The laws of nature, natural law, and the Theoevolutionary Church

The laws of nature understood through intuition with reason are defined as the natural law. Intuitive faith does not contradict high reason, it transcends reason. As Huston Smith put it, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.

The laws of nature can be called the highest reason.

Justice and the laws of the state best work in harmony with the laws of nature, discerned as the natural law, however imperfect we are at discerning and applying them.

Religion too must work in harmony with the laws of nature, which are the divine laws, originating long before the written laws of man.

Evolution works according to the highest reason in the laws of nature, which are being discerned through intuition with reason. The Inward and Outward Paths of the Theoevolutionary Church based in theological materialism attempts to work in harmony with the laws of nature and the natural law.

Past, Present, Future in Revitalized-Conservatism

Arcadians seem only concerned with the past. Metropolitans seem only concerned with the present. Utopians seem only concerned with the future. Revitalized-Conservatism considers the past, present, and future as a whole, evolving toward Godhood.

More Contra Wilber

Stages of Consciousness are Involutionary

Ken Wilbur's six stages of consciousness are not best described as “evolutionary,” they are more involutionary when experiencing them as stages. And they are not really a hierarchy, they are simply human consciousness. We do not “transcend” these stages as we develop, just as we don't really transcend the body in higher consciousness, they remain essentially undifferentiated. We “transcend” only when we evolve to new species.

The first womb-state of consciousness is only a very small difference from the later ego state. A human is a human and not a God, though we have traces of God within us. Even the highest human consciousness is not “transhuman,” and is barely a baby consciousness when compared to God's consciousness.

Knowledge Doesn't Free us From the Material

With language and knowledge we do not “control” the world and we are not “free” from being molded by the environment. We merely manipulate the same concrete world. Evolution works upon matter but does not free matter, not until we evolve to Godhood, and even then we are not so much “free” as transmuted into the highest matter possible.

The Concrete is Not Bondage

Contrary to Wilbur, the development of language did not bring “release” from the “bondage” of the concrete world—why is the concrete world “bondage”? Release from the concrete world can only come through biological evolution to Godhood. Language separated us from the reality of the world when we began to use symbols rather than applying the thing itself. Contrary to Wilbur, language does not enable the human mind to span both space and time, it is not a “liberation” from the body, language is only a concrete copy within the concrete mind.

This Gnostic hating of the material World is a mistaken notion in religion which is continued by Wilbur. God is both concrete, or material, and spiritual, as we are, although the Trinity is the Zenith of evolved life.

The Materialistic Unconscious

Contrary to Wilbur, there is not a real difference between the pre-logical state of consciousness and the so-called “transmental.” It seems that Wilbur wishes to describe these states as only profoundly analogous to save his version of religion from being more than Jung's view of a materialistic unconscious.

Of the six levels of Wilbur's consciousness, the first, the Uroboric, is described as the bliss of At-One-Ness with Nature, reflecting the child floating in the amniotic fluid. But there is virtually no difference between the bliss of At-One-Ness experienced by mystics and the Uroboric. The Soul and Spirit lie still deeper within the activating heart of life itself, long before this unconscious-conscious experience of the child in the womb. This is not a transmental state, this is a material state.

To attain true Godhood, which is only glimpsed Wilbur's way in deep meditation, we must evolve biologically, all the way to Godhood. Here the true “transhuman” exists, along with transhuman consciousness, and not before.

Toward A Declaration Of Revitalized-Conservatism

We believe it is the duty of man to try to understand the ways of nature, and when an entrenched order ceases to, or never has, harmonized with biological laws, the laws of nature, and divine law, it is our moral duty to object and revitalize the law. But we feel it is our duty to revitalize as conservatives not as radicals.

We seek to revitalize church and state so that they are more in harmony with natural laws as understood since the discoveries of evolution. We understand that the laws of nature are not a written code and that a tension exists between virtues and the realities of nature and power, we can only refer to the laws of nature approximatety, therefore we are Revitalized-Conservatives not revolutionaries. Like Burke we prefer to think of “reform” as the opposite of “change” or “innovation,” but we prefer the term revitalize.

We feel it is our duty to harmonize and adapt the laws of church and state to the laws of nature and the science of evolution. Traditional religion, that is, chiefly the Involutionary Inward Path, and Beyondism, chiefly the Evolutionary Outward Path, require each other for a Revitalized-Conservatism. We believe that we cannot reach Godhood without this revitalization.

