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

[Gaby]

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Powerful! It did remind me in a way of Madame Salzmann's essay on The First Initiation:

Title

You will see that in life you receive exactly what you give. Your life is the mirror of what you are. It is in your image. You are passive, blind, demanding. You take all, you accept all, without feeling any obligation. Your attitude toward the world and toward life is the attitude of one who has the right to make demands and to take, who has no need to pay or to earn. You believe that all things are your due, simply because it is you! All your blindness is there! None of this strikes your attention. And yet this is what keeps one world separate from another world.

You have no measure with which to measure yourselves. You live exclusively according to “I like” or “I don’t like,” you have no appreciation except for yourself. You recognize nothing above you—theoretically, logically, perhaps, but actually no. That is why you are demanding and continue to believe that everything is cheap and that you have enough in your pocket to buy everything you like. You recognize nothing above you, either outside yourself or inside. That is why, I repeat, you have no measure and live passively according to your likes and dislikes.

Yes, your “appreciation of yourself” blinds you. It is the biggest obstacle to a new life. You must be able to get over this obstacle, this threshold, before going further. This test divides men into two kinds: the “wheat” and the “chaff.” No matter how intelligent, how gifted, how brilliant a man may be, if he does not change his appreciation of himself, there will be no hope for an inner development, for a work toward self-knowledge, for a true becoming. He will remain such as he is all his life. The first requirement, the first condition, the first test for one who wishes to work on himself is to change his appreciation of himself. He must not imagine, not simply believe or think, but see things in himself which he has never seen before, see them actually. His appreciation will never be able to change as long as he sees nothing in himself. And in order to see, he must learn to see; this is the first initiation of man into self-knowledge.

First of all, he has to know what he must look at. When he knows, he must make efforts, keep his attention, look constantly with persistence. Only through maintaining his attention, and not forgetting to look, one day, perhaps, he will be able to see. If he sees one time he can see a second time, and if that continues he will no longer be able not to see. This is the state to be looked for, it is the aim of our observation; it is from there that the true wish will be born, the irresistible wish to become: from cold we shall become warm, vibrant; we shall be touched by our reality.

Today we have nothing but the illusion of what we are. We think too highly of ourselves. We do not respect ourselves. In order to respect myself, I have to recognize a part in myself which is above the other parts, and my attitude toward this part should bear witness to the respect that I have for it. In this way I shall respect myself. And my relations with others will be governed by the same respect.

You must understand that all the other measures—talent, education, culture, genius—are changing measures, measures of detail. The only exact measure, the only unchanging, objective real measure is the measure of inner vision. I see—I see myself—by this, you have measured. With one higher real part, you have measured another lower part, also real. And this measure, defining by itself the role of each part, will lead you to respect for yourself.

But you will see that it is not easy. And it is not cheap. You must pay dearly. For bad payers, lazy people, parasites, no hope. You must pay, pay a lot, and pay immediately, pay in advance. Pay with yourself. By sincere, conscientious, disinterested efforts. The more you are prepared to pay without economizing, without cheating, without any falsification, the more you will receive. And from that time on you will become acquainted with your nature. And you will see all the tricks, all the dishonesties that your nature resorts to in order to avoid paying hard cash. Because you have to pay with your ready-made theories, with your rooted convictions, with your prejudices, your conventions, your “I like” and “I don’t like.” Without bargaining, honestly, without pretending. Trying “sincerely” to see as you offer your counterfeit money.

Try for a moment to accept the idea that you are not what you believe yourself to be, that you overestimate yourself, in fact that you lie to yourself. That you always lie to yourself every moment, all day, all your life. That this lying rules you to such an extent that you cannot control it any more. You are the prey of lying. You lie, everywhere. Your relations with others—lies. The upbringing you give, the conventions—lies. Your teaching—lies. Your theories, your art—lies. Your social life, your family life—lies. And what you think of yourself—lies also.

But you never stop yourself in what you are doing or in what you are saying because you believe in yourself. You must stop inwardly and observe. Observe without preconceptions, accepting for a time this idea of lying. And if you observe in this way, paying with yourself, without self-pity, giving up all your supposed riches for a moment of reality, perhaps you will suddenly see something you have never before seen in yourself until this day. You will see that you are different from what you think you are. You will see that you are two. One who is not, but takes the place and plays the role of the other. And one who is, yet so weak, so insubstantial, that he no sooner appears than he immediately disappears. He cannot endure lies. The least lie makes him faint away. He does not struggle, he does not resist, he is defeated in advance. Learn to look until you have seen the difference between your two natures, until you have seen the lies, the deception in yourself. When you have seen your two natures, that day, in yourself, the truth will be born.

