Darwin's Black Box - Michael J. Behe and Intelligent Design

Bernardo Kastrup's writings have been cited previously in this thread. Regardless of whether one agrees or not with his cosmic mind model, he at least invalidates the basic premises of the materialist/physicalist worldview in an elegant way. He also does it in an academic setting. The video is Kastrup's Ph.D. defense this year:

I just finished reading Kastrup's book, The Idea of the World, and would like to recommend it. It's a bit repetitive, because it's actually a collection of papers, but he did a good job tying the pieces together, and avoiding super convoluted philosophical jargon. For those who watched the thesis presentation above or any of his videos, it's just a more detailed explanation of it.

I particularly enjoyed how he destroys materialism (the "physicalist" view, as he calls it), explaining that the materialists are basically a bunch of insecure kids trying to boost their egos and sense of importance. But other parts were equally interesting. I don't think he has the whole banana (for example, there are no "densities" or levels of consciousness or STS/STO, Being/non-Being alignment), but I think it's a good platform to build from, and some of his arguments easy to convey to others who may be questioning Darwinian nonsense.

Anyway, FWIW, if anybody is interested.
 
I've read Darwin's Black Box back in the 90's. Just to give an idea how different the cultural context was in that time, I've read it on recommendation from a review in one of the most prestigious newspapers in the Netherlands (NRC Handelsblad). Nowadays, such a book wouldn't even be reviewed on mainstream media.
At the turn of the century, intolerance for any challenge to the materialistic view became very intense. I used to be subscribed to tech websites like Ars Technica. I was very surprised to see articles lambasting ID as some sort of fundamentalistic medieval proposal. That was the reason why I stopped visiting that site.
Darwin's Doubt by Stephen C Meyer is another great book.
 
I just finished reading Kastrup's book, The Idea of the World, and would like to recommend it. It's a bit repetitive, because it's actually a collection of papers, but he did a good job tying the pieces together, and avoiding super convoluted philosophical jargon. For those who watched the thesis presentation above or any of his videos, it's just a more detailed explanation of it.

I particularly enjoyed how he destroys materialism (the "physicalist" view, as he calls it), explaining that the materialists are basically a bunch of insecure kids trying to boost their egos and sense of importance. But other parts were equally interesting. I don't think he has the whole banana (for example, there are no "densities" or levels of consciousness or STS/STO, Being/non-Being alignment), but I think it's a good platform to build from, and some of his arguments easy to convey to others who may be questioning Darwinian nonsense.

Anyway, FWIW, if anybody is interested.
I've read some of Kastrup's earlier work. There were some interesting intuitions, and a parsimonious rebuttal of materiarialism which made sense to me. In the last couple of years he's gone really woke, applauding Merkel and Lucinda Ardern lockdowns and vaccination mandates. He also went all the way on his 'love' for the Ukrainian cause.
Not long ago he tried to debate Chris Lang and made a fool of himself. And in a very woke way, he demanded the video of the debate to be removed.
He toys with his ideas, but he doesn't go for the experience, imho
 
I've read some of Kastrup's earlier work. There were some interesting intuitions, and a parsimonious rebuttal of materiarialism which made sense to me. In the last couple of years he's gone really woke, applauding Merkel and Lucinda Ardern lockdowns and vaccination mandates. He also went all the way on his 'love' for the Ukrainian cause.
Not long ago he tried to debate Chris Lang and made a fool of himself. And in a very woke way, he demanded the video of the debate to be removed.
He toys with his ideas, but he doesn't go for the experience, imho
i found kastrup not reliable.
 
I've read some of Kastrup's earlier work. There were some interesting intuitions, and a parsimonious rebuttal of materiarialism which made sense to me. In the last couple of years he's gone really woke, applauding Merkel and Lucinda Ardern lockdowns and vaccination mandates. He also went all the way on his 'love' for the Ukrainian cause.

Oh yes? Too bad, but unfortunately, not surprising nor a stand-alone case. People without a network often tend to fall for the propaganda even though they can be smart about one or two topics.
 
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I'm wondering what happened... Was that below one? I've only heard first 10 minutes, but turned it off because it was too hard to follow while driving.
I was planning on posting the video later today.
Kastrup started the debate by stating that he didn't bother to read Chris Langan's CTMU. On the other hand, Langan was very civil and patient towards him. I wonder how Kastrup would have reacted having Chris been more intellectually mean to him
 
I've watched most of the Langan - Kastrup debate and I must say that Kastrup was far more understandable for me than Langan. This is probably because Langan's work requires an understanding of his strictly defined language to grasp his concepts. It's a shame that Kastrup didn't prepare himself, and hasn't read Langan's work, because he could translate Langan's ideas to be more understandable by the mainstream. This resulted in basically a monologue of both participants, with the host only managing which gentleman should be talking now.
Then I scrolled through Kastrup's Twitter feed, and oh boy, his ego is very sensitive. I just cannot comprehend how it is possible that he lacks an open mind on other matters, and just goes by stereotypes. This reminds me of Nassim Taleb, who wrote bestsellers on "antifragility", yet had a complete meltdown and showed extreme "fragility" during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sorry for being off-topic!
 
Then I scrolled through Kastrup's Twitter feed, and oh boy, his ego is very sensitive. I just cannot comprehend how it is possible that he lacks an open mind on other matters, and just goes by stereotypes.
This happens most of the time when people don't work in a network, as Chu mentioned earlier. Fortunately, we can extract here some good ideas from those people, and apply it in the right context.

Thank you Gaby, for the great Behe's video. I like very much his work!
 
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