are lost to the fact that the very nature of life is conspiracy, no one creature exists without the breath of another, and if your breath depends on taking his, that's what you will do, or your genes perish.

Just like Alex said was his experience was mine as well, once you question enough, soon everything is on the table. Either you have a disposition that can handle that, or you block, shut down, fight, or whatever. The Jungians will suggest you finally reach the stage of Acceptance. This is where the evidence would suggest otherwise.

Alex said, "It came looking for me . . ." speaking about conspiracy. Bulllshit, but believable bullshit. More likely I would suggest is along the lines of, "When it came looking, I refused to turn away." That's the difference between a one of character and a one of cowardice, b/c it's come looking for us all at some point. If you haven't experienced conspiracy in your own life and seen that for what it is, named it, called it out, you are a fool beyond current measurable perimeters. Even Dr. Phil has written a book about this, so WOW!
 
On the whole evolution question I've personally found Perry Marshall book (Evolution 2.0) and wider work informative. Marshall is an engineer* who accepts evolution but does not believe it can have come about through random mutation. Furthermore – that the level of information required right at the start implies a 'creator' of some sort.
I think the Discovery Institute crowd would even dispute that evolution in the sense of there being a tree of evolution is right! The problem as I understand it, is that there are huge gaps in the fossil record. For example Jonathan Wells published a book, "Icons of Evolution" which shows how many of the most cherished images illustrating evolution in biology textbooks are actually accepted to be false!

http://www.discovery.org/a/3570/

Authored by developmental biologist and Senior Discovery Fellow Jonathan Wells, this book takes aim at 10 common "icons" used to bolster Darwin's theory in widely used biology textbooks. The "icons" commonly cited to support evolution in textbooks turn out to be scientific urban legends, long-refuted fakes, or misrepresentations of the scientific data.

One of the most famous "icons" discussed is the famous drawings of vertebrate embryos, used in many textbooks to claim that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (that is, the development of an embryo replays its evolutionary history). There's only one problem with these popular drawings: they were based upon faked data by the 19th century embryologist Ernst Haeckel. The drawings have been known to be faked for years, yet they persist in textbooks as a standard proof of evolution. Moreover, Wells explains that embryos of different classes of vertebrates begin development quite differently, belying the claim that common ancestry is revealed in these early developmental stages.

A former Berkeley radical turned anti-Darwin molecular biologist, Wells has done thorough scholarship in this book. It is laden with extensive references to the mainstream scientific literature, which show that common lines of pro-Darwin evidence such as the grand "tree of life," the alleged transitional form "Archaeopteryx," or the supposed vindication of natural selection in "peppered moths" are based upon extremely weak evidence. The tree of life turns out to be a tangled thicket; Archaeopteryx turns out to be 25 million years older than its alleged evolutionary predecessors, and the moth myth turns out to be based upon very little hard data (unless you consider gluing moths on trees to be ("hard data").

In 2000, when speaking to a class of graduate students at Scripps Institution for Oceanography, NCSE director Eugenie Scott said that Icons of Evolution ("Icons") would be a "royal pain in the fanny" for the evolutionist community. Dr. Scott's prophetic utterance has been eminently vindicated, as this textbook has served to expose errors used in many biology textbooks surrounding the evidence which supposedly supports evolution. The furor stirred by Icons has even led to the revision of some biology textbooks. Yet critics of this book have had little more to say in response to Jonathan Wells other than irrelevant ad hominem attacks. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in how high school biology textbooks present neo-Darwinism, and particularly for anyone planning to teach evolutionary theory.



Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why much of what we teach about evolution is wrong
David
 
I've also interviewed David Websdell on his Idealism too. David is writing a book focusing on the direct experience of a conscious only view. He's gone through his exercises with me various times and I find them excellent. I'm planning on recording some more experiential stuff with him.

Richard, I meant to say in my earlier post that I thought you won the debate or at least brought in some much needed balance. :)

IMO, "consciousness only" or idealism or materialism are all equally meaningless in the same way that Oneness is probably the ultimate truth and at the same time meaningless. A monistic philosophy seems to be the most logical even if it obliterates logic. Consciousness is consciousness of consciousness..." doesn't give us much to work with, but the self-referential circularity of life seems self-evident when you think about it.