 

[luc]

Here are some more notes I made while continuing to read Darwinian Fairytales. Some of these things have already been discussed in one form or another, but I thought this angle might be worth exploring a bit more. This particular dead horse sure deserves some more beating!

It's strange, it somehow feels so liberating!! As if a chain is finally removed that dragged me down my whole life and now there's a whole new world opening up. Weird!


---

Darwinism's dilemma

The basic Darwinian dilemma is this: Darwin paints a picture of life as a dismal struggle for resources whereby most of the members of a species are wiped out by natural selection. There can only be a few winners. He compares all life to the life of cods or pine seeds: the vast majority of the young don't make it and die off before they even get started. He also posits that a species will inevitably multiply in proportion with the food supply: that’s supposed to be the primary limiting factor.

The dilemma is, of course, that human life in particular does not look anything like that, at all. We might also point out that Darwin’s view of life is pathological to the core with its view of life as a pure, mechanical dog-eat-dog affair.

Now, you might object that just because we naïve people don’t like this view doesn’t make it wrong. But that’s just avoiding the question and the obvious observation that indeed, human life in particular just has nothing to do with the Darwinian jungle, as every child can see. And lest you think that this is just wishful thinking by naïve people, consider this: not only do humans possess virtues like nobility, self-sacrifice, prudence and so on that fly in the face of Darwin’s ruthless, omnipresent struggle for resources, humans also are capable of evil that goes way beyond anything useful. Pure, malicious sadism of the self-destructing and even human-species-destroying kind is clearly a thing, and just as human virtues, it contradicts Darwin’s view.

Of course, Darwinists are aware of this dilemma. In his book, Darwinian Fairytales, philosopher David Stove lists three major ways they tried to escape it:

a) The Caveman way out

The caveman escape route is to posit that while we don’t live in the Darwinian jungle now, we certainly did so in the distant past. But this obviously contradicts Darwin’s theory, which is a theory about all life and requires evolution to be a constant, ongoing process – we can’t suddenly decide to stop! And if we can stop now, why didn’t we stop then?

Also, on what evidence can you make the claim that humans in the distant path lived according to Darwin’s brutal vision? Didn’t they, too, have moral inclinations, nobility and higher aspirations? It’s hard to imagine that any human tribe could ever have survived in a Darwinian dog-eat-dog scenario, which, we should remember, is very extreme and hardly allows for anything – rites, morality, social institutions and so on – to interfere with the relentless pressing of a population against the food supply and a brutal weeding out of the weak and unfit. The caveman theory is the easiest way out of the dilemma, but perhaps also the poorest. It is still widespread though in the heads of many people.

b) The Darwinian Hard Man

Darwinian Hard Men are perhaps the most disgusting of all the bunch. Their way out of the dilemma is to notice that human life doesn’t seem to follow Darwin’s logic at all, so they consider this an error and then set out to actively rectify the situation and make it Darwinian. These are your lovely social Darwinists, eugenicists and genocidal racist maniacs. Of course, the winner of this particular race to hell is all-time Darwinian madman Adolf Hitler. Without Darwinian ideology, no Nazis, like it or not.

Now, the fantastically obvious objection to the Darwinian Hard Men is this: Darwin’s theory predicts that all life follows the Darwinian rules of a ruthless weeding out of the weak, a ruthless struggle for resources that constantly leaves behind dead bodies in the millions. If the Darwinian Hard Man observes that this obviously doesn’t happen in human societies (after all, we have hospitals, institutions for the weak and ill, moral virtues and so on), he should conclude that Darwin was wrong. But instead, he wants to actively change society so to make the theory right! In other words, he feels the need to make human life conform to what is supposed to be inevitable, which of course it cannot be if you need to make it so.

c) The Darwinian Soft Man

The Darwinian Soft Man has developed two major strategies to deal with the dilemma. The first is to simply ignore the problem. The majority of the population, including scientists, falls into that category. They accept Darwinism because that’s what you do and just don’t think about the glaring gulf between the theory and human experience.

The second strategy seems to have become increasingly common these days, namely to explain all those disparities between Darwin’s view and human experience with mental gymnastics that supposedly explain everything humans do with wild theories of why at the end of the day, this all serves “survival” in one form or another. Of course, this doesn’t save Darwin’s errors about comparing all life with pine seeds that die in large numbers before they even develop or his painting of life as the one-dimensional, ruthless struggle for resources that it clearly isn’t.

