INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST http://www.integralworld.net Newsletter Nr. 722 Amsterdam, July 8th, 2018 THE ‘LOOPHOLES’ OF NEO-DARWINIAN THEORY - Why Ken Wilber's Desperate Attempts to Refute Darwinism Fail Miserably - FRANK VISSER As has been documented on this website many times, Ken Wilber's stance on the evolution/creation debate is: creationists point out "glaring" problems with Darwinism but fail to provide a believable alternative. His own Integral Theory, which postulates an Eros in the Kosmos—a driver for complexity and consciousness—supposedly does a better job. Also, I have mentioned on many occasions that creationists at least take the trouble to build their case with detailed accounts of biochemical or genetic processes. Wilber doesn't care about such details. He is content to conclude that these fundamentalists have done the dirty work for him, after which he can discard their backward religiosity so he can advance his more sophisticated, mystical view of the cosmos. But do creationists have a case at all, when it comes to the supposed "loopholes" of Darwinism? Shouldn't this be analyzed at least in a book length treatment, instead of through integral sound bites and slogans? I have pointed out many times that given the centrality of the metaphor of evolution within the integral body of knowledge, one would expect Wilber to carefully lay the foundation of this integral edifice, by deeply engaging with the various Darwinist authors and researchers to make his point. That, however, has never happened, in the four decades that he has produced his works. What if the strategy of creationists fails? How will that reflect on the credibility of integral theory and its vast vistas of cosmic and terrestrial evolution? Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/visser120.html VISUAL FORESIGHT AND THE DELPHIC ORACLE - KELLY LANE Technologically speaking, we are creating our own version of the Oracle of Delphi. But this time we are not relying on outdated mythological beliefs or superstitious thinking. Instead of invoking magical incantations (or succumbing to misunderstood gaseous fumes), we are designing elaborate software programs that have the ability to allow machines to learn autonomously and then analyze tomorrow's outcomes today. Science, in other words, is taking the promise of Pythia and making it a reality in machine hardware. This can and will occur because artificial intelligence (unlike our own) can evolve at an ever-accelerating rate. Vestri is merely the forerunner of a new kind of Oracle, one which is algorithmically programmed and which can access enormous amounts of data worldwide and (on the mathematical basis of game theory) divine what the Greek gods of yesteryear, such as Apollo, could not. This book is richly illustrated in color. Written by Kelly Lane, a twelve-year-old middle school student, whose first book, When Computers Become Human, was published by the MSAC Philosophy Group when he was eleven and has subsequently been translated in Mandarin and published in China. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/klane2.html