"All men, if you only go back to their beginnings, have the gods for their fathers." (Seneca)

The transpersonal is still prepersonal, yet is biologically beyond as well

Carl Jung has been charged, by Ken Wilber and others, with confusing the personal subconscious mind with the “superconscious” mind. The “collective unconscious,” where Jung discovered archetypes existing, contains what we might call the God-archetype, and here is where the Wilber types are fearful of admitting that God remains there in the personal subconscious. They want God to be more than this, (indeed God is more than this, biologically) so they expand the God archetype to exist outside and beyond the personal subconscious, but outside biology itself. Yet the transpersonal God they define is still the prepersonal God of Jung.

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) takes a different perspective. The God archetype is not exactly free from the body even though it appears similar in different life forms, much as the father's genes are similar in his offspring; God is implicit in all explicit life forms. We can discover the God-archetype within, which is prepersonal, but we must evolve biologically to that Godhood we can see (with effort) inwardly.

Traditional religion involves seeing more or less the same God Jung imagined in the subconscious, using various methods of prayer and meditation, but we cannot reduce God to this experience of the God within. However, unlike Wilber's view, reaching the God within is defined in ECC as the Involutionary Inward Path, which we do pursue. But to reach the Real God, Who is only partially (though blissfully) seen as the God within, we must apply the Evolutionary Outward Path, to evolve biologically and bio-spiritually to Godhood.

This fear of biological evolution in new age religion seems to stem from fear of the idea of future biological evolution, which has been politically incorrect at least since evolutionary theory was made evil by the political study of eugenics. Fear of biology in old age religion was not so much fear as the lack of knowledge of evolution. But truth requires courage.

Natural and Divine Law Redefined

Moving forward from the Greeks, the theological materialism defines natural law as not fully distinguished from the laws of nature. Cicero wrote that “True law is right reason in agreement with Nature,” and over the ages we have learned more of nature than we once knew. The former definition of natural law as prescribed by an authority superior to the political state, a law of divine commandment, from God, can now be seen in the evolution of nature to Godhood, with no separation.

Bringing our "Souls" and the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood in harmony with the divine order does not really mean moving outside of nature, it means bringing ourselves in harmony with evolution, which can then lead to Godhood. Godhood is the zenith and culmination of nature and evolution.

Russell Kirk pointed out that the scientific theories of Plato and Aristotle have continually been supplanted by modern science yet their ethics, politics and metaphysics have not been, at least not for conservatives. Perhaps it is due time to do so. Metaphysically there is no real dividing line between biology, the individual, the group, politics, ethics and science.

The Golden Mean

The Golden Mean in evolutionary political and culture form.

The old Greek formula of “nothing to excess,” or the Golden Mean, can be pursued in the evolutionary format. We evolve best within this conservative dynamic. Radical excesses and extremes rarely work well. Catholic virtues can work in harmony with Beyondist ethics, both are needed in conservative evolution.

Reforming Plato and Aristotle

Harmonizing religion and science in nature

Plato distinguished a difference between the laws of nature and the laws of God. The Sophist's declared that justice comes from following nature. Plato countered that justice comes from obeying the nomos, divine law, divine tradition. Theological materialism combines these views saying that by following the laws of nature we evolve to the nomos, to Godhood, but nomos is only a definition of Godhood. This combines religion and science.

Aristotle suggests to us, however, that we should evolve prudently, along the Golden Mean, between the traditions of both religion and science. City-states can still affirmed in the form of thousands of "ethnostates," lightly guided by subsidiarity, or federalism. As Aristotle might have predicted, perhaps we need a guiding (not ruling) national religion.

It is said that Aristotle's Ethics, Politics and Metaphysics lived on but his science was supplanted by modern science. Perhaps it is time now to update Aristotle's ethics and politics with theological materialism and modern science.

Choosing the future

“There is no law of physics preventing many of science fictions most imaginary devices,” said Michio Kaku. But there can be religious laws picking and choosing—not outright rejecting future imaginary devices, or science.