But it seems kind of, sort of plausible to explain altruism with “benefits for the species” or sexual restraint based on values with “it was good for the tribe” or religion with “it helped us survive”. But this is just wild speculation to the point that things like that cannot even be refuted really. It’s like saying that things are as they are because in the distant past people thought they were a good idea. (This also doesn’t explain the existence of evil.) This, of course, brings us right back to what really matters: the world of thought, consciousness, free will and of humanity’s striving towards something higher and more noble than ruthless killing and dying for resources. But Darwinists hate that road and where it leads. It’s almost as if they want Darwin’s simplistic and false view to be true. In that, they are closer to the Hard Men than they care to admit.

---

This may also be interesting in light of the Cs’ comments about Nazi Germany being a “trial run”: the Nazis represent the culmination of the era of Darwinian Hard Men. Today, we live in the era of Darwinian Soft Men, and maybe we are about to see the culmination of that.

Darwinian Soft Men might seem more harmless than the overt Darwinian Hard Men, but maybe they are just more sneaky. If you believe in Darwinism and just ignore the contradiction between the world you live in and the theory, it will still drag you down, only unconsciously. And if you believe all virtues and all striving for something higher are just due to some vague concept of “survival of the group” or species, then you don’t have any real moral foundation. What does prevent you, for example, from killing half of humanity to “save the planet” or “save the species”? Darwinian Soft Men are real wolves in sheep’s clothes!

 

[genero81]

Darwinian Soft Men might seem more harmless than the overt Darwinian Hard Men, but maybe they are just more sneaky. If you believe in Darwinism and just ignore the contradiction between the world you live in and the theory, it will still drag you down, only unconsciously. And if you believe all virtues and all striving for something higher are just due to some vague concept of “survival of the group” or species, then you don’t have any real moral foundation. What does prevent you, for example, from killing half of humanity to “save the planet” or “save the species”? Darwinian Soft Men are real wolves in sheep’s clothes!

It seems pretty clear to me now that Darwinism, in particular Neo Darwinism and the pseudo science that supports it, was a big part of the 4D STS programming project. So the 'trial run' was a Darwinian inspired attempt to forcibly promote the so called "superior race" by the brute force of war and eugenics. This time appears to be driven by a Darwinian inspired mind set that inevitably manifest itself through 'logical conclusions' based on said mind set in the form of simplistic and ill advised ideologies leading to God knows what outcome. Probably loss of life on a grand scale and general hysteria and irrationality.

 

[Cosmos]

Also, on what evidence can you make the claim that humans in the distant path lived according to Darwin’s brutal vision? Didn’t they, too, have moral inclinations, nobility and higher aspirations? It’s hard to imagine that any human tribe could ever have survived in a Darwinian dog-eat-dog scenario, which, we should remember, is very extreme and hardly allows for anything – rites, morality, social institutions and so on – to interfere with the relentless pressing of a population against the food supply and a brutal weeding out of the weak and unfit. The caveman theory is the easiest way out of the dilemma, but perhaps also the poorest. It is still widespread though in the heads of many people.

This brings up another Dilemma for the Darwinists. 2008 the officially recognized year for the first appearance of anatomically modern humans was 150k before present. Now it is 300k before present and the number is constantly adjusted upwards.

They seriously want us to believe that anatomically modern human beings couldn’t think and act as we do with the same anatomy similarly deeply for the roughly 295.000 or 290.000 remaining years?

That is actually what they are saying, which is totally ludicrous. The first modern human civilizations are supposed to have emerged only about 5000 years ago, while in reality, even within this timeframe, human civilization most likely almost collapsed more than once. And just look at how people lived and behaved merely 150 years ago. In those mearly 150 years, humanity essentially went from horseback without electricity or any modern comfort to landing on the moon and exploring the outer limits of our solar system with propes.

So they seriously want us to believe that in the 299.850 years before that point, anatomically modern humans beings just couldn’t achieve anything more than cave thinking?

That idea is just so far removed from any commen sense that it is unbelievable.

Just how many hundreds if not thousands times a similar development could fit into the remaining 290.000 years or so?

 

[zak]

Just a heads up that Behe has a new book coming out on February: Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution. https://smile.amazon.com/Darwin-Devolves-Science-Challenges-Evolution/dp/0062842617/ Sounds like it might develop some of Sandford's ideas (pretty sure he and Behe are friends).

