From: ScienceAndSpirit (rjon@vzavenue.net)
Date: July 19, 2005 10:42:19 AM PDT
To: rjon@vzavenue.net
Subject: Re: Question about challenging the materialist view of the evolution of consciousness
Reply-To: postaum2005@sriaurobindocenter-la.com

(Discussion List Post-AUM 2005): Replying to this email will send it to all members of the Post-AUM list.

Hi Don,

You ask:

Our
major questions: Specifically, in what we write about evolution or
quantum physics, did we make any scientific errors? And generally
speaking, does the flow of thought in this section make sense? Is there
anything else we can do to distinguish what we write here from
"Intelligent Design"?

Re the quantum physics part of your question, here's a couple of researchers I'd recommend checking out:

1)
*The Quantum Brain* by Jefferey Satinover. - Satinover is a
psychiatrist, neurologist, Jungian Psychoanalyst, and Ph.D. in
condensed matter physics, specializing in superfluids and Bose-Einstein
condensates. - George Gilder says TQB is "The best book I have read in
over ten years." - www.satinover.com/qbrain.htm

2) The
collaborative work of Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, M.D. -
Penrose is a well known mathematical physicist at Oxford doing
fundamental work in quantum gravity.

- Hameroff is a research
physician (specialty is anesthesiology) at the University of Arizona at
Tucson, and the Co-Director of the U. of A.'s Center for Consciousness
Studies. - Hameroff and Penrose have written many papers about the
relationship between the fundamental properties of reality and human
consciousness, via proposed quantum processes within tiny microtubules
inside the brain's neurons. [The "mind of the cells?"] - Their
perspective is that mathematical truths and values like truth, beauty,
harmony, and goodness exist as inherent, non-reducible characteristics
of reality. Penrose has done sophisticated mathematics implying that
these "proto-conscious qualia could be fundamental properties of
space-time geometry." He suggests that these "Platonic values" exist at
the infinitesimal Planck scale (10^-33 cm, 10^-43 seconds), where
space-time itself becomes quantized.

- www.quantumconsciousness.org/

In
my next posts I'll address the metaphysical positions of these
researchers and distinctions from 'Intelligent Design' and the
'materialistic view of the evolution of consciousness.'

Namaste,

~ ron