Evolution without accidents and also no intelligence?

I hate the materialistic worldview, which seems meaningless, maddening. For that reason, I seek evidence of a higher meaning. For now, I'm confident that even the physical world (without implying the existence of anything else) is far more complex than what has currently been uncovered by science. For instance, I suspect that emergent properties exist and cannot be explained by a purely reductionist approach.

My heart believes ID to be true, not my mind.

Thanks for opening up a bit, because it is hard to respond well to short quips.


I suppose the real value of ID is to shake up the thinking process. Generations of kids have been brought up on Darwin, DNA, and natural selection. If this explanation is wrong, it is time people knew about it!

Whether the true explanation is as you suggest, or that some entities designed life on earth, is almost a secondary consideration, and the two concepts might even merge into one, since immaterial designers still need to impress their ideas into physical matter at some point.

OK first just a quick review of what we are talking about. A modest protein consisting of a chain of 100 amino acid residues can have

20^100, or
12676506002282294014967032053760000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

possibilities. For comparison, the number of protons in the universe has been estimated as

10^80, or

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Protein space is absolutely VAST. Talking about genetic variants floating about in individual microbes doesn't really cut it, unless effective proteins are actually fairly common.

For RM+NS to find one of these things is basically absurd unless useful proteins are really quite common, even if we allow that some activity might exist when we get within one or two steps of the end product.

On top of that, nobody seems to discuss the fact that many important enzymes - such as the proteases - would be deadly to a cell unless additional control machinery was available. This means that natural selection would operate against the adoption of such a protein just when it had finally evolved!

Emergence always seems useful as a vague concept to throw around to confuse discussions, rather than a serious proposal.

My best guess - only a guess, not something I am wedded to - is that a timeless realm does indeed exist in the realm accessed by NDE's and some other practices. I am also fairly impressed by the evidence for reincarnation. I seriously wonder if we began as a group of spirits who set out to make a tough physical life that can operate something like a gym. For that make any sense it would be necessary that people get multiple chances of life on earth, so reincarnation is necessary.

David

Thanks for opening up a bit, because it is hard to respond well to short quips.


I suppose the real value of ID is to shake up the thinking process. Generations of kids have been brought up on Darwin, DNA, and natural selection. If this explanation is wrong, it is time people knew about it!

Whether the true explanation is as you suggest, or that some entities designed life on earth, is almost a secondary consideration, and the two concepts might even merge into one, since immaterial designers still need to impress their ideas into physical matter at some point.

OK first just a quick review of what we are talking about. A modest protein consisting of a chain of 100 amino acid residues can have

20^100, or
12676506002282294014967032053760000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

possibilities. For comparison, the number of protons in the universe has been estimated as

10^80, or

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Protein space is absolutely VAST. Talking about genetic variants floating about in individual microbes doesn't really cut it, unless effective proteins are actually fairly common.

For RM+NS to find one of these things is basically absurd unless useful proteins are really quite common, even if we allow that some activity might exist when we get within one or two steps of the end product.

On top of that, nobody seems to discuss the fact that many important enzymes - such as the proteases - would be deadly to a cell unless additional control machinery was available. This means that natural selection would operate against the adoption of such a protein just when it had finally evolved!

Emergence always seems useful as a vague concept to throw around to confuse discussions, rather than a serious proposal.

My best guess - only a guess, not something I am wedded to - is that a timeless realm does indeed exist in the realm accessed by NDE's and some other practices. I am also fairly impressed by the evidence for reincarnation. I seriously wonder if we began as a group of spirits who set out to make a tough physical life that can operate something like a gym. For that make any sense it would be necessary that people get multiple chances of life on earth, so reincarnation is necessary.

David

Maybe apropos: interestingly, well-known psychic channeler Ron Scolastico's "Guides" taught that in early human days the spirits went through several stages of attachment to fully occupying the bodies of the early humans; initially the spirits had sort of hovered over their early human avatars. Your guess as to the overall reincarnational cosmic scheme is close to the system expressed by Ron's "Guides".

Maybe apropos: interestingly, well-known psychic channeler Ron Scolastico's "Guides" taught that in early human days the spirits went through several stages of attachment to fully occupying the bodies of the early humans; initially the spirits had sort of hovered over their early human avatars. Your guess as to the overall reincarnational cosmic scheme is close to the system expressed by Ron's "Guides".

