The Goldilocks Enigma – Part Two

 by Laura Knight-Jadczyk

In the previous post where I introduced Paul Davies book “The Goldilocks Enigma” which appears to be one of the sources of Philip Goff’s rather shallow musings on ‘The Purpose of the Universe’, I cited Davies’ briefly from his discussion about ‘The Big Questions’.  There he noted that “The ancients were right: beneath the surface complexity of nature lies a hidden subtext, written in a subtle mathematical code.  This cosmic code contains the secret rules on which the universe runs.”

I added the context that the ancients thought that knowing or inferring something about ultimate reality can help an individual to live a better life in some sense, thus, the development of various religions, though I mentioned Christianity specifically.

What developed from this drive to understand ultimate reality, within the parameters of science as we know it today, was the materialist assumption that the physical world is causally closed and free will is just an illusion. I then noted that, for this belief system to make any sense, materialists needed their own creation myth to explain the complexity of human life, experience and consciousness which Philip Goff was exerting himself to provide based on Darwinism.  Goff struggled with the fact that, if the physical universe is causally closed and we have no free will, then our consciousness is entirely useless and certainly not advantageous for survival.  He did some fancy cogitation in an effort to overcome this implication, suggesting that the Universe can have ‘purpose’ even if it is a materialist universe.  He combined his ‘pan-agentialism’ with ‘teleological laws’ to come up with ‘Cosmic purposivism’ which just happens to coincide nicely with liberal-left political aims. In short, Goff described a Big Bang that was as much Creationism as the “God did it” version.  As I noted,  for Goff, the Wave Function is something like a deciding god who then castrates himself and Goff gives us no idea where the wave function comes from, nor what gives particles ‘agency’.

As I noted, based on research in mathematics and physics, there is clearly much more to our reality than the naive realism upon which Darwinism and neo-Darwinism is based. And it’s not that there aren’t some elements of natural selection in play; clearly there are.  But it is the way that the principles have been applied: Natural selection was seized upon as the one and only underlying law of our reality as a whole: random processes of matter, no consciousness needed. And it has been the steady application of this materialistic evolutionary thinking that is behind the explanation of the order of the universe that prevails today, which underpins the chaos and disorder we see in a world devoid of information and organization. 

Burkhard Heim & 12 Dimensional World

How can this be in a world where science has uncovered the existence of a network of complex coded mathematical relationships beneath the diverse physical systems making up our reality? Paul Davies writes:

How has this come about?  Somehow the universe has engineered, not just its own awareness, but its own comprehension.  Mindless, blundering atoms have conspired to make, not just life, not just mind, but understanding.  The evolving cosmos has spawned beings who are able not merely to watch the show, but to unravel the plot. What is it that enables something as small and delicate and adapted to terrestrial life as the human brain to engage with the totality of the cosmos and the silent mathematical tune to which it dances. … Could it just be a fluke?

Here we encounter the concept of Laws of the Universe or Nature.  These laws did not develop in a void.  In earliest times, people observed the cycles of nature and the stars.  Religions posited a created world order.  The Greeks proposed that the world could be explained by logic and reason.  Modern science emerged from the Christian belief that there was only one true god, one Truth, and the Greek philosophical position that logic and reason could get us there.  And so, as Davies points out, the founding assumption of science is that the physical universe is neither arbitrary nor absurd, but rather underpinned by a coherent scheme of things, a system of well-defined laws. Davies writes:

Right at the outset we encounter an obvious and profound enigma: Where do the laws of nature come from?... If they aren’t the product of divine providence, how can they be explained?

In earlier times, these laws were seen to be ‘thoughts of God’ or derived from God’s role as law-maker and keeper of order. After Darwin, of course, it could be suggested that nobody needed God to create things; natural selection did that very well.  Of course, as I have noted, that just put the problem off several steps.  But in any event, today the ‘laws of physics’ are central to science and foundational to physical reality.  These laws have been discovered and described bit by bit over hundreds of years. 

Galileo supposedly dropped balls off the tower at Pisa and discovered that the distance the ball falling increases as the square of the time.  Davies asks the obvious question: Why is there such a mathematical rule?  Where does the rule come from? And why is the rule as it is and not something else?

Why does the force between magnets diminish with the cube of the distance between them?  Why is it so that if you double the volume of a fixed mass of gas while keeping the temperature constant, its pressure is halved? (Boyle’s Law)  Why is it so that the square of the period of an orbit is proportional to the cube of the orbit’s radius? (Kepler’s law)  Why is it so that the force of gravity diminishes with distance as the square of the separation between the two bodies?

We could say that the physical world conforms to mathematical laws or that mathematics and laws emerge from the behavior of objects in the physical world.  Chicken or egg?  Does it matter?.  By using Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation, engineers can figure out when a space craft will arrive at point B after departing from point A. And it always works.  Whatever the origin of the world – matter or mind – the mathematical models of reality appear to always describe what actually happens in the real world.  Davies captures the deep mystery: “Why is Nature shadowed by a mathematical reality?”

So, the next question is: How many laws are there? It turns out that many of the laws are not independent.  Davies writes:

Newton’s laws of gravitation and motion explain Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion, and so are in some sense deeper and more powerful.  Newton’s laws of motion also explain Boyle’s law of gases when they are applied in a statistical way to a large collection of chaotically moving molecules.  … The laws of electricity … were found to be connected to the laws of magnetism, which in turn explained the laws of light.  These interconnections led to a certain amount of confusion about which laws were ‘primary’ and which could be derived from others.  Physicists began talking about ‘fundamental’ laws and ‘secondary’ laws… This streamlining and repackaging process – finding links between laws, and reducing them to ever more fundamental laws – continues apace, and it’s tempting to believe that, at rock bottom, there is just a handful of truly fundamental laws, possibly even a single super-law, from which all the other laws derive. 

The idea of Laws of Nature resulted from recording and codifying observations of patterns in nature, i.e. physical events.  Somewhere along the way, the laws themselves became the reality rather than the events they described.  The laws of physics became abstractions within their own realm and only touch our world when they ‘act’.  Davies writes:

It’s almost as if the laws are lying in wait, ready to seize control of a physical process and compel it to comply… So we have this image of really-existing laws of physics ensconced in a transcendent eyrie, lording it over lowly matter.

Of course, that means that the ‘laws of physics’ are part of the impersonal forces and natural physical processes rather than the observed expressions of purposive supernatural actors or events.  Note what I wrote above: “We could say that the physical world conforms to mathematical laws or that mathematics and laws emerge from the behavior of objects in the physical world.  Chicken or egg?”  Scientific explanations seem to win hands down. Science tells us that the madness of rabies is caused by the cascade of events resulting from an infection by a virus rather than possession by a demon.  But for all we know, (and I’m only being partly facetious here), the rabies virus is merely the agent of a devil.

There is a lot that science doesn’t know and cannot explain. Davies tells us:

Many scientists who are struggling to construct a fully comprehensive theory of the physical universe openly admit that part of the motivation is to finally get rid of God, whom they view as a dangerous and infantile delusion.  And not only God, but any vestige of God-talk, such as ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ or ‘design’ in nature.  These scientists see religion as so fraudulent and sinister that nothing less than total theological cleansing will do.  They concede no middle ground, and regard science and religion as two implacably opposed world views.  Victory is assumed to be the inevitable outcome of science’s intellectual ascendancy and powerful methodology. …

At the level of popular, Sunday-school Christianity, God is portrayed simplistically as a sort of Cosmic Magician, conjuring the world into being from nothing and from time to time working miracles to fix problems.  Such a being is obviously in flagrant contradiction to the scientific view of the world.  The God of scholarly theology, by contrast, is cast in the role of a wise Cosmic Architect whose existence is manifested through the rational order of the cosmos, an order that is in fact revealed by science.  That sort of God is largely immune from scientific attack.

