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

I am with you on this.

Thanks -- but see my subsequent reply to Richard Cox; listening to the interview he had with Tim Freke about how he had moved on from pure Idealism, I think I begin to see what he might be saying more clearly. Check the video out if you can; it may help you make a little more sense of his view.

Thing is, superficially at any rate, Tim seems to accept the Big Bang and the 13 billion year narrative, and I don't think that anyone should: that's just the current narrative and it could change tomorrow for all we know.
 
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I don't get this profit-hating thing. I wish Tim made 10X on his books and conferences!

Yeah. I agree. I don't think Tim is a bad actor; I think he's sincere. I haven't read any of his books, and my earlier comments on his apparent confusion might be as much the result of my own failure to grasp what he's saying as his failure to put it across in video format.
 
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.
I don't think I really buy that argument - though I may be misunderstanding it.

I am wary, because scientists invoke all sorts of spaces with varying numbers of dimensions. For example there is the concept of 'phase space' which includes the locations of the particles within, together with their momenta. This is convenient for various sorts of calculations, but it isn't a 'space' in the usual sense, because you can't rotate in that space - mingling positions and momenta!

Therefore I am not sure this way of looking at all coffee mugs in more than an extreme mathematical abstraction. But even worse, we can question whether all possible coffee mugs would share a single point in 5D space, because a coffee mug isn't terribly well defined - what about a mug used for a variety of drinks, or an old, emptied food can used as a coffee mug in an emergency, or a laboratory beaker used in the same way. Remember that all other objects would require to be represented by another point in 5D space.

My feeling is that reality has to be a combination of mechanism and consciousness, except that it is always possible that mechanism may be eliminated by the use of loads of extra consciousness (Idealism). To me, the real problem is how to escape from the conventional model of reality in which consciousness has no home and everything is a mechanism..

Distinctions between Dualism and Idealism are so remote that it is almost certainly counter-productive to even think about them. I mean, there are plenty of physicists who think String Theory, with its 10/11 dimensions may be wrong, some think theoretical physicists parted with reality even earlier, so fooling about with dimensional ideas may not be helpful.

David
 
seemed to me more of a matter of disagreeing.

The fireworks were fun to listen to, but in parts it reminded me of one of those cable TV news programs where everyone is shouting over everyone else. I felt like more would have been accomplished if more of an effort were made to "steelman" opposing viewpoints and build on common ground. Tim seemed genuinely confused as to what your actual position was at some points and I can sort of understand why. It seemed more like a Trumpian art of the deal type business conversation where each party makes an extreme provocative shocking comment at the beginning so that the eventual middle ground will be found closer to the desired side...

sure, but Tim seems stuck in a very linear understanding of this. what about Radin and Bem... let along NDE/OBE?

Well that was a perfect illustration of what I'm talking about above... When you say something like "there is no time!" I mean a strongly worded provocative contrarian statement which taken at face value is patently false even though I think I know what you mean by that, but I can twist the sentence to a point where I could kind of agree... time is not simply what it appears to be from the naive realism, but the naive real perspective of time is incredibly useful because its where we spend most of our... time.

So what you both ended up agreeing upon on was that one has to be able to shift between perspectives and I agree with that too.

Radin and Bem, NDE, OBE, etc.. all lead us to the idea that our existence in the present moment is sort of smeared out in time and that all events are not necessarily coordinated linearly and that our experience of time as a linear progression is somewhat of a "construct" of the matrix we find ourselves in and that if we pop out of it we have another degree of freedom... but I do agree with Tim that for there to be any change at all there has to be something that looks like what we call "time"... we can consider multiple dimensions of time perhaps, but time is just a comparison of relative changes.
 
I don't think I really buy that argument - though I may be misunderstanding it.

I am wary, because scientists invoke all sorts of spaces with varying numbers of dimensions. For example there is the concept of 'phase space' which includes the locations of the particles within, together with their momenta. This is convenient for various sorts of calculations, but it isn't a 'space' in the usual sense, because you can't rotate in that space - mingling positions and momenta!

Any dimension is a way of mathematically relating similarity and difference of a singular quality. We could choose any property (temperature, pressure etc) and make a dimension of it, but that is not what I'm talking about here... I'm saying a 4D object (3D object moving) is a projection of a 5D object which is all the semantic connections between that object and everything else. The 4D's we are used to are a subset of semantic connections... location and time are arbitrarily defined comparisons similarity and difference.