That is fascinating - I can find his website, but he is dead of course. Can you link to a specific written or audio work where this is explained?

I got interested in Seth for a while, but his material always seemed cloaked in unnecessary vagueness.

David

That is fascinating - I can find his website, but he is dead of course. Can you link to a specific written or audio work where this is explained?

I got interested in Seth for a while, but his material always seemed cloaked in unnecessary vagueness.

David

If I remember rightly (it's been a long time since I read this volume), the reincarnational cosmic scheme was outlined and described from the Guides' teachings in Ron's first book, "The Earth Adventure: Your Soul's Journey Through Physical Reality". 

https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Adventure-J...oks&sr=1-2

I don't remember exactly where in his voluminous writings Ron's Guides talked about the early human history of the souls' embodiment. It is at least outlined in The Earth Adventure. Other sources are the transcripts of the introductions and closings and answered questions from his various retreats, plus answered questions from the Study Group, which is still active.

Thanks for opening up a bit, because it is hard to respond well to short quips.


I suppose the real value of ID is to shake up the thinking process. Generations of kids have been brought up on Darwin, DNA, and natural selection. If this explanation is wrong, it is time people knew about it!

Whether the true explanation is as you suggest, or that some entities designed life on earth, is almost a secondary consideration, and the two concepts might even merge into one, since immaterial designers still need to impress their ideas into physical matter at some point.

OK first just a quick review of what we are talking about. A modest protein consisting of a chain of 100 amino acid residues can have

20^100, or
12676506002282294014967032053760000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

possibilities. For comparison, the number of protons in the universe has been estimated as

10^80, or

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Protein space is absolutely VAST. Talking about genetic variants floating about in individual microbes doesn't really cut it, unless effective proteins are actually fairly common.

For RM+NS to find one of these things is basically absurd unless useful proteins are really quite common, even if we allow that some activity might exist when we get within one or two steps of the end product.

On top of that, nobody seems to discuss the fact that many important enzymes - such as the proteases - would be deadly to a cell unless additional control machinery was available. This means that natural selection would operate against the adoption of such a protein just when it had finally evolved!

Emergence always seems useful as a vague concept to throw around to confuse discussions, rather than a serious proposal.

My best guess - only a guess, not something I am wedded to - is that a timeless realm does indeed exist in the realm accessed by NDE's and some other practices. I am also fairly impressed by the evidence for reincarnation. I seriously wonder if we began as a group of spirits who set out to make a tough physical life that can operate something like a gym. For that make any sense it would be necessary that people get multiple chances of life on earth, so reincarnation is necessary.

David

Hi David, just a brief comment on the emergence thing. I’m on a roadtrip right now but will get back to your post sometime tomorrow.

I agree that emergent properties are not significantly better than Intelligent Design as an explanatory model. Both concepts rely on physical processes that cannot be reduced to the elementary physical forces we observe in particle collision experiments. However, if one rejects reductionism, they must at least consider the idea of emergent properties, unless they are willing to believe in an intelligent designer who influences physics.

That is fascinating - I can find his website, but he is dead of course. Can you link to a specific written or audio work where this is explained?

I got interested in Seth for a while, but his material always seemed cloaked in unnecessary vagueness.

David

The following are pertinent excerpts from Chapter 2 of The Earth Adventure, Creating the Earth Reality, to give the flavor of this writing. Apologies for the lengthiness, but that was Ron's Guides' style:

Chapter Two topics:

The Souls' First Reality
The First Stage Of Earth Creation
Making A Place For A New Reality
The First Separation
Filling In The Space
The Beginning Of Earth Life
The First Human Beings
Souls Create A New Human Experience
The Transformation Of Animal-Humans
Intensifying The Human Experience
The Beginning Of Negativity
Help From Human Teachers
Help From Spiritual Guides
The Negativity Grows

