Tim Freke on the Science of Evolving Souls |355|

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Tim Freke on the Science of Evolving Souls |355|
by Alex Tsakiris | Jul 11 | Skepticism, Spirituality

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Philosopher Tim Freke’s, Soul Story offers a worldview beyond science and religion.

photo by: Skeptiko
On this episode of Skeptiko…

Alex Tsakiris: …you’re talking about a deep evolution, a spiritual evolution, and I get that, I just don’t know that we can connect it with the dorky, neo-Darwinistic bullshit that we’ve been fed…

Tim Freke: My approach is look, there does seem to be the fact of biological evolution, whatever the mechanisms, however we come to understand that.. Then a hundred years ago something amazing happened with big bang theory, when we went, “Look, it’s not just life, it’s not just biology which has evolved, it’s the whole universe has evolved over 13.8 billion years.”

… so, this period where we could argue about the biological mechanisms is only the tail end anyway, I mean, clearly evolution can’t be about genetics only because there was no genetics when there was the evolution of basic gases, there was nothing. So the evolutionary process is much bigger than any biological evolutionary process.

Stay with us for Skeptiko…

Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and on this episode Tim Freke joins us to talk about his new book: Soul Story: Evolution and The Purpose of Life
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

Do you think that Tim's approach of trying to get science and spirituality to play nicely together, through the common bond of evolution and emergence, has a chance of working?
 
Not a snowball's chance in hell...reconciling science and spirituality isn't going to happen by reducing metaphysical realities to physical processes via emergence...and that is indeed what Freke is suggesting when he said:

"now we need to go, “Oh yeah, and there’s another phase of evolution after biological evolution,” and that’s the evolution of soul and that’s what spirituality has been studying all of this time." -
Freke

Saying that the mental properties supervene on the physical is just playing into the hands of ontological materialists.
 
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Not a snowball's chance in hell...reconciling science and spirituality isn't going to happen by reducing metaphysical realities to physical processes via emergence...and that is indeed what Freke is suggesting when he said:

"now we need to go, “Oh yeah, and there’s another phase of evolution after biological evolution,” and that’s the evolution of soul and that’s what spirituality has been studying all of this time." -
Freke

Saying that the mental properties supervene on the physical is just playing into the hands of ontological materialists.
Agreed. Freke left me profoundly underwhelmed! As if the whole debate was about how many phases of evolution there were, and once you throw out evolution by natural selection (which I think he does) don't you have to redefine it again before using the term?

At one point Alex tried to move him on to talk about life after death, and his approach seemed to be to say that consciousness probably went on for a bit after death! He specifically didn't want to consider what many NDEers have reported - that time is somehow different up there!

I guess he could be described as quintessentially New Age!

David
 
I found the podcast to be very interesting. I'm always happy to hear people who have developed ideas about the nature of reality that stretch my own understanding. I find it pointless to listen to someone who just reinforces my own ideas. Good stuff.

Thanks to Alex and T!M.
 
Not a snowball's chance in hell...reconciling science and spirituality isn't going to happen by reducing metaphysical realities to physical processes via emergence...and that is indeed what Freke is suggesting when he said:

"now we need to go, “Oh yeah, and there’s another phase of evolution after biological evolution,” and that’s the evolution of soul and that’s what spirituality has been studying all of this time." -
Freke

Saying that the mental properties supervene on the physical is just playing into the hands of ontological materialists.
agreed... he's coming at it from the wrong direction re consciousness :)
 
Great interview!

I agree with everything Mr. Freke (great name for an explorer of taboo topics) says.

I'm not sure if it is a case of sensitization (suddenly seeing something everywhere after becoming familiar with it) or if I'm surfing a psychic wave of the human hive mind, but I feel like every time I have a few epiphanies, I shortly thereafter hear it echoed and validated out there.

Agree that "all is material" and "all is consciousness" are equally meaningless. Agree that everything (even heaven and hell) is constantly evolving.

I like the idea: "time doesn't pass, it accumulates."