A special preorder offer

 

[Aeneas]

Darwinian Soft Men are real wolves in sheep’s clothes!

It sounds similar to people falling for Obama, because he looked the piece, said what people wanted to hear, had the right skin color and yet behind the soft exterior, a Cheney like character was hiding. Or perhaps just an empty shell, through which evil forces could execute all their evil plans, while keeping the people enthralled with the image projected.

 

[caballero reyes]

2018/06/09
Joe said reply 93:

(Joe) Is it true that people who gravitate toward that idea of relativism and that there's no truth, and then they effectively put themselves in the place of god, is it because they have no real inner connection or appreciation of anything higher than themselves?

A: Yes
----------------------
I wonder if,in this phrase,the word RELATIVISM comes from the word RELATIVE.

I think everything is RELATIVE from the point of view that everything is related in one way or another.

This is why it is not clear to me the meaning of the question and answer of the Cs.
----------------------
RELATIVE:
1-That refers to or concerns someone; that relates to him.
Synonyms: atinent, concerning, corresponding, belonging, referring, related, touching
Example: The adjective "scientific" applies to things relating to science.

2-Which is not unique, absolute or total.
Example: Your opinion is relative, there are other ways of seeing things.

3- Linguistics.
It is said of a type of pronoun that alludes to what has already been mentioned.
Use: it is also used as a noun.
Example: The relative pronoun "which" connects or relates something that has been mentioned to what comes next. (WIKI)

 

[caballero reyes]

Laura said reply 89 :

Yup. Things are really congealing. I think what is going to be in order is to write a sort of "catechism" of C's cosmology/anthropology/christology/science, etc. Maybe you geniuses can think about that. Kind of a Summa Cassiopaea.
---------------
How about we all give our opinions on Questions and Answers in sessions, like these, to integrate the "Summa Cassiopaea".

1---Session 29 december 2018:

... "You've talked many times about genetic manipulations that have been ongoing and about the fact that traveling back and forth in time to do these genetic manipulations has been one of the tricks that is used on the human race by 4D STS types. You said that there are 4D labs where these genetic manipulations take place. You've talked about how an abduction is done, that it happens like soul extraction: the soul is taken to 4th density, a body is molecularly reassembled in 4D “matter”, the work is done on the reassembled body there in 4D and then that body is disassembled and the soul or consciousness is sent back through the realm curtain. It then carries with it the pattern of the manipulation which then causes those changes or manipulations to come into effect within the body on 3D Earth. So, I have some idea of how that works, but maybe this isn't a question I should ask, but... I really have to ask it: How does that happen? How do they do that?!"

A: Recall that 4D is a realm where thought has the power to create. If a mind, and here we mean much more than you understand as mind, thinks about a structure or something that needs to be accomplished, it assembles itself, more or less. Then when the structure is sent back through the realm curtain, the "idea" is the attractor blueprint that draws to itself the matching elements from your reality and they proceed through the process of organic assembly. This occurs because even inanimate matter has a minimal level of matching consciousness.


2---Session 16 october 94.

Q: (L) What is the "expanded" present?

A: The real measure of time.


3---Session 16 october 94.

Q: (L) What is the quorum?

A: Deeper knowledge organization. Totally secret to your kind as of yet. Very important with regard to your future.

Q: (L) In what way?

A: Changes.

 

[dugdeep]

2018/06/09

I wonder if,in this phrase,the word RELATIVISM comes from the word RELATIVE.

I think everything is RELATIVE from the point of view that everything is related in one way or another.

This is why it is not clear to me the meaning of the question and answer of the Cs.

I can see why it might be confusing. But relativism doesn't really mean that everything is related, as such. It's not about the interconnectedness of everything, so much as a belief that the subjective perspective of each individual is all that exists (more inline with your second definition of 'related').
Here's a definition of the term relativism:

Relativism is the idea that views are relative to differences in perception and consideration. There is no universal, objective truth according to relativism; rather each point of view has its own truth.

 

[Aeneas]

This is truly an inspiring thread with many enlightening inputs. The following is some thoughts that these reading have provoked, which I will try make coherent.

10 days ago, Ysus and I went to see Jordan Peterson. He was giving a talk and the topic was about chaos and order and it is relevant to this topic about Darwinism and Intelligent Design. This is a brief synopsis of what he said:

The ancient myth were guidelines for how to live your life and how to navigate the primordial principles of Chaos and Order. He told the Egyptian creation story of the male god, Apsu (Order) represented by salt water encountering the female goddess, Tiamat (Chaos) represented as soft water, and how everything came into being from the meeting between order and chaos. In the friction between chaos and order there is also creativity as order is trying to deal with the chaos and to re-establish order. The new order that is established is not the same as the old order if successful but of a higher order. So to sum it up, life is about navigating between order and chaos and hopefully from the learned experiences that life presents, establish order on a higher level. This, JP illustrated by an oscillating curved line trending upwards.