THE BEGINNING OF EARTH LIFE
.....it was the souls themselves, in their creativity, who caused all of the permutations and all of the changes that led from the beginning cellular life forms to all of the many present forms of the minerals, the plants, the animals, and the human forms. In this evolutionary creation of the physical earth, there were large groups of souls hovering "above" earth, overseeing the gradual development of all of these earth forms. In this evolutionary process, the souls were drawn to various aspects of evolution by desire and interest. Certain groupings of souls would "specialize," rejoicing more in certain of the life forms of earth than others. For example, there was a large grouping of souls fascinated with the various mineral forms who were overseeing the creation of those forms. Most likely, in later periods, a human being created by one of the souls of
this grouping would have a particular fondness for the mineral forms of earth. There would be another grouping of souls fascinated and preoccupied with the development of the fishes, and with the sea itself. Thus, you could have, later, a human being with a magnetic pulling toward those interests. These early interests of the souls in different streams of earth evolution were the beginnings of individuality. In the creation of the overall earth reality, the souls were all united. But there came to be large groupings of souls with these individual desires and fascinations. As a result of this, there came about another slight separation. It was very slight, and not negative in any way. The process was imbued with love. But, those souls who were preoccupied with one particular earth form, such as the mineral form, became less interested in the other forms.

THE FIRST HUMAN BEINGS
Again, you could assume accuracy in your scientific understandings, and, building upon that, we would say that next, the ape forms began to evolve toward man. But know that this evolution of the ape animals was guided by the souls over watching earth, who chose, through interest and desire, to become preoccupied with the ape animal form. There would be other groups of souls who were not interested in ape forms, but continued their interest in maintaining the other animal forms. You could speak of the energies of this group of souls collectively as the ones who over watched animal nature.
There were large numbers of souls interested in this final physical permutation which is the evolution of the human body.

...in the eternal sense, all of the souls were sharing earth. But, in the sense of bringing the forces of God into individual creations, there would be a large grouping of souls intensely focused on the evolution of the ape form into the beautiful, magnificent, perfectly functioning form that you now understand as the human body. We would summarize human evolution in this way: there would be the ancient periods during which the souls over watched those early animal forms and first implanted within them a cleverness of mind, causing the growth of the brain within the race of the small ape forms. Next, there was the implantation of imagination and creativity into those animal forms. All of this was done over many years of earth time. After that came the extremely important implantation of feeling into the evolving animal forms that would become human. There were feelings of love and beauty, reflecting the perfection of God itself; feelings of kindness, and feelings of belonging together, so that the race of early human beings would accurately reflect the divine patterns of the souls by existing together in harmony and understanding of one another. All of the individuals would experience a feeling belonging together, feeling themselves as the entire wholeness of the group. In this, there was absent the feeling of being one separate, individual human being, which is such a normal feeling for you at this time. In the beginnings of human life then, there were human societies in which love, kindness, and harmony manifested. But, for many generations, the most intense subjective awareness of each human being was a feeling of belonging to the group. Thus, in the earliest stages of human life, there were the full human capacities of creativity, inventiveness, intelligence, and feeling, but not yet that sense of each person being one unique individual. Early human beings did not
have that unique awareness of self that was the reality of the souls.

In those early human societies, with the souls rejoicing in their creation of human beings, and with all of this creation permeated with such love, beauty, and perfection, there was no negativity at all.

SOULS CREATE A NEW HUMAN EXPERIENCE
In this beginning period, the souls had only created the physical animal forms imbued with all of the human characteristics; they did not inhabit them. The souls used these animal-human forms as patterns, and from these patterns they began to create new "versions" of those early human forms that would eventually become refined enough so that the souls could enter into, and subjectively experience through human beings. The new versions of human forms that the souls created and first inhabited would not be considered entirely physical from your present point of view. These new forms were made of the eternal non-physical forces so that the souls could place a portion of their own self-awareness into these non-physical bodies. These bodies that existed alongside the physical animal-human forms, if seen with present human eyes of earth would appear to be rather vaporous and etheric. The existing animal-human forms of the time were able to perceive these new bodies in ways that you would now speak of as "seeing spirits."

For many generations of earth life, the souls rejoiced in projecting a portion of their self-awareness into these etheric human forms. The etheric bodies were refined versions of the animal-human forms that continued to exist side by side with the new forms. Now, as the souls began to desire more and more intensity of subjective experience inside of these etheric human forms, in a very complex way, they began to make changes in the non-physical forms that eventually, over vast periods of time, resulted in these etheric human forms becoming more solid, more physical. To simplify, we would say that eventually, from this process, these etheric forms evolved into human beings who were quite physical and solid, and, they contained within themselves projections of the consciousness of the souls. They had a divine self-awareness. In some earth teachings, these new humans have been called "the sons of God." At the same time, there simultaneously existed the other stream of animal forms raised to human capacities. The animal-humans were able now to make communications in words and in inner projections of thought and emotion, but they did not have a portion of soul consciousness living within them. In some earth teachings, these beings are spoken of as "the sons of man." The sons of God can be seen as a race of physical human beings containing the projection of self-awareness and the creating the divine spark of the souls. As the souls who created human evolution concentrated on the development of the sons of God, the animal-human beings gradually came to be infused with the forces of the souls who had chosen to over watch earth nature and the other animal forms....