By the principle of opposites if there is change, there must also be stasis... or put another way, all is a spectrum of relative rates of change. The past is probably fixed for as long as it needs to be.
 
Do you think that Tim's approach of trying to get science and spirituality to play nicely together, through the common bond of evolution and emergence, has a chance of working?

There is no conflict between science and spirituality. That is a myth propagated by atheists who try to discredit spirituality by calling it unscientific. The real conflict is between atheists and spirituality.

Many scientists including many Nobel Prize winners have spiritual beliefs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis
The "conflict thesis" is a historiographical approach in the history of science which maintains that there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science and that the relationship between religion and science inevitably leads to public hostility. The thesis retains support among some scientists and in the public,[1] while most historians of science do not support the thesis, especially in its original strict form.[2][3][4][5]

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/video-lecture-by-john-lennox-explains.html
Video Lecture by John Lennox Explains why Atheism is a Delusion Incompatible with Science.
...
Lennox also makes the case that science and theology are not in conflict. Science and theology provide different kinds of explanations. You can explain a car by describing an internal combustion engine, and you can explain a car as a product of the company founded by Henry Ford. Both explanations are true, but they are different kinds of explanations. Many Nobel Prize winning scientists believe in God. Lennox says, "We owe modern science to Christianity directly. All the early pioneers Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Clerk Maxwell were all Christians." He says Christian faith is based on evidence and the faith modern scientists have that nature is orderly and subject to natural laws originated from religious beliefs about God. Science is man's attempt to understand the universe created by God. God is not a god of the gaps who's role is diminished with every scientific discovery. That misconception arises when you believe there is only one kind of explanation. God is the creator of the natural laws scientists are trying to discover.

The conflict is between atheism and theism. Lennox sides with the theists and concludes that it is atheism that is incompatible with science. A brain that arose through natural evolution, that was selected for survival not truth, would not be a reliable tool for understanding nature. [More here.] Atheism undermines the belief that we can understand the natural world, it undermines the foundations of science. [In Promissory materialism isn't even plausible, it is contradicted by the history of science I also point out that the multiverse theory, which atheists cling to as a non-theistic explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe to support life, also undermines science because the theory is unfalsifiable and when there are an infinite number of universes, anything can be explained by chance rather than by natural law. A third way materialism undermines science is that it makes a priori metaphysical assumptions in favor of naturalism that artificially limit the scope of science.]
 
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Agree that "all is material" and "all is consciousness" are equally meaningless.

Yes. What they 'actually' are is meaningless because outside of this experience what reference points could we possibly use to judge? ("consciousness is 4 parts candy floss and 1 parts shoe leather") What I've been focused on lately is that whatever they are, they are seemingly a spectrum composed of the SAME thing and should both be considered equally real -- be you a physicalist or an idealist. (Materialists, don't pretend thought is just an airy fairy dimension that doesn't matter, and idealists, don't try and pretend the material world is just an emergent byproduct of thought that doesn't have any inherent meaning or viability in itself. And mothers, stop trying to pretend that sticks and stones break bones, but words and intentions don't hurt when they obviously do.) The physical and mental are most notably directly transferable via metaphor and if you pay attention we effortlessly reference physical instances with mental metaphors or physical instances with idea metaphors.

I don't like how Freke was saying all these experiences were different dimensions. In a cacophony of music you can have all of those frequencies in the same physical space and some frequencies will cancel and some will build and some will pass right through ignoring the other completely. That seems to be a closer fit to me? A book dropped impacts energetically on the floor, some of that energy is displaced audibly, particles are sent wafting through the air into your smell receptors, the cat is emotionally startled and runs into the next room, etc..

Agree that everything (even heaven and hell) is constantly evolving.

I dunno about heaven and hell, but the 'everything is evolving (even the laws/concept of evolving)' concept for me was the take-away of this entire interview. I checked with my gut and it nodded and gave me a wink.

I like the idea: "time doesn't pass, it accumulates."

By the principle of opposites if there is change, there must also be stasis... or put another way, all is a spectrum of relative rates of change. The past is probably fixed for as long as it needs to be.

