The separation between the material and the spiritual was a big metaphysical error

 Russell Kirk (The Conservative Mind):

“A Purpose, a Will, emanates from God; this Will has created our humanity and guides us now in ways beyond our understanding, toward ends which even our reason cannot make out clearly. Providence acts through the instincts and intuitions of our feeble flesh. This being so, the man who takes the materialist, the mechanist, and the Utilitarian for his preceptors in the ends of life is a forlorn fool” – who facilitates rule by demagogues, I would ad.”

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Albert Einstein said “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”

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Those statements affirm the Great Spiritual Blockade of the revealed religions which has enshrouded the material evolution of life to ascending levels of real Godhood for thousands of years. This has not stopped evolution, which moves inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements---it is a pattern with a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward higher and higher more effective living forms, all the way toward ascending levels of Godhood.

The separation between the material and the spiritual was a big metaphysical error. There need not be that tension between the material and the spiritual just as there need not be tension between religion, science, and the political.

The evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood brings back the ideals of life and living, heroism, cultivating wisdom, strength, beauty, health, kinship and ethnic bonds, and harmony with life and nature; natural instincts can then be religiously appreciated and seen as vital because we evolve to Godhood by way of material evolution and successful survival and reproduction.

Theological materialism affirms an ordered, rational, material, evolution to supermaterial Godhood. We can attain real Godhood and affirm real religion, but it is a supermaterial Godhood evolved to in the material world---and religion, science, and the political, can aid us in that sacred goal.

Why the “fallen nature of man” was an evil idea

The “fallen nature of man” was an evil idea put in place to explain why the natural human material tendencies don't conform to the religious spiritual definition of man, and to hold in check those natural tendencies.

Contrary to the Traditionalist school it is the idea of Maya that is mistaken, which says that the material world is an unreal illusion and the spiritual world is real, when it is the material world that is real; the spiritual “God” is only inwardly and materially experienced as bliss when all the desires are gotten rid of by the ascetics. 

In 413 Augustine said there is a material city of man and spiritual city of God and Christians were not of this world, which thereafter brought a tension to Western Christianity between church and state. Monastic loving Augustine was thinking more like Christ, just as Christ resembled Buddha, who believed that material desires are hell and the religious path is to rid the body of all material desires, that was the way to see or experience the bliss of nirvana, which Christ called the God Within.

The material evolution of life toward real Godhood shows the contrast between the Outward Path evolution of life and the Inward Path of sacrifice, renunciation, asceticism, fasting etc. designed to reject the drives and desires of material life mainly so as to experience the beatific vision, which like nirvana is a peak material experience brought on by severe ascetic restrictions.

The separation between the material and the spiritual in all the revealed religions was a big metaphysical error, which set up a great spiritual blockade against the material and supermaterial evolution of life to ascending levels of real supermaterial Godhood.

There need not be that tension between the material and the spiritual just as there need not be tension between religion and science and the political. A better more real and more natural formula is to follow the biological origin of social behavior.

The evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood brings back the ideals of life and living, heroism, cultivating wisdom, strength, beauty, health, kinship and ethnic bonds, harmony with life and nature; natural instincts can then be religiously appreciated and seen as vital because we evolve to Godhood by way of material evolution and successful survival and reproduction, which now can be aided by the genetic sciences.

The deep degrading of material life brought on by the church defining God as non-material and spiritual

The root of sexual abuse in the church, the sexual molestation of minors, etc., which the church itself considers a mortal sin, ultimately comes from the deepest degrading of material life brought on by the church defining God as non-material and spiritual. The celibacy of priests derives from the same degrading of material life. In his study of the Vatican, journalist Frederic Martel said that up to 80 percent of the clergy at Vatican City are homosexuals, though not all of them are active. And the Vatican thinks that this plague can only be eradicated with more spiritual weapons!

The biggest tragedy that comes from the degrading of material life and the spiritual definition of God is that it sets up a Great Spiritual Blockade against material life evolving to real supermaterial Godhood.

The material evolution of life toward Godhood shows the contrast between the Outward Path evolution of life and the Inward Path of sacrifice, renunciation, asceticism, fasting etc. designed to reject the drives and desires of material life mainly so as to experience the beatific vision, which like nirvana is a peak material experience brought on by severe ascetic restrictions. There is massive metaphysical irony in the church being against the abortion of babies while in its deepest theology degrading the material world and defining God as non-material and spiritual.

The evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood brings back the ideals of life and living, heroism, cultivating wisdom, strength, beauty, health, kinship, ethnic bonds, and harmony with life and nature; the instincts of sex and reproduction can again be religiously vital and appreciated because we evolve to Godhood only by way of material evolution and successful survival and reproduction, which now can be aided by the genetic sciences.

But for conservatives we can in the Twofold Path retain that old Inward Path to the God within as the first imperfect glimpse of Godhood wrongly defined as spiritual, which has blocked the evolutionary path to real supermaterial Godhood in the Outward Path.

Bringing material beauty back to religion (from the archive)

The highest possible degree of the spirituality in Traditionalism leads to the decline of the material body due to the Great Spiritual Blockade. But the Half-Truth of the Inward Path can join the Half-Truth of the Outward Path to end the spiritual blockade of the Outward Path of material evolution toward Godhood. We can bring Eros, survival, and reproduction back to the sacred, after it has been largely exiled by Traditionalism due to its materialistic content which is considered inferior.

The sacred essence of survival and reproduction is the activating thirst for heavenly beauty which can be reached in the Outward Path of material evolution toward Godhood. When this Sacred Goal of Eros is missing, sex and reproduction can be defined as profane. “Eros with ethics” was the way someone defined advanced Paganism but this was lost in the spiritual abstractions of the Inward Path of the revealed religions. 

 
Sacred Art follows the thirst for heavenly beauty, whereas profane art does not. The activation of material life within, Tirips, helps activate the thirst for the beauty without. Traditionalism tends to see and define only the recalling of the inner path, making an idol of the Soul Within; Traditionalism then puts up a Great Spiritual Blockade against the thirst for material beauty which reaches its zenith in supermaterial Godhood.

Life need not be thought of as “sinking” to scientific rationalism any more than it should sink to spiritualism. Both have been idol-worshiping at one time or another. Traditionalism made an idol of the Soul Within even as it virtually rejected the earth and the material world by calling these things idol worship. Godhood is an evolved sacred material object in the world, not merely an equation outside the world defined as non-material Perfect Truth.

Traditionalism gave us hubristic authority beyond the material world, beyond the stars, and Traditionalism continues to supplant astronomy and biology with the exclusivity of the spiritual Inward Path. But life and beauty can be religiously exhumed from this material neglect.

The Inner God is the Outer God we must evolve to. The Order of the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood brings Eros back, reproduction and evolution to Godhood can be affirmed.

Would this view of art and religion have given aid to Nietzsche?

Why theological materialism doesn't have to venture into spiritualism

Materialism doesn't have to venture into spiritualism, materialism covers all the forms of matter all the way to Godhood. Matter is convertible into energy or light (photons or atoms of light), the same matter can change from solid to liquid to gas. The beginning world-cosmos originally can have been in the material form of vibrating atoms of light, then as the world cooled the forms of matter changed to their other forms of matter and those various forms of matter interacted and selected in evolutionary ways, eventually evolving us. Matter evolved to be materially activated from within toward metabolism, growth, reproduction, which suggests direction toward an end, at least toward survival and reproductive success, or evolutionary success in the world...No need for spiritualism in that dynamic. Energy or light is not God, it's a primitive form of matter. The deepest drive of “life” is toward evolving in the material world to ascending levels of Godhood, supermaterial Godhood, which is also the zenith of success in material life.

Theological materialism instinctively and logically suggests totality, more than a total work of art (“Gesamtkunstwerk”), more a total religion which can include all distinctive groups politically living and evolving toward Godhood in an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, with as much social order as is possible given real kin and ethnic centered human nature, and retaining their uniqueness.

The philosophy of theological materialism sounds fantastical, unreal, phantasmagorical, but it is also down to earth, material, practical, and we determinedly need it in our increasingly chaotic world.

In the next natural transvaluation of Vedic-Platonic cosmogony we need to unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade of material evolution to real Godhood

Contrary to the Traditionalist school it is the idea of Maya that is mistaken, which says that the material world is an unreal illusion and the spiritual world is real, when it is the material world that is real; the spiritual “God” is only inwardly and materially experienced as bliss when all the desires are gotten rid of by the ascetics. 
 

The mirror-inward God may or may not help us understand the real outside Godhood which is evolved to in the material-supermaterial world. The inward God or Father-within dissolves in the outward God, not the other way around. The evolution of material/supermaterial life has ascending levels of Godhood, whereas the mirror inward God is a blissful ascetic illusion. 