....the souls began then to build all of the earth evolutionary forces about this particular refined race of human beings called the sons of God. And, for long periods they worked to transmute and transform the other race of humans that was the sons of man. Eventually, there came a point in time in earth when all of the sons of man were finally infused with a portion of a soul expressing in the way of the sons of God. All human beings then were transformed into this new jewel in the crown of creation—the sons of God. Thus, there came a time, in the ancient past, when all human beings physically existed as humans now appear, and all of them were imbued with a portion of soul awareness that brings the eternal force into human form. These evolutionary changes took place long before what you would think of as recorded human history...

The Buehler paper you link to seems to make a good case for identifying at least some of the underlying mechanisms of the "intelligent cell cognition" that Shapiro was referring to. Again, this does not in any way shape or form point to individual cells having consciousness, because of that obstinate Hard Problem. For just one example, cognitive and other data processing is ubiquitous in our computers with no sign of consciousness. 

Then the claim might be made that creative innovative biological engineering design can be expected to come out of "cognitive data processing", no consciousness required. Unfortunately, data processing of any kind can't generate thought, imagination, innovation, foresight, ingenuity, all the qualities of consciousness essential to human beings who are the only observed source of creative innovative inventions.

Obviously I agree with you that data processing (as in AI) can't generate real thought.

However, I'm not convinced that a single cell can do much data processing. Remember also that Rupert Sheldrake gives evidence (particularly the newt embryo experiment) that seems to prove that intelligence comes from outside the individual organism - from what he would describe as the morphogenetic field.

David

The following material continues and supplements the quotes from Chapter 2 of Ron Scolastico's The Earth Adventure already posted in #66 above (at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-e...3#pid53873 ).

I might comment that the overall picture from the human perspective that emerges from these writings of Ron Scolastico's Guides of the basic nature of the Souls and their relationship to present human beings is one of loving but fundamental separation - the soul is a separate vastly greater being than its human. Rather than being separated by space, they are separated by time - the transformation process after death in which the human is subsumed into the Soul entity. The soul not only loves it's human self, but all others equally. The soul essentially created the human as a hybrid being, both physical and spiritual, and all negatiivity pain and suffering resulted from mistakes made in this process of evolution of these beings by both the souls and the proto-humans.

Other observations: The spiritual transition process beginning immediately after physical death is apparently one in which the human personality and consciousness gradually "opens up" to its  true nature - that of the Soul. Until the human has essentially disappeared (remaining as stored memories), leaving the vastly greater Soul entity. This Soul entity seems clearly to be so much greater and different in all ways that the human and the soul are really separate beings from the perspective of the human.

Regarding reincarnation, it is not even mentioned whether the Soul deciding on the next incarnation even considers that the genetic complement of the chosen family and fetus may contain defects which will inevitably cause severe disease and suffering by the human. Implying it just may not even be a consideration at the Soul level of consciousness. Another indication of the apparent alienness of the Soul consciousness from the human.

These teachings seem clearly to imply that though the soul and its human are indeed one (in some incomprehensible way), from the human perspective the human and the soul are completely separate beings.

These excerpts are just a medium-sized glimpse of the vast conception summarized in The Earth Adventure. Whatever its ultimate (probably partial) accuracy, it is quite an accomplishment.
 

....in the early portions of this "individualizing" process, there was still harmony, love, and a feeling of belonging in all of the human social groupings of earth. Next, there came a major turning point in human life. In the creation of the individual ego within each human being, the souls instilled free will into the human personality patterns, just as the God forces had infused free will into the souls. Into the human beings the souls planted total freedom for the human personalities to do as they pleased, and to create what pleased them.