So here, I would like to include an exchange Ark had with Robin Amis, editor and publisher of the three volumes of Gnosis by Boris Mouravieff.  In the exchange, Ark will cite what Amis wrote to him:

Ark to Robin Amis:

You stated that:

1) Scientific method has its limitations.

2) Knowledge should be understood in broader terms so as to include, for instance “noetic knowledge”. In particular:

a) there is a true form of knowledge that is normally associated with religion

b) those with intellectual training tend to regard it as not being knowledge at all

3) That you - Praxis - teach this other form of knowledge, and the conditions under which it can be understood.

4) The reason that Praxis (and other religions) depends on a suspension of judgment is “that newcomers studying this material, despite quickly getting confirmation of its reality, will not understand it deeply enough.”

I will try to address and expand the above points and, perhaps, try to add some new ideas, if only for the future discussion.

Point 1) I agree. I agree completely. In fact it takes a scientist to truly know the limitations and the weaknesses of science, as many of the tricks and games and even lies are known only to the insiders - scientists.

Point 2) I agree that there is such a knowledge; I agree that is important and, in fact, is crucial.  It depends on whether you start with a fact and follow the clues to real knowledge, or whether you start with an assumption, and interpret all facts based on what may, at the very beginning, be a lie.

a) Whether this “true knowledge” is, was, or should be “associated with religion” is disputable.

The term “associated” is somewhat vague and can lead to misunderstandings. Science is also associated with religion. The Pope has scientific advisers; the Vatican supports scientific research.

On the other hand the greatest crimes of history have also been - and probably are still - associated with religion, one way or another.

Religion, if analyzed sincerely and critically, has many dark spots, and analyzing the reasons for this is not an easy task.

But I hope you will agree with me that one of the reasons why religions have these dark spots is that people were lulled into believing that they have (in opposition to others) the “true knowledge”.

So the very concept of “true knowledge” is risky. It is easy to imagine that two different people will have different, orthogonal truths. For one the truth may be that he needs to kill the other man, while for the other man the truth may involve avoiding being killed. Every noetic truth has down-to-earth implications. Or so I think.

b) Though I agree that what you wrote may describe a general tendency, yet there are exceptions. History knows scientists - great scientists - that were “mystics” at the same time. Pascal, Newton, Poincare - just few examples. So, indeed, the term “tend to regard” that you used seems to be appropriate. But for this present point, it is important to know whether there is a real contradiction between being a scientist and appreciating other forms of knowledge at the same time. It seems to me and, I believe, you will agree, that there is no intrinsic contradiction.

Point 3) Here of course you are assuming that Praxis is already in possession of such a knowledge. Perhaps this is the case or, perhaps, Praxis has only “fragments of unknown teachings”, and not the complete picture.

Being a scientist I am always careful and I would never state that I have the full and complete “knowledge” of something. I may know about tools, theories, formal structures, data etc. But one day, all my tools, data, theories and formal structures may prove to be wrong or useless with the uncovering of a single datum that shifts the entire structure. A true scientist MUST be open to this. What is important in science is being always open to surprises, to new paradigm shifts etc.

So, I think, you - Praxis - are teaching what you BELIEVE to be, at the present moment, “the true knowledge”, and you may have very good reasons for such a belief. You may have very important pieces of knowledge but, perhaps, you are still lacking some of other important pieces.

How can we know in advance where the next unexpected discovery will lead us?

And here I would like to make some constructive - or so I think - comments.

Looking at the history of our civilization, religion seems to have been in existence much longer than science. And yet we see that religion has failed. In spite of its teachings people are still constantly at war with each other. Human beings have not become better, and they are often much worse than animals. Gurdjieff described seeing the truth of our condition - the condition of our reality in general - as the “terror of the situation.” It is terrible because, when you really SEE it, you realize how great a failure religion or the “powers” of the various versions of God really are.

Science, which came later and has exploded in the last millennium, has failed too. It has brought mankind to the edge of self-destruction. Advances in mathematical, physical and computer sciences have brought about “applied game theory“, where “wars” are called “games”, and to “win the game” is to kill as many people as possible with as little cost as possible.

Is there any hope at all? And if there is, then where?

Perhaps it is time to try something new? Perhaps a “marriage of science and mysticism“ has a chance?

Why not take what is good from science and what is good from religion, and discard what is wrong?

What is the best thing about religion?

Religion teaches us to be open minded and accepting of possibilities which are far from being “rational”. Religions teach us to pay attention to singular events, miracles, phenomena that are fragile and hardly repeatable. Finally religion teaches us to look inside as much as outside: know thyself.

The strengths of the approach of religion just happen to be the weak points in science.

Science is often narrow-minded and conservative restricting everything to what is material and rigidly repeatable. Science teaches us that what is “out there” is not connected to what is “in here,” that it must be captured, weighed, measured and manipulated. That is why new paradigms are so painful when they come - but they DO come in science, and they seldom come in religion which is “fixed” and dogmatic and not open to discussion.

What is the best thing about science?

Science is open to criticism and discussion. Even if many forces on the earth try to make a sort of religion of science, in general, scientific theories must be published and publicly discussed. We can find an error in Einstein‘s papers because these, as well as other papers, are publicly available. Everyone can learn mathematics, as advanced as you wish, from reading monographs, articles, going to conferences, and discussing with other scientists.

The strength of science just happens to be the weakness of religion. Religions are always “secret” in one respect or another - even if that secrecy is only the declaration that no changes can be made, no questions asked, because the ultimate truth about God is a “mystery,” a “secret.” That is why the teachings of religion are so easily distorted and misunderstood. It is so easy for the central “authority” to achieve the “pinnacle” of the religion and declare to the followers the correct interpretation and that no other is permitted.

Point 4) What you say about students not being able to judge for a long time is certainly true. But whether discouraging them from such judgments is the only solution - I am not sure.

Certainly that was the way it was done in the past. Groups were usually small, whether exoteric or esoteric. Travel and communication possibilities were severely restricted. But today a qualitative change has occurred: we are now in the era of networking and instant communication on a planetary scale.

Therefore a different approach is possible: instead of having few students and “teach them even when they are not yet ready”, we can address ourselves to those who are ready.

This was not so easy to do in the past when teachers communicated, at best, to merely hundreds of potential students. But it is possible now, when we can communicate with millions.

Whoever is not yet ready for the next stage, let him stay where he is or go back where he was. Those who ARE ready, will find you - if you take care and NETWORK efficiently.

So, I would not discourage students from making early judgments and discussing subjects that they are not prepared for. If they come to the wrong conclusions and go away or attack you, that is their free will. Let them go where their minds and their hearts lead them.

Coming back now to Davies, he notes that even atheists can feel awe in respect of the cosmos.  They even note that it does, indeed, appear that there is a purpose that evolution is following.  We certainly got that from Goff, though I suspect he got it from Davies and others. As noted above, this is what inspired his Cosmic Purposivism.