 

There are probably many Gods that attain ascending levels of Godhood. Although the most evolved Gods may have great power in the world the Gods may or may not help to govern the primary cosmos, we will have to evolve higher to know; but we do know that the sacred material activation of life within life, or Tirips, working in conjunction with natural selection and evolution, does govern the material worlds.

 

In the next natural transvaluation of Vedic-Platonic cosmogony we need to unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade of material evolution to real Godhood.

As the asceticism of the Inward Path is rolled back

As the asceticism of the Inward Path, which is the foundation of the revealed religions, is rolled back (transformed not rejected) in the theological materialism of the projected Theoevolutionary Church, we will better see the ascetic Inward Path contrast with the Outward Path of material evolution to ascending levels of Godhood.

We will also see how the Outward Path corrects the rejection of some of the values of European paganism, especially in the Inward Path disparagement and spiritual blockade of materialism in favor of non material asceticism.

The material evolution of life toward Godhood brings back the contrast between Outward Path evolution and the Inward Path values seen in its sacrifice, renunciation, asceticism, fasting etc. designed to reject the drives and desires of material life mainly so as to experience the beatific vision, which like nirvana is a peak material experience brought on by severe ascetic restrictions.

The evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood brings back the ideals of life and living, heroism, cultivating wisdom, strength, beauty, health, kinship and ethnic bonds, harmony with life and nature, instincts such as sexuality are again religiously appreciated and vital because we evolve to Godhood only by way of material evolution and successful survival and reproduction, which now can be aided by the genetic sciences.

But we can conservatively retain that old Inward Path to the God within as the first imperfect glimpse of Godhood wrongly defined as spiritual now seen as materially evolving to ascending levels of Godhood in the Outward Path.

Why and how there need not be tension between the material, the spiritual, science, and the political

Richard Fletcher tells us in “The Barbarian Conversion” how the Eusebian accommodation between church (Christianity) and state (Rome) in the fourth century was an intellectual marvel. Eusebius showed how the city of earth became the city of God and how the monarchy of emperor Constantine brought the kingdom of God to men. That accommodation between church and empire became the cornerstone for political theology.

The Eastern church mainly affirmed that harmony, but in 413 Augustine objected and said there is a material city of man and spiritual city of God and Christians were not of this world, which thereafter brought a tension to Western Christianity between church and state.

Monastic loving Augustine was thinking more like Christ, just as Christ resembled Buddha, who believed that material desires are hell and the religious path is to rid the body of all material desires, that was the way to see or experience the bliss of nirvana, which Christ called the God Within. So Augustine was affirming Eastern Buddhism perhaps without knowing it when he objected to the Eusebian accommodation between church (Christianity) and state (Rome).

Both had it wrong. The separation between the material and the spiritual in all the revealed religions was a big metaphysical error, which set up a great spiritual blockade against the material and supermaterial evolution of life to ascending levels of real material-supermaterial Godhood.

So there need not be that tension between the material and the spiritual just as there need not be that tension between religion and science and the political. A better more real and more natural formula is to follow the biological origin of social behavior and kin and ethnic centered human nature. That can lead us to affirm a harmonious ethnopluralism of ethnostates in politics, evolutionary realism in art, and theological materialism in religion and philosophy.

Toward a sacred totality

Tirips, or the material activation within life to live and evolve exists in every cell of the body and is the will to live and evolve to Godhood and reach the zenith of survival and reproductive success. Tirips or the will to live and evolve is not from God and is not God itself, it is the sacred material activation to Godhood and it works along with the outside forces of natural selection and the ups and downs of evolution. We materially evolve to ascending levels of Godhood, we become Gods; there is no non-material spiritual God.

Those who believe in the complete randomness of evolution, the vast majority of scientists, often make dismissive comments regarding any kind of direction to evolution, usually in footnotes to show its unimportance to the text, but then the footnote’s are often emotional and long, protesting too much. I find the arguments that evolution is non-purposive and random almost as closed as the religious arguments denying evolution.

Evolution moves inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements, and the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward higher and higher more effective living forms.

The evolution to Godhood can redeem material life and evolution, which has been demeaned and cast out in the great spiritual blockade of traditional religions. The sacred activation to evolve to real Godhood can proceed and join estranged religion and science together with a synthesis of the arts in a sacred totality more comprehensive than the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus.

Gods are far more than the bliss of experiencing the nirvana and beatitude of inward man

Joseph Campbell said, “All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you,” and regarding the revealed religions he was right, although they also think of God as outside of man. 