For me, 'time doesn't pass, it accumulates' seems like good ol' materialist causality? The past makes the future: taa daa! It didn't seem like a new light bulb of an idea to me.

However, there is an imaginable conceptual framework that would allow for all of these to be true:
* time is cyclical
* things are predetermined and the future can be predicted
* the past affects the future
* we have free will and determine the outcome moment by moment


^ So imagine this little fella makes his artistic ring and then decides he doesn't really like how it looks on his first go round and he decides to go back over the 12 signs of his zodiac again... he is responding to the current state as he approaches each already-formed ripple (the past) and he is also reforming things according to his new understanding (the present)... and he can even make adjustments with foreknowledge of the future ripples that are down the line.

Oh that reminds me, didn't we all jump on Ed May or was that some other overly confident poor fellow? Ed May is a materialist realist who also works on remote viewing. He doesn't even believe in psi. Then how is remote viewing possible? According to him, through retro-causality, although in his interview here and on Skeptiko I never heard him really get into the meat and potatoes of what that would mean.


Well science may have just backed him up a bit, albeit on the very small and weird scale:
Physicists provide support for retrocausal quantum theory, in which the future influences the past

retrocausali.jpg
 
Yes. What they 'actually' are is meaningless because outside of this experience what reference points could we possibly use to judge? ("consciousness is 4 parts candy floss and 1 parts shoe leather") What I've been focused on lately is that whatever they are, they are seemingly a spectrum composed of the SAME thing and should both be considered equally real -- be you a physicalist or an idealist. (Materialists, don't pretend thought is just an airy fairy dimension that doesn't matter, and idealists, don't try and pretend the material world is just an emergent byproduct of thought that doesn't have any inherent meaning or viability in itself. And mothers, stop trying to pretend that sticks and stones break bones, but words and intentions don't hurt when they obviously do.) The physical and mental are most notably directly transferable via metaphor and if you pay attention we effortlessly reference physical instances with mental metaphors or physical instances with idea metaphors.

Exactly.

Whenever you hear the keywords "is just" or especially "is just an illusion"...applied to either material or consciousness or anything else... what follows is a re-framing or a redefining or a new metaphor that takes the naive intuitive perspective and turns it upside down resulting in a destabilizing or de-rigidifying (new word?) or a liquefaction effect on one's paradigm which is a knowledge structure... the temporary dissolving of the paradigm results in a feeling of transcendence which arises from suddenly viewing reality as a connected whole with no divisions at all - especially between self and other. We can't stay in this state too long, so after the paradigm quake opens up the ground, we quickly close it back up and have only the memory of the fleeting feeling of transcendence associated with the new metaphor and then feel like we've leveled up and those who haven't seen this new metaphor are somehow lacking, which in turn gives the ego a little boost every time we have the opportunity to turn someone on to a new "is just" trip...

...so ironically... the materialist reductionist <is just> perpetuating "is just" metaphors to hang on to the bit of transcendence first felt upon hearing it... and likewise for the mental monists. Transcendence <is just> the experience of oneness or boundary dissolution however you arrive at it.

For example, "material" <is just> a metaphor for something that looks and feels solid... like a billiard ball. The notion that your body <is just> 99.99999% empty space flips the naturally assumed metaphor to its opposite which rocks a paradigm and inserts a chasm of mystery into the usual pattern overlay we apply to our ordinary perceptions. Nothing has physically changed but the imagination begins to overlay a pattern of metaphors associated with empty space - transparency and hollowness and limitless potential - onto "solid" reality... which in turn brings to mind the unanswerable questions: what is real? Why is there something rather than nothing? etc... which totally dissolves one's knowledge structure and pattern overlay... which results in the oceanic feeling of floating in transcendence off one's foundation... and then the problems of life shake a person out of the trance and we have to get practical again and quickly forget everything but the momentary feeling that everything is everything and nothing all at once.