It was hard for me to not see the lecture by JP in STO/STS terms, matter/ consciousness and the framework of 1D through to 7D.

On the cellular level, this meeting with chaos, can be seen as when the cell is stressed from the outside. This stress causes it to be creative and look for solutions and if successful, certain DNA will turn on or rearrange and it will be a cell better suited to meet the challenges in its environment. Perry Marshall gives some good examples of how this works such as the bacteria which gets resistant to anti-biotics. As below so above and we on a macro level learn by suffering.

Marshall shows clearly just like Behe, that a designer must be involved and that the building blocks of life could not come about without design. And design requires knowledge. The higher the knowledge the better the design and the greater the order. Consciousness is one way to express this. At one level there is 1D sleeping matter or sleeping consciousness and at the other end is pure consciousness, 7D.

In the book Consciousness – Anatomy of the soul, the author, Peter Walling, describes how consciousness exists in a non-physical space and how phase transitions take place in the cerebral cortex. He uses the analogy of Flatland and says (page 78):

We propose that consciousness occurs when the dynamics of a healthy brain allow sequential streams of data, to build up a higher dimensional edifice in hyperspace, by stacking slice after slice of information. This process is analogues to the Flatlander seeing the passing sphere by stacking consecutive discs one upon the other.

Thus Walter Freeman’s demonstration of phase transistions offer a natural way of providing consecutive slices of brain activity to be stacked into a higher dimensional structure which, like the “honey spoon” in Flatland, allows access to a higher dimension than the prevailing physical equipment would normally permit.

In the above he proposes how consciousness occurs in a healthy brain and the stacking of information to build this ‘construct’ in hyperspace. This makes me think that when (in an unhealthy brain) you stack this hyperspace with lies and false information then the result will be more chaos and a slide towards sleeping matter or sleeping consciousness. JP mentioned that an encounter with chaos can be deadly and something you never recover from. If too many lies are believed, too much chaos is created in the ‘construct’ in hyperspace and then this could lead to disintegration or soul smashing.

We as consciousness units are co-creators in a very real way by stacking truthful information based on proper observations of reality right and left. This is what creates greater order in the hyperspace of each consciousness unit and this greater order is the ID that guides the nuts and bolts in the molecular boiler-room of life, the cell. Thus by creating greater order, we slide in the direction towards pure consciousness and more ‘concretely’ towards 4D of variable existence.

I am starting to see how evil aka chaos is necessary in order to learn. It is the playing in the mud and then sifting through it, ordering it to find the pearls which then stacks the hyperdimensional space of each consciousness unit with more truthful information - pearls- which then awakens sleeping matter, DNA, and brings it into action. This then leads to the re-establishment of order, but at a higher level. This is a never ending process as JP mentioned, which is what the C’s have been saying about the Universe being a school and that all there is, is lessons.

The Darwinians are like the authoritarians in 2D flatland, who due to their resonating frequency are unable to perceive of anything higher or greater. Some of these are likely born that way where as others perhaps at some point in time were attracted to or choose to fall in line with the mental prison that evolutionary Darwinism entails. The materialists, who have cut off the head or in other words the higher connections, find themselves without meaning in a nihilistic utopian hell, having cast themselves adrift in a dinghy on a wild raging ocean.

 

[Laura]

Here are some more notes I made while continuing to read Darwinian Fairytales. Some of these things have already been discussed in one form or another, but I thought this angle might be worth exploring a bit more. This particular dead horse sure deserves some more beating!

It's strange, it somehow feels so liberating!! As if a chain is finally removed that dragged me down my whole life and now there's a whole new world opening up. Weird!

Another terrific post. And yes, I really understand the feeling I've put in bold. For me, it feels like I can breathe again. And before, I really didn't realize how constricted I felt. I feel like Martin Luther King's exclamation: "Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!"

And that doesn't mean anything about falling into religion, either - it's just a strong sentiment.

I actually think it was useful to go through all the other processes we have done, before coming to this material, especially religious studies. Without knowing what is wrong with religion, it would be all too easy to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. Indeed, religion, it a more pure form, has a big role to play in our lives, to re-ligare, or bind us together, but as with everything else, we should examine things and base our choices on what seems most likely to be TRUE. And it seems to me that True Science can help with that, also; NOT "materialist" science.