I prefer to think of patterns as the base unit of reality because pattern by definition contains a unification of a dualism: it brings together subject and object. (There is no pattern without something that is similar to something else and also without an observer to arbitrarily decide two things are similar enough to be considered identical or different enough to be considered different)

I am stuck on the idea that we can consider the 5th dimension to be a "physical" spatial dimension perpendicular to 4D spacetime. We've all seen flatland where a sphere passes through the 2D plane and appears as a projection... a growing/shrinking circle... well suppose you had a 5D object which is essentially a platonic object and project it... take for example a coffee mug. Now project the 5D coffee mug into 4D and instead of a growing/shrinking circle, what you see is a slideshow of all the possible stories and instantiations of a coffee mug doing all the things a coffee mug does. So although all the coffee mugs in the universe (we'll assume the aliens have something akin to coffee and include their mugs here) might exist in wide variety of spaces and times, they all share a point of coincidence in the 5th dimension. This is the semantic dimension and to move in this dimension is E-motion (5-motion) and the greater E-motion the greater the energy/mass in that semantic dimension and that 5D energy can be observed. I would argue that you can't have 4D space time without the notion of similarity and difference which is the 5th dimension. How do you know where two points are in relation to one another without comparing them to a third... the ratio created by the comparison of boundaries and spaces is a measure of similarity/difference and similarity/difference is the foundation of symbol/meaning and so even the basic notion of units of measure and ratios are a slice of the 5D object.

We consider a point to have no real existence because it has no size... and a line because it has no thickness... and a plane likewise... and a solid isn't real either unless it exists for a period of time... well what if it doesn't stop there? I'd propose that a solid object existing for a time isn't real unless it can be linked semantically to something similar or different. And that seems obvious: everything that exists must be to some degree similar and to some degree different from something else that exists. If it were entirely different with no similarities then it couldn't actually exist. And if it were so similar as to be identical then it wouldn't be different, but would be the same instantiation. So there is a spectrum of similarity/difference that everything exists on and that is the 5th semantic dimension of space-time. That similarity/difference forms a real objective structure which is pattern which requires a subject to arbitrarily assign boundaries and meaning. The dualism is: experience/information. There is experience and then there is experience cast into form (in-form) and then there is the experience of observing the in-formed experience, so the loop is complete: Consciousness is consciousness of consciousness...

The obvious problem with this notion that reality is fundamentally mental/semantic is the same that the deconstructionists have posed... where is ultimate truth if all boundaries are arbitrary? And that is why everything "floats" on nothing. The Abyss exists right under our feet right this moment...We're all walking on water right now. So what's to keep everything from being destroyed in the next moment? Nothing but faith and will and the symmetry breaking between masculine and feminine (order being masculine is slightly dominant over the chaos of the feminine).

But enough of the philosophical pseudo-profundity... how do we go faster than light or make 90 degree turns in our craft composed of odd layers of metal that occasionally flakes off and ends up in the hands of a Vegas real estate billionaire, a tatted up rock star, and Hal Puthoff? Well, we just need some kind of tech that augments imagination and makes every particle in your craft and body an extension of your will which forms connections in the semantic dimension and then the physical place you want to arrive at is coincident with the physical place you are at now... and then you will be there. It is that simple. :) (I could be completely wrong about all of this)
 
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I think the Discovery Institute crowd would even dispute that evolution in the sense of there being a tree of evolution is right! The problem as I understand it, is that there are huge gaps in the fossil record. For example Jonathan Wells published a book, "Icons of Evolution" which shows how many of the most cherished images illustrating evolution in biology textbooks are actually accepted to be false!

http://www.discovery.org/a/3570/


David
I’ve done a deep dive on this and Intelligent Design is 100% a Christian conspiracy. Follow the money. Start with the conspiracy, and work back from there.
 
I’ve done a deep dive on this and Intelligent Design is 100% a Christian conspiracy. Follow the money. Start with the conspiracy, and work back from there.
Why not do a deep dive into the question as to whether biology textbooks knowingly include false information about evolution - or do a deep dive into one or two of the DI's science books.