Davies points out that that 1) the universe ‘obeys’ (or expresses?) mathematical laws; 2) these mathematical laws underlie everything and some scientists think they are real and inhabit a transcendent Platonic realm; 3) Science reveals that there is a cohesive scheme of things, but they do not consider that to be evidence for meaning or purpose.  Davies writes:

Of course, scientists might be deluded in their belief that they’re finding systematic and coherent truth in the workings of nature.  Ultimately there may be no reason at all for why things are the way they are.  But that would make the universe a fiendishly clever bit of trickery.  Can a truly absurd universe so convincingly mimic a meaningful one?

And so, Davies sets himself the task of explaining the Universe.   We'll begin synopsizing next post.

The Goldilocks Enigma

 

It’s not too hot, it’s not too cold and its forces act together in a way that’s just right; why does the universe seem so perfectly tailor-made for life to exist?

by Laura Knight-Jadczyk

In his book aptly titled “The Goldilocks Enigma”, physicist and science writer, Paul Davies, says that some scientists claim to be on the verge of providing answers to the great questions of existence such as Why are we here? How did the universe begin?  How will it end?  How is the world put together?  Why is it the way it is? And so on.  We recognize these questions from Philip Goff’s rather feeble attempt to philosophize about them in the previous series of posts: “Why? The Meaning of the Universe”.  Here I’ll just suggest that the reader will be better served reading Davies over Goff even if I don’t think Davies has the whole banana either.

Davies explains that the reason some scientist are so confident about the possibility of being able to explain the order of the universe is due to developments in both cosmology and high energy particle physics.  However, elsewhere, Davies has warned us against ‘Taking Science on Faith’  because the faith scientists have in the immutability of physical laws has origins in Christian theology. (He was roundly criticized for saying this).

Davies thinks that the fact that consciousness exists is one of the most significant facts of the universe, (he also notes that many scientists and philosophers do not agree with this assessment), and that for life to emerge and then to evolve into conscious beings like ourselves, certain conditions have to be met.

Davies worked with astronomer, Fred Hoyle, and tells us that Hoyle thought that it appears as if some super-intelligence was behind the laws of physics.  Davies agrees that it does look that way and no scientific explanation for the universe can be acceptable unless it accounts for this fact. “On the face of it, the universe does look as if it has been designed by an intelligent creator expressly for the purpose of spawning sentient beings.  

Like the porridge in the tale of Goldilocks and the three bears, the universe seems to be ‘just right’ for life, in many intriguing ways.”  Figuring out why this is so requires us to probe the nature of physical laws. Davies writes:

“Throughout history, prominent thinkers have been convinced that the everyday world observed through our senses represents only the surface manifestation of a deeper hidden reality, where the answers to the great questions of existence should be sought.  So compelling has been this belief that entire societies have been shaped by it.  Truth-seekers have practiced complex rituals and rites, used drugs and medication to enter trance-like states, and consulted shamans, mystics, and priests in an attempt to lift the veil on a shadowy world that lies beneath the one we perceive.  The world ‘occult' originally meant ‘knowledge of concealed truth’, and seeking a gateway to the occult domain has been a major preoccupation of all cultures, ranging from the Dreaming of Aboriginal Australians to the myth of Adam and Eve tasting the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. …

“The ancient Greek philosopher Plato compared the world of appearance to a shadow playing on the wall of a cave.  Followers of Pythagoras were convinced that numbers possess mystical significance.  The Bible is also replete with numerology… The power of numbers led to a belief that certain integers, geometrical shapes and formulas could invoke contact with a supernatural plane, and that obscure codes known only to initiates might unlock momentous cosmic secrets. …

“Isaac Newton – mystic, theologian and alchemist – … did more than anyone to change the age of magic into the age of science. …

“The ancients were right: beneath the surface complexity of nature lies a hidden subtext, written in a subtle mathematical code.  This cosmic code contains the secret rules on which the universe runs.  Newton, Galileo and other early scientists treated their investigations as a religious quest.  They thought that by exposing the patterns woven into the processes of nature they truly were glimpsing the mind of God.  Modern scientists are mostly not religious, yet they still accept that an intelligible script underlies the workings of nature, for to believe otherwise would undermine the very motivation for doing research, which is to uncover something meaningful about the world that we don't already know.”

There is actually a bit more to the search for the underlying nature of reality than just ‘figuring stuff out’.  Theologian Gerd Theissen writes:

“Religion is a cultural sign language which promises a gain in life by corresponding to an ultimate reality.  The definition leaves open whether and in what sense there is an ultimate reality.  In religion, a gain in life is often to be understood in a very tangible way, above all as health and help … But often religions promise something more sublime in addition: a life in truth and love, a gain of identity in the crises and changes of life – even the promise of eternal life.  … Cognitively, religions have always offered a comprehensive interpretation of the world: they assign human beings their place in the universe of things … Religion maintains belief in a hidden order of things – and it functions where our knowledge fails in cognitive crises (for example in the question of what lies beyond this world in which we live and what removes us from ourselves at death).” (Gerd Theissen, A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion  (London: SCM Press, 1999).(Emphases, mine.)

What is of interest here is that it is implied that knowing or inferring something about ultimate reality can help an individual to live a better life in some sense and Christianity  most certainly promised this ‘gain in life’ at its inception.

But somehow, today, what was once seen to be a path to a better life has changed into a way of life that, to outsiders, seems delusional.  The problem lies, I think, in how Christians began very early on to misunderstand the message and then to distort it.  The main reason for the distortion of that message was the very thing that the message was intended to defeat: a totally materialist view of reality versus one that includes consciousness as something that can be non-material.  And in our day, scientific materialism reigns supreme.

In many ways, scientific materialism is the modern incarnation of one side of the old conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, to use the apostle Paul’s terms, only taken to new extremes. Often not explicitly formulated or even acknowledged, this belief system is based on the idea that the material world is all there is, and everything else – consciousness in particular – is derived from it, a mere side effect. What’s more, it is often assumed that the physical world is causally closed, which implies that our free will is just an illusion. But for this belief system to make any sense, if only superficially, its proponents need their own creation myth to explain the complexity of human life, experience and consciousness: enter Darwinism. A random material universe, so the story goes, is somehow capable to produce life by chance; the complexity of our experience, including our so-called illusion of having free will, so the story continues, is just a product of selecting ‘advantageous’ traits over long time spans. Never mind that if the physical universe is causally closed and we have no free will, then our consciousness is entirely useless and certainly not advantageous for survival.[1] But if we have free will, that is, if our minds can somehow break the causal chains of the strictly physical world, then there must be something seriously wrong with materialist doctrine.[2]

But the materialists are determined to hold the line against any single acknowledgment of any process that is not totally random, accidental, and material. Evolution is their gospel, Darwin their savior.  Their story is that the Big Bang was the explosion of a primal atom, and all matter in the Universe was in this incredibly dense atom.  Everything that has happened since is just the result of random jostling of particles that, over billions of years, may form affinities by accident, and different forms of matter arise.  Eventually, some of this matter jostles against some other bit of matter, some sort of electrical (or other) interaction takes place, and that is 'life.’