I don't like how Freke was saying all these experiences were different dimensions. In a cacophony of music you can have all of those frequencies in the same physical space and some frequencies will cancel and some will build and some will pass right through ignoring the other completely. That seems to be a closer fit to me? A book dropped impacts energetically on the floor, some of that energy is displaced audibly, particles are sent wafting through the air into your smell receptors, the cat is emotionally startled and runs into the next room, etc..

I don't recall that specifically or what he was saying there... I think dimension means you can hold everything else constant and only change one other thing.

For me, 'time doesn't pass, it accumulates' seems like good ol' materialist causality? The past makes the future: taa daa! It didn't seem like a new light bulb of an idea to me.

Maybe I've just been on the "time is just an illusion and there is no reality but the now" metaphor for so long that good ol' ordinary causal reality seemed new and refreshing. :)


^ So imagine this little fella makes his artistic ring and then decides he doesn't really like how it looks on his first go round and he decides to go back over the 12 signs of his zodiac again... he is responding to the current state as he approaches each already-formed ripple (the past) and he is also reforming things according to his new understanding (the present)... and he can even make adjustments with foreknowledge of the future ripples that are down the line.

Wow... that little guy's work is impressive! Unfortunately I've got to work or I'd add more about time... out of time.
 
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Excellent response!

Re: The Unanswerables: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is real?

Funny, I came across this video yesterday and I was like, man, Skeptiko folks eat these questions for breakfast.

Metaphysical: About reality
1. How come existence exists at all?
2. What is existence?
3. How is existence related to non-existence?
4. Why is reality structured as it is?
5. Are there other possible ways reality can be ordered other than our own?
6. Why are the laws of physics the way they are?
7. Which comes first: consciousness or matter? Does consciousness come out of matter of does matter occur within consciousness?
8. What is matter, energy, space, time?
9. What is outside the universe? Is it infinite or finite? Why?
10. What existed before the big bang?
11. How does the material interact with the immaterial?
12. What governs what’s possible and impossible in the universe? What sets limits on the universe?
13. What governs emergent properties (eg. atoms, molecules)?
14. How can emergent properties arise out of nowhere?
15. What makes a thing a thing? What is an object (a single thing, multiple things)?
16. Does reality have a bottom most scale? eg. lower than atoms, and lower than than. Does reality have a top most scale? eg. higher than planets, universes, etc. Are there limits or do the levels go infinitely up and down?
17. Does the evolution of the universe have a purpose? If so, where does it lead to?
18. Does external reality exist at all?
19. What is God? What would the concept of God entail?
20. What are thoughts?
21. How did life start? Aka Where did it all come from?

Epistemic: The study of knowledge
1. How do we know what we know?
2. How can I know anything for certain?
3. What makes justifications valid?
4. Why do billions of people believe in God?
5. Why do people disagree about good and bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral?
6. How come intelligent people delude themselves? eg. scientists who are creationists. How can I be sure that I’m not deluded?
7. How do I know that I’m not indoctrinated aka brainwashed into believing things without thinking about them myself?
8. What is science? Is it the best way of arriving at knowledge?
9. What are the limits of science? Are there things that science can’t understand/explain?
10. What is mathematics? What makes it valid?
11. What are the limits of mathematics? Is it displayed by reality or projected by the human mind?
12. What is rationality? How does it work and why is it valid? Limitless? Displayed by reality or projected by the human mind?
13. Which is more valid, the senses, rationality, or intuition?
14. What are the biases/blind spots of humanity as a whole?
15. How do animals understand reality?
16. Are there creatures with higher intelligence than humans? If so, how can we be certain of our knowledge?
17. Why is human knowledge taken as the ultimate truth?
18. What is truth? Is is objective or subjective
19. Where does understanding come from? How can we rely upon it?
20. What is the ultimate truth?
21. What is the best way to acquire knowledge?
22. Is reality understandable? Can humans understand it all or not because we are limited?