 

[BlackCartouche]

One of the things Darwinists, and by association atheists, seek to explain away 'feelings' of compassion empathy and remorse, is its the evolutionary process for collective sociability to ensure a developed consciously-aware species its own self preservation of survival, so as to bind together in common cause and to further evolve via complex social dynamics, necessary to evolve both civilization further, and also a counteractive measure against our progressive ability to blow ourselves up with the rest of the planet.
Its ironic, then, that the very "binding" Darwinists argue is a favorable evolutionary intra-species characteristic necessity to ensure species-survival, is of the Latin "religare" meaning "to bind", of which "religion" comes about - is the very thing Darwinism seeks to undermine.

It then struck me that, if 'pooling together' (for lack of a better term) collectively through the evolved feelings of compassion empathy and remorse for one another as a necessary requirement to maintain sociability of evolved consciousness, is in one sense the nearest to a Darwinist concept for "soul-pooling", but in another way - and maybe because of it - its become, conceptually, a restriction of an otherwise natural step onward toward the evolutionary process leading to "individuation". This is interesting because Darwinist/atheist don't believe in souls, so what then, would be "individuation" of raw consciousness without a soul? The evolutionary next step of non-souled individuation would surely be to break free from the collective consciousness of its sociably binding constraints, and in doing so is to discard those very things that "bind": Compassion, empathy and remorse.

It stands to reason that the psychopath is the Darwinist/atheist definition of evolved consciousness into 'anti'-souled individuation.

 

[shellycheval]

First, thank you all for a brilliant thread—so much intelligent discussion both illuminating and inspiring. My apologies—I’ve had the following quotes on Copy for a while and have lost track of the authors but I’d like to comment while I can—I must get ready for work in just a minute.

Possibly Luc or Joe?
“Few, if any, are willing to discard their entire belief system in favor of something else that makes more sense of reality, it's just too scary, especially when it implies having to radically recast your entire conception of yourself and the universe in which you life. Strangely though, a new conception of that sort would likely provide people with a greater sense of comfort and less angst, even if it vastly expands the gamut of what you don't know. People want to constrain the universe to the limits of their own minds, rather than broaden their minds to try to encompass the limitless nature of the universe.”

Indeed! It was the suffering I experienced from watching 911 unfold that shocked me to my core and I did wake up into a different reality. On an emotional level it was as potent as Neo’s experience of seeing his previous life as The Matrix. I could negate the truth in front of my face and go back to sleep or face the hideous reality I was finally able to begin to see. In response I sought more information and found Laura, the Cs and the Forum and have since certainly been “broadened” for sure! It has been an incredible comfort to learn that the gap between what I was observing as true and what I was told was true has finally been filled with knowledge that connects and offers the opportunity for continued growth and learning, even if it’s painful and dark at times.

“not only do humans possess virtues like nobility, self-sacrifice, prudence and so on that fly in the face of Darwin’s ruthless, omnipresent struggle for resources, humans also are capable of evil that goes way beyond anything useful. Pure, malicious sadism of the self-destructing and even human-species-destroying kind is clearly a thing, and just as human virtues, it contradicts Darwin’s view.”

Observation and some studies show that animals too sometimes act in ways that are noble and as self-sacrificing as many humans. This appears to also contradict a strictly Darwinian view of “survival of the fittest.”

 

[Aeneas]

I am starting to see how evil aka chaos is necessary in order to learn.

The above is not totally true, as chaos is not the same as evil. Chaos is entropy and to choose lies, false gods, chaos or entropy is to sin or 'to err' or to do evil. Perhaps a distinction has to be made whether one is doing it consciously or unconsciously? By that I mean that to unconsciously worship 'false gods', the 'flesh' etc. might be considered to sin or 'to err' from where redemption is possible. Luke 23:34 comes to mind:

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

Whereas to consciously do so, is no longer just a sin but is downright evil from where there is no redemption.

Another train of thougth that I forgot to mention in the previous post was the importance of B and C influences in our lives in view of what has been said in this thread. B and C influences inspire order of a higher level for the consciousness unit that are mired in a sea of A influences.
From Casswiki:

A influences are mechanical and random in nature

, they seek to keep man occupied with the external world. They can be pictured as vectors of random magnitude and direction which all in the end add up to the zero vector. This is how A influences keep man in his place while providing a lot of random, transient motion. To take a physics analogy, this is like thermal motion of molecules. A influences are the normal realm of man and as long as man seeks no esoteric development these can be good and favorable.