But make no mistake about it!  The Big Bang theory is Creationism. Materialists believe that matter sprang suddenly into existence with nothing prior. That primal atom was there, and they make no attempt to explain it.  That's exactly the same as saying 'God was just there' and decided to create the universe.  Archeologist Steven Mithen writes:

Creationists believe that the mind sprang suddenly into existence fully formed. In their view it is a product of divine creation. They are wrong: the mind has a long evolutionary history and can be explained without recourse to supernatural powers.[3]

As you can see, Mithen is arguing from as false a premise as the 'God-did-it-in-six-days' gang. He has already made a big leap of assumption that when anyone speaks about 'mind' they are speaking exclusively about a mind that is tied to a physical body.  It apparently never occurs to him that pure consciousness is what is meant by ‘mind’ and not masses of neurons talking to each other with chemical and electrical signal systems. The very idea that consciousness might exist prior to matter is anathema to the materialists, yet that very idea in its most basic form is being discussed in recent years as the foundation of all existence in the form of pure information. At the same time, a close study of the matter reveals that many scientists involved in biochemical research have actually gutted classical Darwinism and some of them are coming forward and saying so plainly.[4] 

Proponents of Darwinism or neo-Darwinism insist that there are clear distinctions between science and religion.  Indeed, there are obvious differences in the style and content of a laboratory experiment and a claim to divinely revealed knowledge.  Materialists say that science is concerned with knowledge of the proven and visible, while religion is concerned with mindless faith in the unprovable and invisible.  And yet, when the facts are known, one must ask: is natural selection really a proven system based on demonstrated knowledge, or is it an unproven hypothesis in which there are so many contraindications that belief in it is also, in the final analysis, only a matter of faith?  Natural selection is no more visible than a Deity and, frankly, less likely to do what is claimed than supernatural intervention!

Evolutionists are often found taunting those who think that something higher is involved in our existence – that their miracles of special creation can, by definition, be neither proved nor disproved.  Yet the evolutionists arrive at similar propositions, especially when they exclude any possibility of something that guides and propels evolutionary processes.  The main difference between the believers in miracles of special creation and believers in accidental variations is that the former has God Almighty pulling the strings and the latter has only impossible probabilities of jostling atoms and molecules as its ultimate reality.  Not much difference, eh?

The late Weston La Barre, professor of anthropology at Duke University, was consumed with ideological fervor against the 'enemy' and wrote that all religions other than evolution are maladaptive retreats from reality.  When considering the Platonic philosophy which holds that ideas, forms, patterns, types and archetypes have an existence and reality of their own and would, therefore, seem to have an obvious relevance to evolution and the origins of species, he regularly compared Plato to Adolf Hitler.  He neglected to mention that Hitler was a confirmed – even extreme – Darwinist, believing that man evolved from monkeys, a proposition that Plato would have considered absurd.

The writings of many great researchers, including physicists and mathematicians, suggest that Plato was correct and that there are immaterial realities independent of physical brains, and more.  The evidence for this is actually more considerable than the rags and tatters of evidence glued together to attempt to validate macroevolution.  And, of course, this means that the advocates of materialistic Darwinism are the ones who are laboring under one of history's greatest delusions.

Quantum physics indicates that not only does 'matter' seem to dissolve into patterned vibrations at the most fundamental levels, it has become apparent that there is a structuring role played by consciousness, by information.[5]

There is now much accumulated evidence that mind does exist separate from the physical brain and that phenomena such as telepathy, psychokinesis, and other so-called paranormal effects are not only demonstrable, they conform to models of the universe with non-local causes.  In the fields of mathematics and physics, the world has changed under the material evolutionist's feet and there is much more to our reality than the naive realism upon which neo-Darwinism is based.  The fact that most contemporary evolutionists still cling to the old-fashioned, crude and mechanical theories in spite of the well-known developments in other scientific fields is more proof of the religious character of their beliefs.

And here we come to an interesting idea: the difficulty for both believers in purely mechanistic evolution and the creationists is that any cosmology that is sufficiently explanatory of the phenomena we observe in our universe has deeper dynamics and implications.  The evolutionists and creationists both seem incapable of the truly abstract, subtle thinking required to parse these implications. It is as though both types are confined within a set of cognitive restrictions that drive their perceptions, experiences and priorities.

Science took a serious wrong turn in the middle of the nineteenth century, about the time Darwin published his Origin of Species and that is why we do, indeed, live in a spiritual Dark Age as a consequence.  It wasn't that natural selection was wrong, per se, but the way the principles have been applied has been disastrous.  Natural selection was seized upon as the one and only underlying law of our reality – and this seizing was done by individuals with a very particular psychological make-up.  The same kinds of people that become fanatically religious and kill others in the name of their god can – and often do – become adherents of the religion of science.  Psychologist Robert Altemeyer calls them ‘rightwing authoritarians’ and ‘authoritarian followers,’[6] but there are leftwing authoritarians too – labeled ‘political-correctness authoritarians’ in the contemporary literature.

In the nineteenth century, certain discoveries that enhanced technology led to economic and political considerations, and that is when science took the wrong turn because the authoritarian type of individual also has other character traits that include a need to dominate others, as well as a strong tendency to greed.  The pursuit of science thus was taken over by politics, and an army of scientific workers was sought to serve the agendas of what has become known as the military-industrial complex.

Altemeyer points out that the authoritarian follower is quite capable of holding entirely contradictory beliefs, and this is how they are easily controlled by those in positions of power who desire that science serve only their interests.  Over and over again it is seen – in retrospect, of course – that irrational beliefs which are promulgated by authorities who desire to maintain control, and which are believed by the followers who want to be 'good,’ trump true science; and here I mean the mode of scientific cognition, not just 'science' since the so-called Enlightenment.

Over and over again, throughout history, going back even to ancient times, you can note that there were a number of really intelligent free thinkers who made observations, drew useful inferences from those observations, and suggested solutions that were ignored, ridiculed, reviled, buried; and often, the thinker who dared to voice his ideas was destroyed by one means or another because authoritarian followers are also aggressive against anything that is not pronounced to be 'okay' by their leaders.  Most often this destruction was – and is even today – due to power considerations: the individual has an idea that, in some way, threatens the political/social power structure.

The fact is, if you read enough history, you will discover that in war, killing or otherwise neutralizing the intelligentsia first is the aim of all invaders and conquerors because it is through the elimination or suppression of competent thinkers that any oppressive regime takes hold.  This has been done so regularly and extensively throughout history that it staggers the mind to consider it.  What it means, essentially, is that over and over and over again, pathological authoritarians have systematically eliminated from the human population the best and brightest minds, removing their DNA from the human gene pool, and it is ALL of humanity that is suffering the consequences of this loss.  It could very well be that this single strategy is the reason that humanity may indeed be on the verge of extinction right now, as is proposed by a number of eminent thinkers.

The Malthusian Darwinists, of course, will say that it is just 'survival of the fittest.’ I guess that depends on what you understand the 'fittest' to be.  In the animal kingdom, where fitness is measured by strength and power, the ability to wallop the heck out of all rivals to your possession of food and sexual partners, selection of this type might be useful.  But in the human species, where fitness and progress and even survival depend on brain power, killing off all the brainiest people in any given culture can only lead to degradation and devolution of the species as a whole.  And when that species holds in its hands the ability to destroy all life on the planet, well, I think you can see where that kind of selection will lead: a lot of power and not enough brains to know that it ought never to be used.

I would like to invite you to stop and try to imagine what life on Earth might be like if science had actually fulfilled its mandate of explaining our reality, solving the problems of humanity, and teaching us how to best interact with our world and each other.  If science was – today – actually a free exploration of nature and drawing accurate conclusions, creating theories, testing those theories with no hidden agendas, what might it have accomplished up to now?  Can you do it?  Can you think of any area of life that could not be improved by having a truly scientific understanding and clearly described response that was supported and implemented by the social/power structure to the benefit of all of humanity, not just the enrichment of a few?