Therefore I am not sure this way of looking at all coffee mugs in more than an extreme mathematical abstraction. But even worse, we can question whether all possible coffee mugs would share a single point in 5D space, because a coffee mug isn't terribly well defined - what about a mug used for a variety of drinks, or an old, emptied food can used as a coffee mug in an emergency, or a laboratory beaker used in the same way. Remember that all other objects would require to be represented by another point in 5D space.

Yes, there is ambiguity in semantics which is why I made the comment about deconstruction and walking on water... But instead of binary true/false, think of it more of an analog concentric circles of similarity... The instantaneous frame of the coffee mug sitting on my desk is most similar to the coffee mug frame that was there a mirco second before it and a little less similar will be the coffee mug that was there +/- 10 seconds, etc... now even less similar is the other mug that is on my desk with a cat on it. The mug with the cat on it shares a lot of similarities with other mugs and a few similarities with a cat so it has semantic connections to both.

So just as there is a near infinite number of ways you could slice up a 3D object and every slice will be related to every other slice because it was sliced from the same object, there is a near infinite number of semantic connections or ways you can slice up the platonic ideal object.

With a near infinite number of ways you could slice up reality what is it that makes some connections more meaningful than others? Depends on the observer... just as your eyes and brain observe 3D objects and pick out lines and surfaces and colors that are important and ignore the rest, a psychic or remote viewer looking out on the semantic connections is able to filter out the connections that are irrelevant and focus on the ones that are relevant. Emotion highlights the connections... if I were to take my mug and smash it in anger, that emotional act on the mug at a particular time has connections to the mug before it was smashed that could be perceived ahead of time because in the semantic dimension past present and future can be seen coincidentally if observed from a certain angle.

With this view magic is real. What you name something "matters" or how you symbolize something "matters" because semantic connections exist "objectively" in that they can be perceived by third parties or influence standard 4D reality.

I mean how else can you explain remote viewers being able to see what is important at a location signified by GPS coordinates in a sealed envelope??? The GPS coordinates are some ink molecules on paper but they signify something and that is a semantic connection that is objectively observable.

My feeling is that reality has to be a combination of mechanism and consciousness, except that it is always possible that mechanism may be eliminated by the use of loads of extra consciousness (Idealism). To me, the real problem is how to escape from the conventional model of reality in which consciousness has no home and everything is a mechanism..

Instead of mechanism/consciousness as the basic duality I would say mechanism/will or mechanism/chaos is the basic duality. Consciousness is a combination of mechanism and will. If everything is mechanism, then nothing can be new and if nothing is new then there is no creativity so how can there be anything at all? If everything is chaos or will then nothing is intelligible or knowable... nothing to experience. The universe is mostly a beautiful mechanism but at the edges we find ambiguity or chaos and that is where the will can operate on the mechanism. Perhaps your brain and body have trillions of molecules subject to quantum uncertainty that can amplify the fluctuations in the "noise" of choice into a mechanistic action. Will is the anomaly that ruins the perfection of the Architect's Matrix but that is also what makes everything new so each needs the other.
 
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I mean how else can you explain remote viewers being able to see what is important at a location signified by GPS coordinates in a sealed envelope??? The GPS coordinates are some ink molecules on paper but they signify something and that is a semantic connection that is objectively observable.
That is a great question!

I guess I try to rationalise it by assuming that each of us as individuals has weak contact with a shared consciousness that understands the big picture.

David
 
That is a great question!

I guess I try to rationalise it by assuming that each of us as individuals has weak contact with a shared consciousness that understands the big picture.

David

I think that’s a somewhat useful metaphor. I’m just trying to come up with another useful metaphor. In the semantic metaphor then identity is coincidence. Coincidence is a spatial primitive notion. So by modeling semantic connections as spatial coincidences in a dimension perpendicular to our 4D, then we can begin to conceive of a mechanism of action for things like Psi and faster than light travel or time loops and the interface between the “higher self” and the physical material brain.
 
I don't get this profit-hating thing. I wish Tim made 10X on his books and conferences!

So, you want to give him enough rope to hang himself? hehe :)

This is a really touchy point I think deserves some real unpacking. I was just looking at the YT comments of a hard-core conspiracy theorist I support and read some really aggressive accusations when he decided to make the 2nd hour of his podcast private, on his own private platform, away from censorship and typical social media privacy violations.

Now seriously, who thinks that anyone is going to go to all the expense and trouble and time and effort and on and on, to give all their work away for free, forever. What kind of ridiculous saint-pauper stereotype are we setting up for these extraordinary researchers who really go out on a limb?!