A influences are influences or force vectors created within life itself. Influences such as race, nation, country, family, profession, entertainment, current ideas, customs and so on create A influences. These are the first variety of influences by which man is surrounded. These influences are distributed almost equally over all the surface of the cycle of life. Their effects are radiated outwardly and these effects are inversely proportional to the square of the distance, much like the way in which radiant energy is propagated. Any man is influenced by those influences that directly surround him. He is pulled every instant in this way or that way depending on the way they act on him at any moment within his spatial region. These A influences that surround him, all point in different directions creating a force vector nullification that is comparable to the electrical neutrality of large bodies, whereby no matter how intense the local electrostatic fields surrounding the atoms may be, there is always a space-distributed compensation that makes the whole body perfectly neutral. Those who live strictly by A influences are what Gurdjieff refers to as "nullities.' This is your "average man" in life.

The above describes the materialistic Neo-Darwinist. It also describes the state of the world around us, but instead of being neutral as it says, then I think it due to higher level STS influences tend to provide a negative result. In other words tending towards entropy. In the book Genetic Entropy, the author mentions how genetic copying errors creates 'noise', which if no other correcting forces being at play would lead to entropy.

B influences

are vectors that are thrown into the field of A influences but these have a conscious source and a consistent direction. B influences do not cancel each other out and systematically recognizing and following these may lead man to the beginning of esoteric work.

B influences differ from A influences because they are CONSCIOUS in their origin and have been created consciously OUTSIDE life by conscious people for a definite purpose. These influences are the "soul" of any culture and they are embodied in the form of religious systems and teachings, philosophical doctrines, art, etc. They are inserted into life for a definite purpose but although these influences are conscious in their origin they begin to act mechanically when they mix within the general vortex of life. Eventually 'B' influences will be transformed into 'A' influences after they merge together within this general vortex.

In some people there is a discriminatory power within them that allows them to discriminate between these two kinds of influences and they discern from this that there are certain influences that come from a source that is outside the mainstream of life. This person remembers them and FEELS them together and they begin to form a certain whole, a certain kind of magnetic "presence" within that person. This person may not be sure exactly what this feeling is and they cannot really give themselves a clear account of what these feelings necessarily mean but the end result is that they collect within this person and they form a MAGNETIC CENTER, and if the conditions are right, this magnetic center leads them to search for someone who knows the way and is connected to the source of these 'B' influences, that is, they seek a person or teacher who is connected to an esoteric center that stands outside the general laws of life.

It is from this source that the person sets on the WAY. The moment when the person looking for the way meets someone who knows the way then this contact is called the FIRST THRESHOLD or FIRST STEP. From this first threshold the STAIRWAY begins. Between 'life' and the 'way' lies the 'stairway.'

So B influences have a direction and are conscious and thus signify order. They inspire us if our frequency is tuned to them, to seek order as opposed to entropy. This is the first step towards becoming co-creators.

C influences

are only found within the Work and can only be received in personal interaction with a conscious being. Receiving C influences requires a certain level of personal sensitization and receptivity. Failing this, C influences work like B influences. C influences come from the SOURCE, that is, from an esoteric Center that is located outside of life. When they directly act on someone with a newly developing magnetic center THROUGH a teacher who is directly connected to the source then these influences are called C influences. From this connection the person's magnetic center will grow and will lead them to escape the dominion of the Law of chance and enter into the domain of consciousness.

The magnetic center is the organ the seeker gradually develops for discerning between A and B influences. External criteria cannot generally be used for distinguishing between A and B influences. A influences can closely mimic and parallel B influences. For example, such an influence may speak of the personal gain to be had in the Work, may preach humility while secretly priding oneself on one's great purity etc. Such influences generally involve a degree of dishonesty or deceit or service to self. The points may be arbitrarily subtle and no fixed checklist can be adequate. Discernment is a skill that eventually may become a part of one's being.

So the C influence could be seen as the co creator on a much higher level of a STO nature, not the possible co-creators of a 4D STS lizzard nature. This C influence is one imbued with order and consciousness and possibly that which imparts new information when we on a human level through painful efforts have done all that is possible. The mechanics could be how DNA creatively solves solutions when stressed. Electrons could be part of the message channel.

Session 29 March 1997 said:
Q: (Laura) OK. Does an electron have a memory?

A: Electron is borrowed unit of 7th density.

