Gordon White on Skeptiko

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I know a lot of philosophic questions about religion keep getting rattled around here. I'm a fan of the way Gordon's willing to come forth as a proponent of chaos magic as well as being a very articular and well-read spokesman for it but I also think he really did a good job of schooling Alex Tsakiris on a lot of the assumptions he seems to be throwing out there about the fundamentals of the universe, particularly the question of morality and a lot of the Manichean/Zoroastrian type baggage that he may or may not have known he was bringing to table. I also got a kick out of Gordon sort of bringing Joseph Atwill's Caesar's Messiah down to size with the comment that yes, he found a hammer but then proceeded to see the whole bible as a nail.

http://skeptiko.com/gordon-white-pieces ... e-day-333/

One of the things I find myself persistently disagreeing with Gordon on, albeit I think it's a subtle point, is that I don't think we're giving panpsychism a fair shake if we just assume it's a fudge figure to keep reductive materialism on the plate. Considering my own experiences with this stuff and how much it cleaves to mind without noticeable direct effects on matter, I'd have to argue that consciousness is the intrinsic side of matter, that at its roots panpsychism is sort of right and that consciousness seems to stay within it to some degree, but in a very holographic kind of way to where some combination of functionalism and ontological structural realism (ie. the scientific way of saying 'Indra's Net') is closer to it. To say animism over panpsychism might be a certain kind of political antidote, particularly if you see panpsychism as a predominantly post-materialist land grab to keep materialism afloat, but I'm somewhat forced to see it as something like a political distinction without an effective or actual difference.

Edit:
The other thing I'd add - Alex is really annoying through the end of this. He keeps pounding on Gordon about Alexandria when, TBH, he's not quite getting that he's making a sociology/anthropology point rather than a 'woah they were advanced!' point. No, they were just at a particular time, place, and location where a bunch of influences and freedoms to follow them came together before it was really as practical anywhere else. If it wouldn't have been Alexandria it would have been more predominant somewhere else and the same argument could be shifted out that way.