Development of national and individual aspects of religion

Early prophets addressed and affirmed a national God for the people. Then as their people were conquered (eg. the Hebrews) the new prophets began to affirm a personal, individual aspect of God, where national concerns would be less necessary. We would call these the Outward and Inward Paths of religion.

the Evolutionary Christian Church once again affirms a “national,” Outward Path, along with the Inward Path, in the form of thousands of independent “ethnostates” upon the earth, with each little state evolving its people to Godhood, seeing God both Inwardly and Outwardly, yet within an interdependent world. For example, as Cattell expressed it, a man's ethical loyalty to his own group exceeds that to members of "mankind" generally, however, circumstances put emphasis on the primary survival of all groups, if the total existence of man is threatened. We are all evolving to Godhood.

On Scientists

Along with a religious upbringing I was taught to believe that science was virtually God, the only source of unbiased truth. What caused me to lose faith in science (there's a phrase for you) was when a majority of scientists attempted to wriggle away from the biological aspects of social behavior. This made it very difficult for a non-specialist to find unbiased reporting in fields such as anthropology, archeology, linguistics, history, political science, etc.

I continue to think that science holds a vital place, but mainly because of this bias against sociobiology I remain skeptical of scientists. Perhaps this was a good thing, science alone has not been enough to describe the truth.

Solving Nietzsche's Dilemma

God is more alive in the East and Middle East because science has been slowly killing God in the West, and has, at least until recently, been less so in the East. Nietzsche even declared that “God is dead,” which he said was killing all shared belief in the West. Now that God is Dead, Nietzsche asked, where could morality reside?

Nietzsche's answer was that only a “Superman” could create values within this world of lost values, otherwise all would be Nihilism. It was “the Will to Power” of the Superman who would be the creator of new morality, as it had always been beneath the surface.

In completely giving up the old values for new values, Nietzsche's view was far too radical. Rather than a) throwing out religion and replacing it with science, which was happening in the West, b) keeping fundamentalist religion and throwing out everything else, c) throwing out both science and religion and creating new values of Supermen, as Nietzsche advocated, d) throwing out all values and becoming a Nihilist... it is better to...e) retain both science and religion, which theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church has done.

The Traditional religious God is seen in the Involutionary Inward Path, the scientific God is, or will be, revealed in the Evolutionary Outward Path. The Will To Power is more the the Spirit-Will Within, (Will To Godhood) activating material-spiritual evolution to Godhood. This is a new yet Revitalized-Conservative response to all of the above: to Nietzsche's dilemma, to science, to fundamentalist religion, and to modern Nihilism.

Synthesizing Science and Religion

Science doesn't accept anything unless it is verifiable through positivist methods, and religion accepts things obtained through direct knowledge, not verifiable through science. The Evolutionary Christian Church accepts both kinds of knowledge, scientific and religious, both fields must eventually meet and synthesize.

Civilizing Differences

Instead of complaining and trying to legislate against “sexism” and “racism,” which after all, are deeply genetic within basic human nature ( eg. see sociobiology), it seems better to think of civilizing the differences between gender and race. For example, a Gentleman treats all races of men and women in a chivalrous Christian manner. This is the fair, just, and realistic way to improve behavior between sexes and races.

Civilizing Nietzsche

The “slave morality,” which values submissiveness, benevolence, humility, patience etc. does relate to the Inward Path of theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church, which seeks to know the God-Within by way of the Soul and Spirit Within.

The “master morality,” which values pride, assertiveness, affirmation of life, aristocracy etc. relates to the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood.

To split these, as Nietzsche did, into warring factions makes both men and society incomplete. We need both to evolve to Godhood.  This is the Twofold Path.

Contra Plato

In the West Plato seems to have promoted the idea that the material is less, or the material is an imperfect copy of abstract numbers and concepts, which have an independent existence.

God has a mind and body but is a meta-mind and meta-body, usually described as spiritual. I  describe It as Materiaspiritus or material/supermaterial.. The material world evolves to Godhood which is the zenith of material evolution but also the zenith of abstract numbers and concepts that may merely define Godhood..

Less evolved materiality does not make the material evil, it is simply less evolved. How can the material be evil when it is the ingredient out of which we evolve to Godhood?

Conservatism Compared With Evolution

If we look at how the brain evolved we can compare it to how Conservatism evolved. The brain is a collection of spare parts, (see Kluges.) Evolution tinkers with what is already there. So does Conservatism. In evolution it is not so much the “survival of the fittest” as the “fittest of the available options.” Evolution and Conservatism work with what they have, they can't really step back and ask what is the very best option. The best option is the Conservative option.