Another thread that also is relevant, though not on a nuts and bolts level is the one about Paul and the Stoics. Here is part of a post where Approaching Infinity lays out the scenario. It overlaps with what is discussed in this thread. The picture down a little helps for understanding.

Paul and the Stoics: Introducing the Model

[...]
To put "The Model" in a very small nutshell: for Paul, life is religion, and vice versa. What does that mean? There's no separating theory and practice - between ideas about reality and the nitty gritty of actually applying those ideas in your everyday life. In his letters, Paul describes a new state of being and a new way of life in which his fellow "Christ-believers" find themselves, and gives them moral advice and commands that urge them to make that new state REAL by putting it into practice. In most of what he writes, he is actually providing a forceful reminder to them: "This is who you are now, so act like it!" He's not just laying out a theory - he's telling them how to live it.

As a Jew, Paul didn't see anything wrong per se with the Jewish law. But as a way of life that actually got the results it preached, it was insufficient. In his mind, "Christ faith" could and did succeed where the law failed. How did it do so? Paul apparently experienced something that radically changed the way he perceived himself and his place in the world, and tried to replicate that experience in others. His "call" or "conversion" to God via Christ was in fact a change in self-understanding from one state (selfishness, sinfulness, identification with the body, self-directedness) to another state (altruism, identification with something higher and external, yet also within, which resulted in being directed towards others). This change in how we see ourselves means some things grow in importance for us, and other things lose their importance. And if we value different things, we will behave in different ways.

As Engberg-Pedersen puts it, this process is "a move away FROM an identification of the self with itself as a bodily, individual being, VIA an identification with something outside the self, and TO a perspective shared with and also directed towards others, a perspective that will then also issue immediately in practice." This process or dynamic is present in both Paul and Stoic philosophy.

Let's unpack it by looking at TEP's useful diagram:

We'll look at it bit by bit. Before getting to what "I", "X", and "S" represent, notice two details. The x axis is temporal: it shows past, present, and future. The y axis shows higher and lower, above and below. In this model, "past" and "below" are bad. "Now", "future", and "higher" are good. For those familiar with Dabrowski, there is a similar dynamic at work: a higher level of being now and in the future is better than a lower level of being in the past. "We are better now; we were worse off then." In other words, the diagram charts a type of development or growth.

First we have the "I" pole. This is the default state of all humans: our individual, embodied self. Most importantly, this is how we UNDERSTAND or perceive ourselves: "I", "me", an individual mind and body distinct from all others. Its concerns are "my" concerns. (Its self-preservation instinct is MY self-preservation instinct.) Its desires are "my" desires. (Its hunger is MY hunger.) And everything "I" do is in service of those desires: self-preservation, reproduction, self-image, pride, social status, etc.

Paul used the word "flesh" in various ways to describe this state. A few related definitions culled from a Bible concordance show some of the meanings with which Paul imbued the word: man's "sensuous, animal nature", "mere human nature, the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, and therefore prone to sin and opposed to God"; "accordingly it includes whatever in the soul is weak, low, debased, tending to ungodliness and vice"; "note that 'flesh' signifies the entire nature of man, sense and reason, without the Holy Spirit". So the "flesh" isn't merely the body; more comprehensively, it's an entire way of feeling, thinking, and acting as shaped by a "lower", "bodily" orientation.

For Paul, being "in the flesh" or "under the control of the flesh" essentially means living a life of sin. And for those Jordan Peterson fans, you know the word for sin comes from an archery word that means "to miss the mark" or "to err". Basically, sinning means missing the target - and in a religious context that means not doing what God wants, and what God wants is what would be objectively best for us and the world at large. When you sin, you're not getting the best results. You're doing your body's will and not God's will. And when you DO hit the bullseye, that means you are doing God's will. (More on that later.) (Note: Paul used the word hamartia/sin, the Stoics used the word hamartemata/errors.)

The Stoics saw this "I" state as that of a child: self-centered in nature.
[...]

 

[Windmill knight]

I've been thinking about another argument against neo-Darwinism. I can't remember if I read it somewhere or if thought of it myself, and I'm not sure it's entirely correct, but hopefully those of you who know better will tell me.

If evolution is about the survival of the fittest, and in general the simplest life forms are the fittest, then why are there complex organisms like mammals at all?? Remember we are always told that cockroaches will survive a nuclear holocaust, but not us. And bacteria, as species, are much more capable of surviving than cockroaches. Some of them live in volcanoes! So how can we explain that higher organisms ever evolved past the point of the simplest forms of life?