I'm not a Christian - in fact I am opposed to much of what they teach - and yet I have come to the conclusion that Intelligent Design - or something else that can't be reduced to natural selection - is the only way forward for fundamental biology. When things reach the point where textbooks publish false information to persuade the readers to believe in evolution, something clearly needs to change - whatever side you are on.

For me, the best evidence for ID comes from the earliest stages of life, because to get life going at all, you need an information storage - DNA - coding for proteins, including the very proteins that allow that coding mechanism to actually work - to take the information stored in DNA, transcribe that into RNA, and translate that into actual proteins. To put it very simply, the old conundrum, which comes first the chicken or the egg plays right back even at the most fundamental level of biology!

Before you point it out, people have suggested that the original mechanism of life was somehow different and simpler, but they haven't actually come up with an alternative that seems to work, and even if they do, the same problem - that you need a huge mechanism in place before life can kick off at all - will still apply.

It is also worth remembering that even if a suitable bit of DNA and the proteins needed for replication to start, were to have magically appeared in the primordial soup, there is considerably more mechanism needed. For example a cell needs a wall to stop its contents dispersing, and it needs a shed load of extra mechanism to run some sort of metabolism - otherwise there is would be no energy available to drive the process of protein formation, or the raw amino acids (or DNA bases) to build the stuff.

David
 
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I did quiz Tim on how his views differed from Idealism last year, I'll have to leave it up to you as to whether it holds up or not ;)


That was very interesting -- thanks very much for it.

If I get Tim aright, the nub of his problem is that he can't put consciousness first because it would imply that there's always been an omniscient something that in a sense has purposely been forgetting itself so that it can go on to explore itself and discover what it already knows.There's a kind of "self-deceptive" element in that which for him doesn't seem to make any sense. He's saying that no, it isn't like that: the venture of the universe isn't a trick, it's the story of (for want of a better word) a being full of potential that is actually discovering itself in myriads of ways, one of which is you and another me, also snails, coffee cups and atoms.

That doesn't imply he's a panpsychist, i.e. thinks that everything possesses a moiety of consciousness which through complexification comes to possess our level of consciousness and then progresses beyond that to yet higher levels of consciousness. The problem is that word "consciousness"; the prime being hasn't always been conscious at the very highest possible level (well above ours) and we aren't all striving to get back to that level (which is a strain of thought that has long existed -- the "return to Source" motif of a number of spiritual traditions). Rather, it's more that this being has lots of (infinite?) potential to evolve, and we're all involved in that process. It is continually instantiating itself in forms that may sometimes be well behind the leading edge of its self-discovery because -- you never know -- those forms may turn out to have the potential to advance the leading edge.

So the prime being is continually discovering more and more of its own potential, which includes consciousness at our level and perhaps some way further, as found in the minds of the most spiritually advanced people. But the prime being isn't at any time more advanced in a spiritual sense than such people (or possibly -- if there are other life forms in the universe -- than the most advanced non-human spiritual beings anywhere).

I think I may be beginning to see why he uses that word "emergence". It's a bit of a dirty word in some contexts, for example when used by materialists in a hand-waving way to explain all sorts of things about which they have no clue how they came to be. But in the sense he uses it, I think I may be appreciating better where he's coming from.

Again, if I'm beginning to understand him better, this doesn't negate everything that is within the philosophy of Idealism. In fact, to a certain extent, it's compatible with much of it, but like he says, it's often a question of language. In different contexts, one may use the same words to describe things and it's easy to get lost in the semantics.

Whatever, thanks again for posting the video: it's given me a lot to think about. Tell me, do you think I'm on the right kind of track here?
 
I'd be fascinated if you could present evidence that he's being paid to aid in the promotion of climate change and/or a cover up of 9/11.

Somehow I doubt your feigned fascination.

You pretend to not understand how espousing unpopular 9/11 Truths and going against Leftist Global Warming Orthodoxy to an aging Leftist Hippie audience would result in decreased book sales and decreased conference bookings.


“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair

Get real.
 
I find Tim's philosophy very confusing; I don't really know what he is saying, and at times, he speaks almost like a materialist. He throws in the word paralogical, which is a form of reasoning not dependent on logic, and constantly flits about from this to that without seemingly being able to describe what his philosophy actually is in coherent terms. Maybe he does somewhere and I just haven't found it? If so, please do let me know.