Oh, you think it has been done?  Think again.  Read the history of science and human social development.  When you see how repeatedly the few individuals who had the right idea were marginalized and/or destroyed, if you have any firing neurons after being born into a humanity which has been genetically manipulated to lower intelligence, you will immediately realize that the same conditions – only worse – prevail today: what the mainstream follows is almost always what is politically expedient to those in power, with only enough truth involved to patch over the obvious tears in the now disintegrating fabric of the mask of science.

If a true, free, intelligent science, supported and encouraged by all of society, had actually been the norm since its inception, not the exception, we would live in a world where our very existence was not a shame to the planet that gave us birth.  We would have free, clean energy.  We would not have vast numbers of human beings living in poverty or starving.  We would have no over-population problems.  Health issues that dominate Western society and are bringing it to its knees would not be a problem because there would be plenty of nourishing food for all.  There would be no wars because scientific anthropology and social psychology would have figured out what is the best of all possible forms of social structure that allows for the widest expression of human types to flourish in harmony.  Children would not be medicated at ever younger ages because cognitive science would have established the best way to rear and educate them, and couples would be able to attend classes on infant care and parenting that were actually effective.  The best forms of education would be known so that the widest variety of options would be available to the varied human types and levels of intelligence and skill so that each individual would progress into a life of satisfaction doing what they really enjoy and are best at doing, and society would benefit by not wasting its most precious resource: human beings.  Consciousness – and non-material spirit – would be understood and the proper reverence for Nature and the Cosmos would be a natural part of the lives of all, and the well-known religious feelings in human beings would be directed toward compassion and empathy, not used by manipulative leaders to incite anger, aggression and death.  Free will, rather than being outright denied in science and philosophy as well as in very real terms politically, would be respected as the sacred principle that it is. In short, humankind would know how to live in harmony not only with each other, but with the world in which they are born.

All of these COULD be the conditions of a world where true science is a valued part of society. It could have been our world.

But that isn't what we have today.  What we have today is the chaos produced by pathological individuals that induces consent from the authoritarian followers.  As I noted above, science took a wrong turn when it was co-opted by power and diverted to the purposes of imperialism and materialistic greed.

The really sad thing is that the authoritarian followers who 'believe in authority' could as easily follow an authority that actually does have their best interests at heart, were such an authority to exist.  I don't think it does anymore: the psychopaths[7] have seen to that, co-opting and corrupting even science, to the core.  As it is, the authoritarian sheep follow and support the very worst of humanity: pathological individuals who gain power by deception and manipulation.  And in the end, as psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski wrote: “Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.”[8]

The moment that Darwin published his Origin of Species in the nineteenth century, an event that marked the culmination of a gradual shift in society from being dominated by religion to what was called 'rational thinking' and science, the authoritarians knew they had their theory of everything: random processes of matter, no consciousness needed.

So, it has been the steady application of materialistic evolutionary thinking that is behind the explanation of the order of the universe that prevails today, which underpins the chaos and disorder we see in a world devoid of information and organization.  There are, undoubtedly, psychopaths in the woodpile here acting as the éminence grise behind science – the thing that controls most of our social constructs and institutions – because we certainly can't say that all scientists, or even most of them, are psychopathic.  The profession itself excludes most psychopaths by virtue of the requirement for superior intellect.  However, it can certainly include a great many members that are authoritarian in personality type and who are under the control of pathological types.  We have seen living examples of this as a result of the COVID scam. 

Looking back at the history – more particularly, the archaeology – we notice how much like the Roman Empire our present civilization actually is.  The Romans were certainly rational and scientific in many respects.  They had factories which produced tableware that has been found at the farthest reaches of the Empire, even in peasant homes.  They had factories that manufactured roof tiles that covered the heads of even the poorest workers and their livestock.  A cache of letters was found in northern Britain where soldiers wrote home to have socks sent to them, which were, apparently, mass produced.  The Roman army was superior because it had standardized equipment, produced in mass quantities at factories located in hubs of the Empire.  Grain, olives, oil, foodstuffs of all kinds, luxury goods, were mass-produced and distributed throughout the Roman world.  Literacy was obviously very widespread, even to the working classes.  There were roads, sanitation systems, haute cuisine; in short, everything that we take for granted as essential to civilization.  The only difference seems to be that we have harnessed sources of power that the Romans did not have, which enables our civilization to aspire to globalization. But in almost every other way, we are exactly like them.  It is only science that has made us bigger and badder, so to say.  And, as the saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  That fall may be the extinction of the human race.

The end of the Roman Empire witnessed horrors and dislocation of a kind I sincerely hope never to have to live through; and it destroyed a complex civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times. Romans before the fall were as certain as we are today that their world would continue forever, substantially unchanged. They were wrong. We would be wise not to repeat their complacency.[9] 

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, in the next post, we'll come back to Davies and proceed with examining 'The Goldilocks Enigma'.  

---

[1] Karl Popper argues this point in some depth; see Karl Popper and John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism (Routledge, 1984).

[2] For a thorough philosophical refutation of materialism in general, see for example Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press, 2012); David Ray Griffin, God Exists But Gawd Does Not: From Evil to New Atheism to Fine-Tuning (Process Century Press, 2016); Bernardo Kastrup, The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality (Iff Books, 2019); Rupert Sheldrake, Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery (Deepak Chopra, 2013).

[3] Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind (Thames & Hudson, 1999).

[4] See, for example, Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (2^nd ed., Free Press, 2006), The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism (Free Press, 2008) and Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution (HarperOne, 2019); David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin (Discovery Institute, 2010); Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2009) and Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2013); Matti Leisola and Jonathan Witt, Heretic: One Scientist's Journey from Darwin to Design (Discovery Institute, 2018); and the references in footnote 10 above.

[5] Florin Gaiseanu, Informational Model of Consciousness: From Philosophic Concepts to an Information Science of Consciousness (Philosophy Study, April 2019, Vol. 9, No. 4, 181-196 )

[6] Robert Altemeyer, The Authoritarians (Cherry Hill Publishing, 2008).

[7] For a discussion on how pathological characters, including psychopaths as an extreme case, can subvert society and power structures, see Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes (Red Pill Press, 2006).

[8] Lobaczewski (2006).

[9] Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 183.

Why? The Purpose of the Universe - Part Nine

Laura Knight-Jadczyk 

In the previous post, we learned that Philip Goff proposes that the fine-tuning of the cosmos indicates that the emergence of life is one of the goals of the universe.  He further proposes that the emergence of rational organisms from particles with agency is also part of the purpose of the universe.  These two pieces of evidence lead him to suggest that we can choose to make ourselves and our world better by achieving the highest state possible for our form of existence and our commitment to that aim – which he identifies as the Aim of the Universe – can transform our ethical situation, i.e. make us ‘good’.  It was at this point in his discussion that he indicated that “true ethics is not about helping your kin alone – the exclusive concern of the Mafia boss – or helping your nation alone – the exclusive concern of the fascist. True ethics is a concern to make reality better.”

Yup.  We are to make reality as good as we possibly can and this goal trumps humanism.  Just to clarify that, at the present time, the term ‘humanism’ generally refers to a ‘focus on human well-being and advocates for human freedom, autonomy, and progress. It views humanity as responsible for the promotion and development of individuals, espouses the equal and inherent dignity of all human beings, and emphasizes a concern for humans in relation to the world.”  