In these early periods, life on earth resembled what some human beings have come to write about in terms of "the Garden of Eden." Here were individual, unique human beings with the power to create and express, walking in a physical perfection of love that they shared with all other human beings. There was a subjective feeling of belonging to an earth that was created by God. In a certain sense, we could say that this existence was the perfect pattern that the souls desired for earth when they first began their physical creation. This was the new physical reality that they had set out to create.

THE BEGINNING OF NEGATIVITY
....Negativity comes about when the subjective experience of personality is squeezed into one single ego without a conscious awareness of the love that joins one human being to another. It is very important for you now in your present life to understand that negativity is a human creation, so that never would you be tempted to blame life, or nature, or evolution, or God for the negativity that you perceive in life. All of you ones walking the face of the earth in this time were participants in those early human changes that created this negativity. All of you were involved in the creation of what you would speak of as selfishness, and the lack of sensitivity to others. All of the fears, angers, resentments, and painful experiences that are now a portion of the present human experiences were all first created by you ones as individuals living through many early lifetimes.

In those early periods, even as you ones of the human race were guided by the enlightened human beings, you were still able to vaguely perceive a portion of your soul, although your capacity to perceive eternal realities had been diminished (in order to intensify your experience of earth). Thus, the early human beings were guided both by unconscious impulses directly from their own souls, and by human teaching-ones walking in physical form. 

HELP FROM HUMAN TEACHERS
.....In those early periods, even as you ones of the human race were guided by the enlightened human beings, you were still able to vaguely perceive a portion of your soul, although your capacity to perceive eternal realities had been diminished (in order to intensify your experience of earth). Thus, the early human beings were guided both by unconscious impulses directly from their own souls, and by human teaching-ones walking in physical form.

THE NEGATIVITY GROWS
....all of the earth competition and struggle that have led to all of the wars, and all of the human pain and suffering, began with an unwillingness to care for other human beings more than you care for things of this earth. There is not a badness in this, except from the human subjective point of view. From the soul point of view, the soul continues to pour forth love for all human beings, even as it pours forth a portion of its conscious awareness into that one individual human being that it animates in any given lifetime. The soul does not love you as its personality more than it loves all other human personalities. It loves all. The soul would not make a separation or a distance. It is human awareness without love, human thought and feeling colored by fear, and human action growing out of fear that create the differences and the separations between human beings.

To summarize all of this for you, we would say that the physical earth was created by the souls in perfection. The freedom to create was given to human beings by the souls. The human beings created many magnificent areas. They also created one thread of human experience that you could understand as fear—the feeling of badness, the feeling of wrongness that begins to cause human beings to squeeze in upon themselves and to make a wall between themselves and others. That fear that temporarily squeezes out the awareness of love is the underlying cause of all human suffering and pain through all of earth life.

You can see here that all of the earth competition and struggle that have led to all of the wars, and all of the human pain and suffering, began with an unwillingness to care for other human beings more than you care for things of this earth. There is not a badness in this, except from the human subjective point of view. From the soul point of view, the soul continues to pour forth love for all human beings, even as it pours forth a portion of its conscious awareness into that one individual human being that it animates in any given lifetime. The soul does not love you as its personality more than it loves all other human personalities. It loves all. The soul would not make a separation or a distance. It is human awareness without love, human thought and feeling colored by fear, and human action growing out of fear that create the differences and the separations between human beings. The negativity that human beings inadvertently created brought about a pattern that the souls did not intend to create.

.......................................................

Excerpted material on the relationship of soul and human, reincarnation, merging into the soul again, etc.