And not then to swing to the other end of the pendulum, but maybe that's the best way to go. Who is not eternally irritated by the likes of those who preach moderation and model extravagance? And don't we have our fill of them in every sector today?!

Thoughts?
 
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.

This is something I might've noticed more, would surely be more critical of, in retrospect. Why wasn't I? It's much more than I'm just used to it by now. I need to listen again to be sure. But here's one initial speculation--I remember such a feeling of 'yes, this is where we are at, these perspectives are respective of the culture today as I am experiencing it' and from that I saw my own relationships, and struggles and assumptions as I try to navigate them across vast expanses of knowledge, worldview, experience, etc. I felt no threat or even need to mock, just a big welcome space for spontaneous authentic inquiry. Really I think this was what most impressed me. Not sure why, just expressing.

Still, I plan to listen again to reflect further. I see the Tavistock and Theosophocial society influence on all 'New Age' thought, normally I don't excuse those espousing it so readily, but I have here and now, it would seem. :)
 
I hope I'm reading this the way it was intended because I feel like the Jungian, "accept the archetype" thing is often played before all the cards/evidence is on the table. ETH is a great example. I enjoyed this discussion at 24 min in:
Talking The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis with Richard Dolan – Rune Soup

Much appreciated Alex, listening now and this is just the sort of 'pendulum' influence I need at the moment, thank you.

At 24 min: A fresh ETH would include the sciences and that there have been influences even beyond the singularity, it's a technology here (not all fairies) energy propulsion AI, experiencers, they've come here been here a long time, have total organic mastery . . . that's just the beginning. WOW! Stupendous. Open to hearing more.

loosening our grip on these worldviews might allow us to dive deeper.

I appreciate this very much too. How loose though? What if you no longer allowed yourself to drink from a poisoned well?
Just that one thing, which sounds very wholesome and logical, would mean anything that NASA produces is not permissible in a court of your personal 'public opinion'.

After 26 min: He says then about the 'skeptical' hypothesis of Carl Sagan, etc . . .
but there is a far more skeptical hypothesis, many of them, which you know from THC, like Lunar Wave, from Crrow777. Here is a skeptic who says that pretty much everything we've been told about space is false and he's already proved it.

I go back to my usual plea in all these cases--I do not know, I am no expert in anything, don't get the science, will never get it, but I do get a sense for stories sometimes and I am trying to decipher this, with everything on the table, as you said.
 
I think that’s a somewhat useful metaphor. I’m just trying to come up with another useful metaphor. In the semantic metaphor then identity is coincidence. Coincidence is a spatial primitive notion. So by modeling semantic connections as spatial coincidences in a dimension perpendicular to our 4D, then we can begin to conceive of a mechanism of action for things like Psi and faster than light travel or time loops and the interface between the “higher self” and the physical material brain.
When I was first introduced to the idea of a 4-volume - a chunk of ordinary 3D space extending over a period of time, and the ability (at least in theory) to rotate coordinates, morphing space into time and time into space, I was blown away. However, by now I feel differently about it - I feel it is a mathematical abstraction that may or may not even be true. For one thing, these rotations happen in Minkowski space, which is not exactly like ordinary space extended to an extra dimension.

I feel that no extended physics (extra dimensions, new forces or particles...) can ever explain any consciousness phenomenon, and that includes things like remote viewing. The trouble with exotic physics is that it can blow your mind away, and you stop thinking and just say WOW! Also, it is hard to understand, and if you do put the effort in and plough through the equations, you feel so pleased with yourself that it just has to be true!

As far as I can see, the Hard Problem would be just as hard if reality contained 52 dimensions and was wrapped into a high dimensional torus (or whatever!) - The HP, and all the phenomena that it touches on (including UFOs), need to be explained some other way.

David
 
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?


That sounds like an accurate interpretation of Tim's philosophy Michael, however I wouldn't claim I really understood it or that I embrace it, so I'm not in the best position to say. I shall inform Tim this conversation is going on, I know he's heading to the USA any day now, but he might be able to hop in.
 
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 understand what you are saying Charlie, I asked you to provide evidence to support it rather than slanderous conjecture. I really would have found that fascinating but unsurprisingly it has not been forthcoming.

I am not employed by Tim nor do I have any financial relationship with him – so my salary does not depend on me not understanding anything.

You don't have the first idea as to Tim's income or the demographics of his audience. The idea that he would be a secret 9/11 Truther but keep quiet about it to placate his audience is asinine. Who's to say he wouldn't attract a much bigger audience if he were to shout such things from the roof tops? It's impossible to say, the only thing you can do is be authentic and see who turns up.
 