That is, Goff is proposing that we go beyond humanism into, I suppose, transhumanism except that his concern is for ‘the reality’ and not the human beings inhabiting it with their petty family and tribal concerns.  Possibly some transhumanism enters into his concerns, but it seems that he is mainly aimed at Globalism and the agenda of those such as Klaus Schwab and the WEF.  This becomes even more evident with the discussion he opens in his section entitled “Owning and Belonging”.  In this section, he does bring forward a number of thorny social and economic issues.  He notes:

In Europe in 1913, the top 10 per cent owned 89 per cent of all private property, whilst the entire bottom half of society owned just 1 per cent.  

Well, that disposes of 60 per cent of society and 90 per cent of private property, which would leave 40 per cent owning the 10 per cent that is left.  It is a little confusing when he then says:

”…during the 20^th century, a remarkable, and historically unprecedented, transformation took place: a middle class emerged.  That is to say, a significant proportion of the wealth at the top was transferred to the middle 40 per cent between the top 10 per cent and the bottom 50 per cent.  In 2020, this middle group owned about 38 per cent of all property, whilst the share of the elite 10 per cent at the top had significantly come down from 89 per cent to 56 per cent.  The bottom half of society benefited a little but not a lot from this transition: moving up from owning 1 per cent to owning 6 per cent.”

This transition was not due to capitalism, which had already existed for hundreds of years.  It was due to the specific form of capitalism that emerged in the post-war years, which involved democratic control of the market, through active trade unions, strong regulation on the movement of capital, and high taxes on the wealthy. The top marginal rate of income tax in the US between 1932 and 1980 averaged at 81 per cent.  In the UK during the same period, the average of the top rate of tax was 89 per cent.  These taxes did not dampen economic activity. On the contrary, this time was referred to as the ‘global age of capitalism” … high taxes on the wealthy succeeded in making society much more equal without negatively impacting the economy…

…restrained capitalism was abandoned in the Thatcher/Reagan ‘neo-liberal’ revolutions of the early 1980s.  Regulation and taxes on the wealthy were slashed, with the promise of unleashing economic dynamism that would produce wealth that would eventually ‘trickle down’ to the masses.  Instead, we got growing inequality, lower growth, and ultimately the global meltdown of 2008.

Now, I’m not an economist, but I was born in the 50s and was an adult from the 70s onwards.  I know that the term ‘made in China’ or wherever became a household expression starting from the 70s and that was due to the fact that manufacturers were moving their business to out of the US mainly due to the controls touted by Goff above.  It was basically an age of divestment in America so it certainly negatively impacted the economy.  And it was due to this divestment that the Thatcher/Reagan reforms were proposed.  I personally think that ‘trickle down economics’ was something of a scam, but then, consider that Goff above, highlights the year 2020 as being some sort of high water mark for the middle classes?  That was a long time after Thatcher and Reagan. Something is certainly wrong with the picture he is presenting.

I’m also aware that the middle class was present in late feudal societies and that the middle class mainly drove the French Revolution and became the new ruling class.  Things are not as simple as Goff suggests in his brief review of economics. His source for these statistics is Thomas Piketty’s “A Brief History of Equality” (2022).

Piketty has a somewhat checkered career based on the Wikipedia bio about him.  There we read:

Piketty specializes in economic inequality, taking a historic and statistical approach. His work looks at the rate of capital accumulation in relation to economic growth over a two hundred year spread from the nineteenth century to the present. His novel use of tax records enabled him to gather data on the very top economic elite, who had previously been understudied, and to ascertain their rate of accumulation of wealth and how this compared to the rest of society and economy. His 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, relies on economic data going back 250 years to show that an ever-rising concentration of wealth is not self-correcting. To address this problem, he proposes redistribution through a progressive global tax on wealth. […]

In November 2023, Thomas Piketty called for a ban on private jets to fight against climate change and called for a progressive carbon tax in response to a report highlighting the disproportionate amounts of carbon emissions by the richest 1% of people.

Oh boy, a real live WEF acolyte.

Goff continues:

Historically, Western European countries sucked wealth from other nations through military conquest and empire.

True, and it is still a problem.

However, rich countries continue to steal from poorer countries through the more nefarious means of tax havens.  A multinational corporation can profit in, say, Nigeria, but avoid paying tax in Nigeria by shifting profits to a tax haven. 

True enough.  What Goff and other so-called geniuses don’t seem to catch on to is the fact that this would not be the case if taxes were reasonable across the board.

But Goff and others of his ilk are going after the problem in a more dangerous way:

What can be done?  One of the biggest barriers to change is the myth of natural, inviolable property rights.  The wealthy resent the kind of taxes that did so much good in the post-war years, because they feel that the taxes would be taking ‘their money’ off them. In the most extreme version of this sentiment, fans of the 20^th century Russian-born American pop-novelist Ayn Rand declare that ‘taxation is theft,’ at least if it is used for anything more than funding the police to protect property rights.  But even politicians on the centre-left tend to start from the assumption that the need to fund public services or – heaven forbid – redistribute income must be balanced against a concern about the state taking too much of ‘our money.’

The conviction that the money I get in my pay-packet before the deduction of taxes is, in some morally significant sense, ‘min,’ although almost universal, is demonstrably confused.  As we discuss in the appendix of this chapter, ‘P.S. Is Taxation Theft”,’ there is no serious political theory according to which my pre-tax income is ‘mine’ in any morally significant sense.  Nonetheless, the illusion of having a sacred, inviolable right to one’s pre-tax income is hard to shift.  It’s a deep part of our socially conditioned way of seeing reality.  Anyone who has raised children knows how early and with what force they begin to declare ‘Mine!’  This is one reason why the political struggle for justice is inseparable from the spiritual struggle to break our social conditioning.  In our quest for spiritual advancement, we need to see the myth of sacred property rights as part of the enemy we’re battling, both in ourselves and in others.  […]

In the hard copy of Goff’s book that I have, the above mentioned essay “Is Taxation Theft” is at the end of this final chapter.  It is not present in e-book or PDF copies that I also have.  You can, however, read the entire essay online here: Is Taxation Theft?

As I said, I am not an economist and most of what Goff is writing about is outside of my range of knowledge and even interest.  So, I asked for feedback about it on our online forum.  You can read the entire discussion here: Philip Goff Discussion 

Meanwhile, two responses stood out for me and I will include them here.  The first is by forum member ‘Ryan’:  

Goff claims that the morality of natural property rights is conditional upon a society respecting that morality – i.e. the exact moral constructivist argument he claims not to use when he says:

    (Please note, our focus here is specifically on social constructivism about property; we are not considering a more general position according to which morality as a whole is a social construction.)

Goff’s article contains implicit bias. He begins by describing libertarians who hold the notion that taxation is theft as “radical”. He says, “outside of academia”, as if there were “academics” and “everyone else”. He says that the notion is “confused” because it isn’t present in a “serious” political theory, Goff adjudicating what is "serious" political theory, of course. Yet there are many notions, particularly in science and mathematics, that aren’t part of a political theory and yet are completely common sense and justified by airtight reasoning!

He makes a para-logical and para-moral judgement about the notion because:

·       it prevents ‘economic reform’, assuming that the correct ‘reform’ would naturally exclude this notion, and its presence is directly preventing said 'reform'!

·       claims that it’s in the economic interests of those who vote against it, with no evidence, despite that those votes are direct evidence that those voting consider it NOT to be in their economic interests.

·       claims it ‘corrects economic injustices’, as if those ‘injustices’ were self-evident (subjective) and a direct result of that one notion!