BECOMING YOUR SOUL AGAIN
First, during the after-death transition process, your personality becomes so deeply attuned to the eternal forces within your intuiting capacity that this becomes larger than all of the other "earth" capacities that are woven into your personality matrix. Your former capacities that sustained your human awareness, such as thought, emotion, ideation, conceptualization, and all of the other abilities that helped you live in earth while you were a human being, are overshadowed by the magnificence of your reawakening eternal awareness, which is so much larger than your human capacities. Then, as you come to the end of the after-death transition period, with your intuiting capacity now filled with the qualities of your eternal soul, rather than with the capacities of your human personality matrix, you begin to experience a reality that is completely filled with the divine forces of perfection, beauty, creativity, and love. All of your old limited and rigid human personality patterns dissolve. Everything that you have learned as an earth human being that is of value to your soul and the eternal universes begins to be infused with these growing forces of eternal truth within your inner sensings. This is a magnificent, miraculous process in which you are transforming yourself from a limited human personality back into the eternal soul that created that personality. During this process, your conscious awareness of the incoming forces of your soul becomes stronger and stronger, until eventually, the process is complete when you realize: "I am the soul!" Then, rather than experiencing yourself as a human personality infused by a soul, you once again experience the truth of yourself as an eternal soul that has created the human personality into which it projected a portion of its consciousness. That portion of soul consciousness that you previously experienced as your human self is expanded expanded and merged with your full awareness of your eternal nature. At this point, you are standing in the midst of the real truth that was obscured while you were a human being. You are totally aware of the magnificence and perfection of all of the vast universes in which you have your being as an eternal soul. You become aware of your intensely fulfilling and unending love relationship with the forces of God as they continually create you and sustain you in a constantly expanding experience of happiness and joy. You become aware of the vast continuous communication between all souls, and you consciously participate again in the subjective experience of each soul as a portion of their beings.

REINCARNATION CHOICES OTHER THAN HUMAN LIFE
As an eternal soul standing beyond earth, you are free to choose not to create a new personality matrix to infuse into human form. If that is your desire, then most likely you will choose to participate in a non-physical reality that is an extension of the earth reality. This would be an existence that is similar to human life, a world in which many souls who have chosen not to continue to project portions of themselves into human form create a new reality that is a further expression of their desire that led them to create physical reality in the first place. To simplify this, we would say that these souls are expressing in what can be seen as, from your human point of view, the next stage of human evolution.

...in this (afterlife) extension of earth reality there are no energies of negativity. The love, joy, and beauty that you ones are now learning to create in earth is extended and magnified many fold to create an even more beautiful form of existence. This is made possible by the experience that the souls have gained by living in physical earth through their human personalities. In this non-physical realm of existence, the souls can participate directly with the fullness of their beings. There is no need to project portions of themselves into personalities. Within the subjective experiences of the souls who exist in this realm, when there would arise feelings that in earth would have become fear, the soul in its enlightenment and wisdom can immediately understand such an impulse and can instantly transform it in love. Thus, in this new realm, there is no negativity, for there is such mastery that any such energy is dissolved by love before it can manifest tangibly.

My response to these assertions is that, In my opinion, the strongest argument for Intelligent Design (ID) is to insist upon an outmoded and inadequate account of the evolutionary process (Shapiro 2021). Criticizing the inadequacies of out-of-date explanations is the way science should proceed. Evolution by stress-activated natural genetic engineering is currently the best way we have to address the origins of the complex systems which ID advocates claim neo-Darwinism cannot explain. Scientists who want to show that natural explanations exist for the evolution of intricate biological systems should embrace every advance in our understanding of the evolutionary process that molecular biology brings us.

My response to that is that once you abandon RM+NS as a materialistic explanation for life on Earth, you really have to have a viable alternative that really addresses the problem in materialistic terms if you want to exclude the woo-woo that isencroaching ever closer here.

I mean " Evolution by stress-activated natural genetic engineering" sounds great until you remember that engineering - genetic or otherwise - is done by (surprise, surprise) human engineers! As far as I can see, there simply isn't any materialistic alternative explanation!

David

My response to that is that once you abandon RM+NS as a materialistic explanation for life on Earth, you really have to have a viable alternative that really addresses the problem in materialistic terms if you want to exclude the woo-woo that isencroaching ever closer here.

I mean " Evolution by stress-activated natural genetic engineering" sounds great until you remember that engineering - genetic or otherwise - is done by (surprise, surprise) human engineers! As far as I can see, there simply isn't any materialistic alternative explanation!

David

Yeah Shapiro's explanation that I quoted just felt confusing to me. (It's a bit weird that in your post it looks like I wrote that stuff.)

It does increasingly feel like the complete denial of consciousness being involved in the shaping of the universe, even as a possibility, is exposing biases within STEM academia.

Gravity was seen as "occult" at one time, and "Decoherence" seems more like merely observing that somehow the oddities of QM don't usually pass all the way up to our classical existence. I think with Cosmic Fine Tuning and possibly with ID these attempts at avoiding the potential influence of Mind in the workings of the Universe have reached a limit. The Simulation Hypothesis itself is a kind of admission...