The Inward Paths of the ascetic practices of the revealed religions lead to the inward bliss of experiencing the nirvana and beatitude of an inward godhood, attained by blocking all material desires, and it is entirely within man: but it is not Godhood.  

Ascending levels of Godhood are reached by material bodies evolving in the Outward Path to supermaterial bodies, which means Gods are far more than the bliss of experiencing the nirvana and beatitude of inward man.

Becoming Godhood in evolution

St. Thomas said that “The last end of human life is beatitude” and that the beatitude of man is the perfect act of seeing or feeling the divine being, which to humans is also the highest mode of Being. Buddha did much the same thing in advocating the non-material path to nirvana. That position undervalues both God and man.

According to Buddhism true reality is emptiness, which we can only see when we do not “cling” to self and phenomena, and thus see true reality. This is called “liberation” from bondage. The goal is to feel neither attachment or aversion to the world. That is liberation and beatitude, the description of the bliss felt from freeing the mind and body of all material desires. That also suggests hedonism, the ethical theory that pleasure is the highest good and proper aim of human life. That blissful condition of Christ and Buddha is a high category of hedonism hypertrophied and experienced by freeing the body and mind of all passion, and all material desires---which is no easy task.

Beatitude and Nirvana are are not the goal of the Evolutionary Outward Path to real Godhood, they are the goal of the Involuntary Inward Path to the nirvana of the Inward God or Father-Within, the Heaven-Within which Jesus Christ sought and found.

Godhood is not merely calculation, not meditation, not presence, not intuition, not deduction, and not the human experience of bliss. Godhood is a real supermaterial object, or objects, reached through material and supermaterial evolution. The highest act of life is not merely to have blissful intellectual intuition of God, it is to become Godhood in evolution.

Even so, in the Twofold Path we can conservatively retain or include the intellectual intuition of God, seen in the Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul-Within, but we must not be blocked there in a Great Spiritual Blockade. We must move on to the Evolutionary Outward Path, which is materially activated so that we can, through material and supermaterial evolution, become real Godhood.

Can perfection be reached? No, just as perfection in evolution is never final, at least not until Godhood is attained, and even then evolution continues endlessly with ascending levels of Godhood, with no ending and no beginning.

The Great Ancient Error

(Here is my speculations on the origin of the great spiritual blockade developed by traditional religions and what to do about it, modified a bit from 2008.)

The great error of the ancient Proto?-Indo-Europeans was in defining the activation within as spiritual and as God rather than as the material activation to Godhood. From this error, came the great spiritual blockade, which eventually banished the material world, even to the point of describing all material things as evil.

In the distant past Indo-European warriors of Hyperborea? discovered techniques for helping them to endure distress without mental disturbance, mantras etc. which gave them advantages over their competitors. Specialists in these techniques then developed, teaching initiate warriors etc. Gradually this class of specialists became a priest class.

As long as the techniques for helping warriors to endure distress were used for warrior purposes the great error was undeveloped. This was perhaps the high point in ancient Indo-European civilization, that is, when the inward activation, which I define as Tirips, was reached or applied primarily for the purpose of helping warriors to victory. When attaining the the inward activation or Tirips became an end in itself decline set in. The priest class became ascendant over the warrior class. The Activation Within was declared the Kingdom of God Within, and the primary purpose of existence was now to attain this God or Spirit Within. Material life, including the warrior life, was degraded and the great spiritual blockade of material life and material evolution began in earnest.

All the Revealed Religions followed this Inward Path in what has since been called the Perennial Philosophy. Perhaps some branches sought to return the balance between warriors and priests. Perhaps Zarathushtra, or his ancestors, diverged from the main group for this reason. But all branches continued the great error of defining the Spirit Within as God, and God as spiritual rather than supermaterial, and all branches of the Revealed Religions continued the great spiritual blockade against the material desires of the world.

Theological materialism and the projected Theoevolutionary Church seek to address this ancient error. The God Within is seen as the inward material activation of Tirips, activating evolving material life toward ascending levels of Godhood while working along with outside natural selection and evolution.

Theological materialism does not reject the inward activation as the secularists do, it corrects the misdefined involutionary inward path and defines Godhood as that which we must evolve to in the material and supermaterial world, which is the evolutionary outward path to real Godhood.

Warriors perhaps can affirm the period in ancient Indo-European History when the inward material activation of Tirips was applied primarily to helping the warriors, before the time when attaining the “spirit” within was defined as the primary purpose of existence. But we now apply this ethos to the Twofold Path, the inward and the outward paths, toward evolving in the material world toward ascending levels of Godhood.