His statement that 'theft can be legal, moral, or both', is presupposed on the arbitrary laws of a particular legal system. Different legal systems are based on different laws and customs. Therefore, taxation as a general concept can only be referred to in the moral sense, because only that concept is independent of the arbitrary laws it is being compared with. His dismissal of “legal theft” is also based on circular reasoning: legal theft doesn’t exist because the laws create legal claim! Never mind that the person has to earn the money before it can be taxed, otherwise it’s not income!

Goff claims money is “delivered to you” via the “market”, not earned via agreed exchange! His idea of how people obtain money is a ridiculous abstraction. He then sets up a straw man by bringing up the justification for payment as based on “deserving”, an ambiguous concept, rather than agreement! He then unsurprisingly knocks "deserving" down easily, before setting up another, subtler straw man: "entitlement".

    what you are entitled to is the result of your property rights

A completely meaningless distinction that attempts to shift the reader's focus towards 'rights' that are legally enforced by a central authority, and away from the concept of property obtained through ethical, mutually-agreed exchange.

He then creates arbitrary categories, “Right-wing libertarian; Left-wing libertarian; and social constructivist” and seems unconcerned with possible exceptions. But as we will see, Goff isn't concerned with the philosophical justification of individual theories from first principles.

    it is not possible for one individual to acquire exclusive rights over land or natural resources in a way that excludes the equal moral claims of other citizens.

A side note: this conception of property rights assumes that primacy has no moral value, which may be an incorrect assumption.

    The claims of future generations must also be taken into account, leading naturally to an inheritance tax

It's quite possible to have a “left-wing libertarian” theory of property that excludes this.

    But Left-libertarian theories leave considerable latitude for the state to alter the distribution of wealth, perhaps through taxation, if some take more than their fair share of natural resources.

Goff's use of “taxation” here implicitly contains the idea of forcible seizure - ie. theft, which Goff claims he’s arguing against! And he automatically implies the state is the arbiter of “fair share”.

    The second requirement – the denial of equal rights over the natural world – is particularly implausible, and something I’ve never seen any justification of from Right-wing libertarians.

“I’ve never seen a good argument against it, and I think it’s implausible, so it must be.” Where is his justification FOR equal rights over the natural world, as he demands from the right-wing libertarians about exclusive rights? Again, emotional reasoning and moral bias.

    The reason is that the world that Right-wing libertarianism theorises about is a very different one to the world we live in today.

"RWL'ism isn’t a viable theory because it doesn’t correspond to the 'reality' we live in today."

·       How exactly does the moral argument against taxation not correspond to reality when Goff claims that it prevents economic reform, people are voting based on it, it's causing 'economic injustices', and politicians like David Cameron talk about it in their speeches? Sounds like it's a pretty big part of the "world we live in today" to me.

·       I'm sure Goff's beloved abolitionists heard very similar arguments from slavers in their day. I guess they should have realised they weren't acting ethically because it was "very different to the world they lived in then."

    But this is the case only if the market is perfectly free, ie if the state has no influence on the distribution of wealth. Yet there are very few countries in the world in which this is the case. In almost every country, there is a certain amount of taxation, at least to pay for roads and infrastructure, if not for education and healthcare.

The actuality (or not) of morality in practice does not affect the existence of a moral principle! And yet Goff claims that less than perfect adherence to such principles disproves natural property rights via their own presuppositions! UTTER HORSESHIT.

    In theory, Right-wing libertarianism does entail that people have a moral claim on their pre-tax income, and hence that taxation is theft, but only in hypothetical societies where there is zero or minimal state interference in the economy.

NO, NOT IN HYPOTHETICAL SOCIETIES, BUT AS A PREEXISTENT MORAL PRINCIPLE EVERYWHERE! THAT’S WHAT MORALITY MEANS! Goff comes out of the closet as a totalitarian postmodernist libtard here.

    Even if the most radical forms of Right-wing libertarianism are true, it remains the case that you have no special moral claim on your gross income.

“Even if it’s true, it’s false.”

His whole article is essentially what Lobaczewski called a "paramoralism" - an attempt to justify an incorrect statement via an appeal to morality.  He basically argues backwards from the point he's already determined to reach, and sets up straw men along the way, while studiously ignoring the real crux of the question, which he just declares irrelevant by fiat.

His idea that it is immoral to consider you have a property right to the income you receive is context-independent and applies only to an imaginary world of formalisms. What's more, he completely projects these unconscious presuppositions onto the idea of natural property rights, claiming that they only exist in the imaginary formalism of a 'perfect libertarian utopia'!

The second response that I want to share here brings in other philosophical issues.  This one is written by forum member ‘WhiteMountain’:

I think the big problem here is the guy who wrote this article is a very staunch utilitarian, to the point he cannot even contemplate someone who believes in deontological thought, at least in the field of economics. I felt like tearing apart nearly every paragraph in false assumptions which he did not even take 2 seconds to question himself. I am a huge fan of Locke, and I have massive libertarian tendencies. That being said, I also think that anarcho-capitalists are highly naive in many respects at the same time.

Deontology is basically the philosophy best illustrated by Kant that basically says you treat PEOPLE AS THE ENDS and NOT A MEANS TO AN END. It is in this spirit, although it is more often couched in religious statements on "God Given rights" that naturally predominated at the time, that Locke's and other natural rights philosophies are in the same spirit as. Utilitarians like John Stuart Mill basically argue the MEANS JUSTIFIES THE ENDS for the most part - society and governments are justified in doing whatever is necessary to optimize the collective utility functions of society as a whole. And clearly that is where the author is coming from economically. Then there is sort of the hybrid called "rule consequentialism," that I hold to, that basically says that you treat people as the ends not arbitrarily but because it actually leads to better ends the utilitarians want in the first place. More on that later.

But from a deontological point of view, as pure anarchists will point out, all government is immoral. And that is for the most part provable. So when he says "But this is the case only if the market is perfectly free, ie if the state has no influence on the distribution of wealth," yes that is exactly what a lot of these people believe. The problem is that the world does not exist in a vacuum. If there was no government, in the anarchy people like Jeff Berwick long for, most likely some group of thugs would appoint themselves through some "social contract" that they only signed as leaders and oppress people. Maybe someday we can get to a point we have private institutions form a moral anarchistic society as many write about; I am HIGHLY SKEPTICAL about that as there are numerous issues that arise. I think people with common sense will agree with me on that one.

But when you start from the perspective that all government is inherently immoral, violating fundamental tenets of the nonviolence principle, the question that the libertarian philosophers are making it how to you make it the "least immoral" possible. The least violence via takings like theft. And that is where it actually resonated with most people. That gets back to my primary point - this is really more about a deontological worldview where individuals have rights not to be treated as means to an end giving rise to rights like freedom of speech in addition to the least amount of taxation necessary to maintain a state versus a utilitarian worldview where bureaucrats can do whatever they want as long as THEY DETERMINE the best outcome for society. And generally it will be psychopaths determining that...

When he claims stuff like "Your gross, or pre-tax income, is the money the market delivers to you" again he makes a completely unfounded assumption. Technically under income tax laws, ANYTHING you produce can be taxed by the government. A person who grows simple crops for his family is not involved in the market AT ALL. The market is not delivering ANYTHING to these people. It is then the government that artificially puts a price on those goods and taxes it (if they could spy enough to enforce it - thus they want drones everywhere ). BTW see Wickard v. Filburn in the US where the government went after a guy for growing too much wheat under New Deal artificial restrictions even though he was only growing the wheat to feed his own animals. The government literally argued it was "interstate commerce" even though he was feeding animals on the farm and no money changed hands and the corrupt Supreme Court rubber stamped it...so the government when given the opportunity will interfere with personal property not even related to commerce and calling it commerce!