I am with you on this. I confess I have not listened to the whole show. I heard Tim on time and I think he is off somewhere that amuses him - and that is entirely fine. It confuses me. Time and sequentiality are the same thing but the point is the perception of interval in a sequence of events. What we call time is extended interval between events caused by the 'obstruction' of the material world. The point being that we in the physical world are conscious in that extended interval. I can chop an onion while the kettle boils.

Also, the other bloke seemed to confuse materiality with materialism. Being anti-materialist does not mean against the material world, just an opposition to those who think this is the basis of what is. Its such a simple matter, so why get it wrong?

I reacted to an earlier show with Tim, when I thought he was trying too hard to be different, and seem like an innovator. My reaction was that I did not think he added anything to the conversation that was useful. My early impression this time round is more of the same. As I confessed, this is on response to an early, incomplete, but not insignificant listening. To be fair, I have just checked and I am a little over 43 minutes into a conversation that has an hour 33 mins to go.

But I am going to be bold here and riff on a theme that strikes me thus far. My passion is animism and how spirituality is going to look in a post-materialist culture. Its a personal trip that I hope will interest some. Its more commentary than anything else. I don't do books because I can't trust that I can say anything that keeps my attention long enough to make one, let alone a reader's. So I have a bit of a thing about professional authors whose cashflow depends on them getting books out by pushing lines that are not well developed or sufficiently thought through. I have bought and read a lot of books that probably should not have been written or published. But when you are in the money game such a judgement is not welcome.

When a book is published we are induced to think that we, as readers, benefit. But one guy has done all the research and a bunch of professionals have crafted his efforts into a publication that makes them money. Who benefits from the product? I think the moment you have a personal commercial interest in the exposition of an idea the relationship between the thinker and the audience is distorted. I have told Alex a number of times that his not-for-profit spirit of Skeptiko is its chief strength.

It is my opinion that Tim is a for-profit philosopher. No matter what he asserts and professes, his kind of philosophy can't be 'love of wisdom'. I am not saying it is akin to prostitution, just that having a commercial interest (in actuality or by appearance) rightly leads to questions being asked.

Now of course there are authors who publish outstanding works. But they may be driven more by passion for their thesis than need for reward. Some professional writers are singularly talented, and their profession is their vehicle for expressing ideas of singular merit. Some people, like Sheldrake and Rain, are thinkers first and writers second. Tim is not, in my opinion, in the same class. I have read, enjoyed, and valued, his works over the years. And when he is doing what he does well he does it very well.

He loves philosophy, and that's a good thing. But we must be modest/realistic about our abilities. Lots of philosophers (something you can apparently call yourself the moment you have a degree in philosophy - as if the academic model is the only one that matters [it doesn't]) think their professional standing means squat [it doesn't].

If we love the struggle for wisdom, the we are, by definition, a philosopher. We love Sophia. We must recover this universal dignity from academics and their apers. Philosophy is not an intellectual discipline, but what is felt deeply and articulated plainly. It is a communion with Sophia, not with Professors or Publishers.

I will now listen to the rest of the show.
 
Somehow I doubt your feigned fascination.

You pretend to not understand how espousing unpopular 9/11 Truths and going against Leftist Global Warming Orthodoxy to an aging Leftist Hippie audience would result in decreased book sales and decreased conference bookings.


“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair

Get real.
Let me get this straight. When challenged to substantiate an outrageous claim, you loosely connect the man's source of income as proof positive he's a bad actor? That's it? Connect the dots with some actual evidence and you might have something. Otherwise, its pretty clear who the huckster is in this discussion.

"Get real" is right.
 
Why not do a deep dive into the question as to whether biology textbooks knowingly include false information about evolution - or do a deep dive into one or two of the DI's science books.

I'm not a Christian - in fact I am opposed to much of what they teach - and yet I have come to the conclusion that Intelligent Design - or something else that can't be reduced to natural selection - is the only way forward for fundamental biology. When things reach the point where textbooks publish false information to persuade the readers to believe in evolution, something clearly needs to change - whatever side you are on.