Crossing theological rivers

Sri Ramana Maharshi said, “To identify oneself with the body and yet seek happiness is like attempting to cross a river on the back of an alligator.”  I would turn that aphorism around. To identify yourself with the traditional definition of the spirit is like attempting to seek happiness by crossing a river with no legs, no arms, and no body.  

Seeking happiness by the death of the body (by blocking material desires) as the ascetic's do for the peak material experience of bliss it brings is seeking only the death of the body, and the bliss is not even God.  

The “spirit” is not non-material the spirit is the activating material will to Godhood, or Tirips. Tirips activates within material and supermaterial bodies to cross material rivers and evolve to supermaterial Godhood. Ascending levels of Godhood are supermaterial not spiritual.  

We are activated to live and evolve by way of the activation of Tirips or the will to Godhood within life, and then life interacts with the outside forces of natural selection and evolution which shapes us genetically and culturally.

Godhood and religion are not dead, they have been misunderstood and wrongly defined

What the traditional view of God is really saying is, everything is nothing and nothing is everything, because their God is non-material and non-corporeal when in reality nothing is non-material and non-corporeal, even ideas are nothing without the material and corporeal objects they define, which requires material and corporeal minds to do the defining. Even the energy fields that supposedly "govern" the particle are created by the interaction of material forces. The energy field is not spiritual. Gravity or electric forces are not spiritual, they are brought about by interactions between material objects.

But contrary to Nietzsche and others this does not mean that God and religion are dead, it means that Godhood and religion have been misunderstood and wrongly defined. Everything is something and something is everything when material and corporeal objects are not left out of the definition of the sacred as they were in the traditional, non-material, non-corporeal, spiritual, view of Godhood.

There is nothing other than the something of material life, and supermaterial Godhood is materially evolved to in the material and corporeal world. This sacred path to real Godhood is actually blocked by the traditional non-material and non-corporeal definition of God and religion. The ascetic experience of God was a peak material experience of bliss derived from overcoming or blocking all material desires. That spiritual blockade could therefore even be called evil as being the path away from Godhood, but it is better thought of as first attempts by ascetics to see and understand the ascending levels Godhood materially evolved to in the real material and corporeal world.

The sacred goal of theological materialism

The traditional religious definition or meaning of Godhood and the path to Godhood was discovered and designed by ascetics who misinterpreted God as a “spiritual” God and a spiritual experience when their experience of God was a peak material experience of bliss derived from overcoming or blocking all material desires. 

Desire is directed toward something deeper than itself. The deeper need of survival evolved the pleasure experience from eating, just as the deeper goal of evolving to Godhood activates the desire for reproduction and survival. Ascetics were therefore mistaken in defining material desires as only causing pain, suffering, and sin. It is only through purposeful material desires that we can attain Godhood in material evolution. 

Life desires success in survival and reproduction, and the greatest and highest success in survival and reproduction is also the highest good, which is to evolve to ascending levels of Godhood, while adapting to outside natural selection and evolution.

In theological materialism Godhood and religion remain but the definition or the meaning of Godhood and the path to Godhood changes, and that path to Godhood is through material and supermaterial evolution.  So the central task of religion as well as science is to aid in the sacred material and supermaterial evolution toward Godhood.  

This means that the “first cause” is not God but is the material activation within life (Tirips) to ascending levels of Godhood, or the greatest and highest success in survival and reproduction.

I don't fear the deepest instinct, I consider it sacred, and it needs to be unblocked

Both Nietzsche and Burke wrote of the fear of the instincts and passions when unmediated by reason or morality. Burke feared the deepest instincts if unmediated by traditional religious morality, but Nietzsche wanted to give the instincts and passions more free Dionysian reign.

I think of the deepest passion and deepest instinct as the activating will to Godhood within material life, which I call the “Super-Id,” or “Tirips.” It is the combined instincts seeking to evolve in the material world to supermaterial Godhood, activating within life toward supreme success in survival and reproduction, while also engaged in the ups and downs of outside natural selection and genetic evolution.

The activating Super-Id, or Tirips, is not chaotic or Dionysian and not religiously ascetic, and it is not over-controlling in the paths taken among several determined paths, like a boulder rolling down a mountain.

So I don't fear the deepest instinct, I consider it sacred, and it needs to be unblocked.

The end-goal that real life is designed for

Josef Pieper writing about the “purely receptive stance toward reality undisturbed by any interruption by the will,” or Thomas Aquinas saying that the human being can only be satisfied by the vision, the beatific vision, of God, or mystics saying that human beings are designed for that vision and nothing less than such an end, has put up a great “spiritual” blockade against material life evolving toward real supermaterial Godhood.