There is a reason utilitarian thinking is bad and deontology and the respect for "natural rights" (whether you believe they are God given or not) matters is that there is a fundamental uncertainty in life. You never know the second, third, fourth, fifth order consequences of an action. But you KNOW the first order consequences - stealing from someone, killing them, etc. with 100% certainty. For that reason deontological actions over time will produce the best societal results. And this is how you do not have to be a social-constructivist so "property rights are made to serve human interests and not vice versa" The principle of not stealing itself serves a definite human interest the author does not seem to recognize. You might steal money from person A and give to person B thinking you are benefiting them. Maybe it does short term, but over the long term the person becomes dependent and purposeless in life as happens with many welfare programs. You don't know...but in all cases you have taken from the first person and possibly incentivized them to be less productive as well.

"this confused assumption is a major stumbling block to economic reform, causes low and middle earners to vote against their economic interests, and renders it practically impossible to correct the economic injustices that pervade the modern world."

Again this is a false assumption. In many cases keeping more of one's income IS in their best interests. I can keep it or send it to the Ukraine and kill more people for "the greater good"? Even if you have the best of intentions you will not know the outcome, and I can present tons of economic examples. But I would argue it is easy to correct economic injustices within a deontological framework because MOST of the injustices are due to utilitarian policies that could be eliminated!

For example, patents on pharmaceuticals are GOVERNMENT LAWS for the "common good." Not really...more like corporate enrichment so patients can be charge $15k a month for $0.10 pills. A deontologically free market WITHOUT this artificial construct of intellectual property would mean competitive pricing would make medical care more affordable. And it also means that natural supplements would be MORE LIKELY than artificial chemicals to be the subject of rigorous clinical research! And it is not like we ever needed patents for inventions like the wheel or the Welch longbow to be adopted in the past. Patents interfere with the deontological order and hurt the common good, not helping it.

How about corporations? Corporations are the greatest instrument of wealth inequality ever created, and they were created by governments using utilitarian arguments. Now there are also some pretty compelling arguments, but if you are going to have GOVERNMENT CREATED ENTITIES that limit liability so Pfizer could injure the world with vaccines and pay at most a fraction of the damages (even without the laws on vaccine immunity, only the total capital of the company would be at risk, not enough to compensate the world for the damages), then by God you BETTER HAVE LAWS TO STRIP THEM OF THE MORAL HAZARDS. That means you are MORALLY JUSTIFIED in stricter regulation and GREATER TAXATION on them since they are not real people. Most libertarian minded people (but not all) get this wrong. They think corporations and patents are all about "free market capitalism" and benefit society.

I think one of the best policies we could adopt would be to replace the individual income tax with a CORPORATE ENTERPRISE VALUE TAX on publicly traded corporations. The income tax is EASY TO LEGALLY AVOID. I can point to people earning 8 figure incomes in CASH INCOME publicly bragging they do not pay income tax at all (reporting NEGATIVE accounting losses), and even get refunds. And enterprise value tax is simple and cannot be evaded - simply take the volume weighted price for the period of the stock and debt of the company and add it together to get the enterprise value. Then tax that. It could even be a graduated tax to incentivize smaller corporations, not these unaccountable vertically integrated behemoths so we get real competition. But since the tax is aligned with what most managers try to optimize for, it could not be evaded and the more a company benefits from its structure, the more it pays. It is a completely moral tax as well because the government can tax morally what it created. People have the option of not incorporating if they do not like it. But taking a company public results in many times greater wealth through liquidity premiums. They are given the freedom to choose, which is what natural rights are all about.

I could go on, but I think people get the idea. Generally speaking it is better to tax / steal less (because you otherwise get more problems) and if you are going to tax, tax based on the benefit that is directly received from the government arrangement. In that case taxation is not theft, it is a fee for a service voluntarily given up when you sign up for that service. If you don't want to pay property tax, don't register your property, but don't expect the government to come out and protect it when some squatters try to settle down in it :).

Goff makes a point of saying someone who cures cancer deserves more than, for example, a hedge fund manager. But again, think of how you as a utilitarian matter of public policy make that happen. PATENTS were done precisely for that reason!

So companies like Genentech with cancer treatments (and that is what you get instead of CURES when the patent is the vehicle) that made billions of dollars, well more than most head fund managers (while making a bunch of hedge fund managers rich along the way- the guy seems to forget that hedge fund managers often fund this research through their investors). But at the same time, for them to make so much money they use the patents to charge extreme amounts of money as I laid out earlier, which BOOMERANG to the people with cancer who cannot afford the treatment, or the taxpayers who pay out tons of money. And he might argue that is fine because you would not have had the cure without it. He might argue taxpayers are lucky to pay out $15k a month for treatments that would not have otherwise existed. Others like Bill Gates might argue society is better off letting these people die (another utilitarian argument in the guise of population control).

Again, I beg to differ on whether the treatment might exist or not. Because as mentioned above, you are going to incentivize the wrong types of treatments. Symptoms instead of cures. Proprietary medicines with more side effects versus natural treatments with little side effects. There could be certainly better ways of incentivizing treatments than patents. But it is a natural though upfront. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. But we have had 100 years experience that shows us the negative consequences of the abuse of the government interference in the market to let us know otherwise.

And so we now know without a shadow of a doubt what Goff’s book was really about: he decided to write a philosophical treatise to underpin the machinations of an oncoming totalitarian world government. The effort was mostly bricolage, not very deep, and yet, certainly, it has captured the minds of many readers and students who are looking for easy answers to very complex problems. Toward the end of the book he writes:

…I wonder whether a mass encounter with the living presence in all things, brought about through widespread safe and legal use of psilocybin, might be the only way to combat the ongoing commodification of nature which is launching us headlong into climate catastrophe.  Here again, spiritual advancement and political progress could go hand in hand. 

And we see that he is trying to make Left/Liberal ideas seem spiritual thereby turning it into a religion. He adds at the very end:

We can only ignore the evidence of cosmological fine-tuning for so long. … A radical change in how we see the universe is on its way.

At the same time, we are living through a scary, uncertain era.  Nothing has filled the vacuum left by the decline of traditional religion.  …no political philosophy has come along to replace neo-liberalism. 

My hope is that cosmic purposivism may point the way to a new optimism in human potential, a faith based not on dogmatic certainties but on a humble and open exploration of an unfolding purpose we don’t yet fully understand. … We have every reason to feel optimistic about the future.

I think Goff has good intentions and is – to whatever degree he is capable – sincere.  But his tendency to see human reality in such a simplistic manner can only lead to bad results. He believes he has found a simple solution to fix things and his writing style indicates that his aim is to impose his own conceptual world view on others, barely hiding his egotism.  He informs us at least 3 or more times in the book that he is a philosopher and he is trained to think and one can infer that others should not try this (thinking) at home, more or less.  His ideas are over-simplified and devoid of psychological color, based as they are on easily available data and material published by others.  He appears to be attempting to recast these into an active propaganda for political purposes.  But, in the end, the book did not answer the question posed as the title.  Not even close.

Sorry, Goff.  No cigar and the fat lady isn’t singing.