For me, the best evidence for ID comes from the earliest stages of life, because to get life going at all, you need an information storage - DNA - coding for proteins, including the very proteins that allow that coding mechanism to actually work - to take the information stored in DNA, transcribe that into RNA, and translate that into actual proteins. To put it very simply, the old conundrum, which comes first the chicken or the egg plays right back even at the most fundamental level of biology!

Before you point it out, people have suggested that the original mechanism of life was somehow different and simpler, but they haven't actually come up with an alternative that seems to work, and even if they do, the same problem - that you need a huge mechanism in place before life can kick off at all.

It is also worth remembering that even if a suitable bit of DNA and the proteins needed for replication to start, were to have magically appeared in the primordial soup, there is considerably more mechanism needed. For example a cell needs a wall to stop its contents dispersing, and it needs a shed load of extra mechanism to run some sort of metabolism - otherwise there is would be energy available to drive the process of protein formation, or the raw amino acids (or DNA bases) to build the stuff.

David

It's pointless arguing with materialists, David. They lack the capacity to see that they're basing everything on a metaphysical position of non-intentionality (or accidentalism). This is despite the fact that intentionality exists in their own consciousness, and they have to explain how that happened, or else deny their own experience.

This is why there is the "hard problem" of consciousness; it's a problem of their own making, since it only arises if you think everything came about by accident. From the accidental, purposefulness has to have somehow arisen, or else has to be an illusion. Almighty accident has limitless power, much more than intentionality has; give things enough time and anything can happen. This is the faith of the materialist, who is quite blind to the fact he has such a thing as faith.

For him, the world must be the way he sees it and couldn't possibly be any other way. Anyone who entertains the possibility that the world isn't out there in a spatio-temporal sense (i.e. exactly as we perceive it to be rather than as a construction in consciousness) has to be completely off their rocker. This isn't to say that a "thing-in-itself" (ding an sich) as Kant put it doesn't exist, only that it might not exist exactly as we perceive it. By this interpretation, there is definitely such "things" as a coffee cups and planets, but they might not exist literally, that is, as we perceive them.

The rules a thing obeys are conceptual, and this helps create the impression of "things" in space (and/or time) via a combination of our perceptual apparatus and the models we've created to interpret their meaning. Entertaining this idea makes it much easier to understand why it is that when we go looking for elementary particles, we have such difficulties finding them: they are elusive, mere potentialities until we observe them (i.e. when they become compliant with MALs inherent rules).

Explaining this in materialistic terms is nigh on impossible, whereas it's quite a lot easier in Idealistic terms. Things exist, have always existed in potential, but only come to seem to have a concrete form when consciousness makes an observation (IOW, makes an irrevocable decision) and "collapses the wave function" as they say. Once that's done, we have the reality we apparently see before us, and things within that reality can exist for varying amounts of time before eventually disintegrating back into potential (does entropy truly exist, or is it just one way of interpreting reality?).

Starting with billiard balls, one has the problem of explaining how all the complexity we see around us (particularly in living organisms) has arisen, and has to construct a serendipitous narrative that conveniently hand-waves away all the difficulties, or issues promissory notes for their eventual solution. From my viewpoint, there simply has to be, and always has been, some archetypical intelligence in the system; nothing else makes any sense to me.
 
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Alex and Tim talking past each other.
seemed to me more of a matter of disagreeing.

Regarding the questions about the nature of time around 30:00... I feel like I've heard all this before... Yes we are making progress towards something. Consciousness is emerging, but we could also say it is returning. Spirit moves in spirals. What has been will be again, but always a bit different than before.
sure, but Tim seems stuck in a very linear understanding of this. what about Radin and Bem... let along NDE/OBE?
 
Also, the other bloke seemed to confuse materiality with materialism. Being anti-materialist does not mean against the material world, just an opposition to those who think this is the basis of what is. Its such a simple matter, so why get it wrong?
that's not what I heard (the very excellent) Richard Cox say. I heard him rightly point out that loosening our grip on these worldviews might allow us to dive deeper.

It is my opinion that Tim is a for-profit philosopher.
I don't get this profit-hating thing. I wish Tim made 10X on his books and conferences!
 
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