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.


'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?'

Could you give me rough time stamp for when I said that Michael? I'd like to think I said something a bit more nuanced than that.
 
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.

Michael,

You expressed there a lot of what I feel about Tim, but was loath to write as a moderator :)

I am sure he is sincere, but to be a good philosopher in this domain, I guess you need to know some science, and to understand why people don't think materialism is valid. If you don't understand just how hard the Hard Problem is, or how vague 'emergence' is as an explanation compared with the bulk of science, you simply can't think clearly about this subject, never mind write a worthwhile book.

I also agree with your general comments about books - that too many are written just for profit. One of the things I really value about Skeptiko, is that it throws up a lot of links to books that really are worth reading.

David
 
That sounds like an accurate interpretation of Tim's philosophy Michael, however I wouldn't claim I really understood it or that I embrace it, so I'm not in the best position to say. I shall inform Tim this conversation is going on, I know he's heading to the USA any day now, but he might be able to hop in.
I don't take a position on 9/11, but I too think climate change is fundamentally phoney. Because discussions about climate change have become unruly in the past - and distract from the core subject of Skeptiko, I don't debate it (much) in the forum, but I have a PM with a number of people, discussing the evidence, and you are welcome to join if you wish.(Alex, you can join too, of course).

Being a 'Climate Denier' doesn't mean I am against environmental concern, but nothing is gained by pursuing a non-environmental issue when there are so many obvious environmental concerns to think about.

David
 
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 still haven't listened to the show so could be talking rubbish, but it sounds like Freke is outlining a kind of Panentheism, which is heavily influenced by Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and philosophy of organism.

With this is mind I reckon Freke is using the term emergent in the sense that higher systems of organisation have emergent properties and behaviours that cannot be explained or predicted by the study of their constituent parts. These higher systems of order exert a top-down causal effect on their constituent parts. The cosmos is also seen a vast nested hierarchy of emergent (in the previously defined sense) systems, with each emergent system having a top-down causal effect on all lower systems in the hierarchy. So, the ultimate organising system is sometimes seen as being a contender for God.

Panentheism also tries to philosophically collapse dualism by viewing both mind and matter as expressions (or abstractions) of a single ontological reality / existence, or, more infrequently, as ontologically different expressions of an ontologically singular sub-strata.

As panentheism is usually tied in with Whitehead it also holds the dynamic and evolutionary nature of being as necessarily fundamental to any philosophical system that seeks to outline the nature of existence.

So, I suppose, taken the above, the extended consciousness realm and the material would, to some degree, evolve in a intertwined fashion (maybe with bi-directional influence).

One outgrowth of panentheism and Process philosophy is Process theology. In Process theology the world is seen as being contained in God, with God's defining, and unchanging, characteristics being creativity, evolution, etc. As the world changes, so too must an aspect of God. However, the previously mentioned Platonic characteristics are unchanging and exert a top-down causal effect on all of existence (making God's power not coercively omnipotent in the usual sense but magnetically attractive).

Whitehead summed it up as follows:

It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent.
It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many.
It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently.
It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World.
It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.
It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.

THIS SHOW AND FORUM ARE TERRIBLE! I've got stuff to do, but Skeptiko sucks up such a tremendous amount of my headspace. :)
 
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I don't take a position on 9/11, but I too think climate change is fundamentally phoney. Because discussions about climate change have become unruly in the past - and distract from the core subject of Skeptiko, I don't debate it (much) in the forum, but I have a PM with a number of people, discussing the evidence, and you are welcome to join if you wish.(Alex, you can join too, of course).

I think it’s worthy of note that such subjects as 9/11, climate change etc are no longer encouraged on this site, or hidden from the public view on others. Yet I know Alex at least isn’t anti ‘conspiracy theories’, but quite open to them.

I have my own theories about why this might be, including the obvious one that allowing public threads on topics like these is similar to owning a rowdy bar, they tend to need someone in charge keeping things in order so that the place doesn’t get wrecked in a brawl. They aren’t quiet book shops. People get emotional about them- over emotional imo.

It’s a real shame.

I’m the opposite of you where these two topics are concerned. I have literally no idea if global warming as it’s now known is the threat that we are frequently told that it is, it’s so complex. I really don’t understand how you can’t have doubts over the official story where 9/11 is concerned David. Maybe you do? But se la vie. :)

Could I join the private group so as to learn more about climate change please?
 
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