Self: You as an individual
1. How can I be sure that I exist at all?
2. If I exist, what am I? Biological? How do I know?
3. How did I, aka the identity of me, come into being?
4. What justifies identifying with the body or the mind? If the body is yours and the mind is too, who owns these things?
5. If I am the body and the mind, what is everything else? Where do ‘I’ stop and the rest of the world begin?
6. What is in control of my thoughts?
7. What is my role in reality? My purpose?
8. How should I live my life to maximize happiness?

Consciousness: The mind and all mental fabrications
1. What is consciousness?
2. How is perception possible?
3. What unifies our senses into a seamless experience?
4. What if there are higher levels of consciousness? What would that mean for our understanding of the world?
5. What about the different levels of consciousness eg. on psychedelics, meditation. What do they mean? Are they better/worse/more or less real than ordinary consciousness?
6. Are consciousnesses separate or is consciousness one thing?
7. Can artificial consciousness be created?
8. Can consciousness be split or joined?
9. Could inanimate matter be conscious?
10. Is consciousness only accessible to higher level beings or is it everywhere in the world?
11. What are the laws governing qualia (qualities of the senses)?
 
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Thanks for the interview. Kind of hit my sweet spot as these concepts have been rolling around in my mind for a while. Wish Alex would have pushed him a bit on this point though:

"So, then what I’m suggesting is that with the arising of soul, with that other dimension, the dimension of images, has arisen a realm which we can go into, at least for a while, after death, which is why I think, if you listen to people’s near-death experiences, they sound like dreams. Why? Because they are, but they’re not unreal, they’re real dreams, they’re real on that level, they’re real on actually a more emergent level, which is a level in which we can experience as images, images that we’ve gained from our sensual experience take on a life of their own in soul, again we experience that all the time. Now, when we sleep we can just go deeper into it."

Michael Prescott had an interesting blog post that got a bit into that as well as asking questions that have always bothered me about ADC.

 
18 minutes in. Good interview so far. Thanks Alex.

My favorite quote so far regarding the dialectic:

What's Grand is the Subjective, consciousness.

No, no no. What's Grand is the Objective, the subjective is an illusion.
 
What's Grand is the Subjective, consciousness.

No, no no. What's Grand is the Objective, the subjective is an illusion.
The question though is: consciousness - is it subjective or objective?
Isn't consciousness the only thing which we objectively know?
 
. . .I'm always happy to hear people who have developed ideas about the nature of reality that stretch my own understanding. I find it pointless to listen to someone who just reinforces my own ideas. . .

A few minutes into the interview, I started feeling "this is something I don't believe", but determined to stick it out to the end. I am still having difficulty fitting it into my own world view, but I will continue to try it on as my own positions evolve. I sent a link to a friend I often discuss this type of stuff with, and he told me this was something he doesn't believe, but then after thinking that, he didn't finish listening to the whole thing. I am becoming more and more dismayed by people who give all the external signs of thinking, but really just accept or reject things on a basis of what they already think they know, and I'm getting a lot of that vibe from this thread, unfortunately. This wouldn't be such a red flag but for the fact that I am seeing this awful approach to novelty in abundance in every facet of my life--work, politics, friends.

That said, some of the critics are saying some of the things I was thinking, especially his dodging the afterlife issue. Relative to my current interests, that's a big problem, and I got a vague feeling that Freke was doing just what I criticized above: trying to ignore information that doesn't support his premise. But maybe the interview was just too short to go there.
 
The opening comments sounded promising. I thought he was going to explore uncharted territory. But it turned into an exercise in semantics. Renaming consciousness as the "soul" and claiming its the next phase in the evolution of life doesn't even reshuffle the chairs on the deck. Agreed that he was making weird noises, too bad there wasn't any meaning in all that noise.
 
Maybe by talking about consciousness we are objectifying subjectivity... something as irrational as a square circle.

Subjectivity implies a subject, doesn't it? And isn't a subject objectively real?

Have just started listening, am only about 9 mins in. More when I've finished.
 
Strange how I listen to some podcasts and after doing so, still know nothing about what he was saying. He's speaking clearly in perfect English. This is one of those.

It may be because of my stroke, I just don't know. It's weird. Seriously.
 
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