“Interruption” by the will? What about the sacred activation of the material will within life (Tirips) to activate material life to evolve toward success in survival and reproduction which eventually leads to supermaterial Godhood (from the frogs to the Gods), always working within outside evolutionary selection and in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat? That Godhood is the end-goal that real life is designed for.

Even so, the ascetic Inward Path can be conservatively retained in the Twofold Path as the first inward glimpses of the Outward Path of material life evolving to real supermaterial Godhood, just as both conservatism and material evolution retain the best of the past even as they change.

Fictions of metaphysics

Metaphysics dealing with abstract concepts like being, knowing, cause, time, and space, has been largely unreliable, unfounded, nonsensical, and even ridiculous.

“Transcendence-over-function” in religion and philosophy is not real or possible, but we can increasingly understand the functions of nature. Even the beatific vision like nirvana is a peak material experience brought on by severe ascetic restrictions of the body, and not a transcendence of the natural material functions.

Thinking “theoretically” is not transcending nature, even Godhood is a superior beinghood reached by evolving in the material world to Godhood.

“Freedom” in philosophy? Nothing is free of the activations of nature, why would we want to be free of life? We have only freedom to choose within several determined paths, a talent evolved to help us when we were being chased by tigers.

In spite of the fictions of metaphysics we can attain real Godhood and affirm real religion, but it is a supermaterial Godhood evolved to in the material world, and a religion that aids us in that sacred goal, along with the help of science. (theological materialism)

We can have the religiously divine material without negative spiritualism

The West has been falling, Western people have been dying faster than being born, which does relate to their loss of religion and cultural coherence. But that dying has had much to do with the anti-material (or anti-life) metaphysics of traditional religion, which ultimately sees Godhood and morality as non-material and spiritual. That does not much encourage breeding faster than dying.

Contrary to the spiritual ideologues of traditional religion we can have the religiously divine material without negative spiritualism. We can have Godhood, cultural coherence, and religion without spiritualism.

Traditional religions often use such things as fear of eternal! damnation to hold people to their spiritualism, not reason or common sense, but they can also use very cunning arguments, such as the difference between tolerance and magnanimity, or they will agree to separate and different rules for religion and science in order to include science with religion in their worldview---Thomas Aquinas was a genius at synthesizing ancient Greek philosophy into Christianity, which probably saved Christianity from being intellectually overcome by it.

But we can have Godhood, cultural coherence, and religion without spiritualism when we acknowledge the undeniably biological origin of our social behavior, which includes religion. We don't need to use fear of eternal damnation or cunning arguments to hold people to religion when religion sees Godhood as evolved to in the material world.

Analogous to Aquinas saving Christianity, in the Twofold Path our tolerance defined as magnanimity can conservatively retain the old spiritual symbolism of the inward path to the god or father-within, as long as that peak (material) experience is transformed in the outward path to real supermaterial Godhood evolved to in the material world.

Every cell in our body wants to live and evolve in the world not die to the world, we need to get in harmony with that sacred activation.

Reality does not have to be more than natural especially if the evolution of the natural world leads to Godhood

Religion, politics, art, and even science have lived in varying degrees of intellectual servitude to ideologies that see reality as more than natural, usually beginning with ignorance or the denial of the biological origin of social behavior. Nothing exists outside of the natural world, even real Godhood is arrived at through natural material evolution.

Human identity is knowing who you are and what human nature is. Self, family, kin, ethnic group, city, region, nation, world, those are the legs of human identity. Human nature as empirically explained by sociobiology remains basically kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual, marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of successful selection, followed by individual selection. “Biology is the hardware, culture is the software.”

An individual's ethical values can be ordered in a hierarchy of natural inherited behavior from self to family to kin to ethnic group to city to region to nation to world. A man's inherited ethical loyalty to his own group naturally exceeds that to members of "mankind" generally. Given our overcrowded and fiercely competitive world, and given the real biological origin of our social behavior, we all would be better off politicking for ethnostates and an ethnopluralism of ethnostates. How much healthier and happy people would be if they could celebrate who they really are in their own ethnostate, protected from marauding imperialists and supremacists with some form of limited federalism.

As Cattell said, evolution moves inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements, and the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward higher and higher more effective living forms, all the way to Godhood.  Reality does not have to be more than natural especially if the evolution of the natural world leads to Godhood.