Conservative Tradition and Futurism

Can the finite, attainable yet noble values of Conservatism be synthesized with the religious goals of the evolution of man to Godhood?

Evolutionary visions have historically set the world on fire, whereas the conservative life is always realistic.

However, biological and Kosmic evolution is connected to the deepest elements of human nature, and coordination with human nature and the Kosmos has always been one of the strengths of conservatism.

Therefore, the Evolutionary Christian Church is attached to the deepest streams of conservatism, indeed evolution works best within the Jeffersonian Conservative Tradition of small separate states, and with its people bonded by religion.  But we recognize the need for the protection of a light federalism.

We think we represent a mending of the divide between conservatism and futurism.

Where illusion is not illusion

Religious seers see this world as illusion and God as real, but nonreligious thinkers see God as illusion and the world as real. The Evolutionary Christian Church sees both the world and God as real---this world is the means by which we evolve to God.

Religious seers see only the Soul or Spirit Within and think that this alone is Reality, but the Spirit is only one aspect of God, as well as only one aspect of man. The body-soul and spirit in man evolve together to God, Who is the Supreme Reality, the Perfect Trinity.

What Buddha Offered

Nirvana is the goal of the Inward Path, but this is not Godhood. If Buddha had become God he would have evolved to God, he would not have entered a “state,” he would have become God, the High Person.

Buddha was said to have decided to tell others about how they might reach the inner state of Nirvana, he did not tell others how to evolve to Godhood, or how to become God.

Other religious seers did much the same thing, eg. Shankara in Vedanta, Nagarjuna in Buddhism and Ibn al Arabi in Islam.

Knowing and Becoming God

To know God is to become God. To become God is to evolve to God. To know God-Within is to see how we may evolve to God, but to know God is not to be God. To know God is the Inward Path. To become God is the Outward Path.

With evolution it is somewhat easier to see how we become God rather than only knowing God. We can know God through pure intuition, using the traditional Inward Involutionary Path of the revealed religions. But we can only become God through the Outward Evolutionary Path.

We Do Not Oppose The Authority Of The Church

We do not wish to dethrone God, we wish to evolve upward to God. Is the Theoevolutionary Church a new kind of Christian humanism, on the order of Pico della Mirandola's attempt to broaden and deepen the Church in the Renaissance? We are aware that here can rise the seeds of arrogance and egoism. But we believe that the Church is big enough to appreciate creativity and new synthesis; we prefer the word synthesis to synchretism, which has been called a corrupting of the gospel with alien elements. These definitions are never very clear.

Let it be said that we would prefer to emphasize what the various Christians have in common as well as the eastern religions.   However, we think that within the Authority of the whole Church, the scriptures, tradition, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the church councils, the saints and the papal decrees, the mystics of the East, there can, eventually, be room for a new order of renewal called the Theoevolutionary Church.

Including the Medieval Spirit

In our attempt to reconcile science (Beyondism ) and traditional religion, we hope to hearken back to the medieval universities of the 13^th century, which tried to put the pagan philosophers (Plato, Aristotle etc) and Christianity in one place, not two.

The separation between these two seems to have begun with William of Ockam in the 14^th century, who split theology from philosophy, which eventually it seems led to the Reformation. William denied “universals” saying they were only words or names, thus developed Nominalism.

Modern Catholicism has at best attempted a minor reconciliation of science and religion, cherry picking the scientific bits least controversial and leaving out vital areas of science--like evolution and sociobiology--from synthesis into religion----it keeps the two separate as it can. This is not in the spirit of the medieval universities. In defense of the church, I suppose the church has always moved slowly, but eventually does move. It will have to move far to transform the Inward Path to the Father or God Within to the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood.

The Austrian Economic Perspective

Although we disagree with the lack of affirming national and local traditions, and we disagree with the subjective individualism of Classical Liberalism, here is an excellent article from Lew Rockwell by Murray Rothbard on the causes and cure of economic depressions, from the Austrian economic perspective.

Literalizing the Unliteral

For centuries religion has developed symbols using literal objects to stand for spiritual things. It is time to turn this around again. For example, “New Creation” and “Heaven” are not merely spiritual symbols for indwelling states of consciousness, they are actual places and things, which we evolve to.

With this, prehistorical religions can join traditional religions and move beyond to the Theoevolutionary Church transcending both the literal and unliteral.

Symbolic language is not the only way to express spiritual things, especially since spiritual things are the evolved-material. “New Jerusalem” is not seen merely as a new highest consciousness, but as a highest level of evolution.

We do not deny the interpretation of Heaven in the Bible as a symbolic highest mode of consciousness, but we do define this highest consciousness as only the indirect Involutionary Inward way to experience the indwelling Soul.

We also affirm a more literal interpretation of these things in the more direct Evolutionary Outward Path.

A “new man” literally means a new man, a “new heaven” literally means a new material-spiritual place evolved to from the material to the spiritual. The Evolutionary Outward Path reliteralizes unliteral symbols.

Problems With Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo

A complete understanding of Godhood is beyond human consciousness, although we can have a blissful indirect experience of the indwelling Soul and Spirit when we apply the Involutionary Inward Path of Traditional religions.

The Omega Point of Teilhard, and the Supermind of Aurobindo, apply only to the Involutionary, not the Evolutionary Path. Human consciousness, no matter how highly developed, cannot become God, although we can indirectly symbolically experience the indwelling God. We can only supermaterially evolve to Godhood, far beyond the human species.

God exists as Supermind in a Superbody and not merely as Supermind-consciousness or Omega Point-consciousness. We evolve both materially and supermaterially to Godhood, through the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Restoring Earth Mother to Earth Father

The ancient Israelites (and ancient Indo Europeans) were patriarchal people, and the people they encountered in there migrations were matriarchal, worshiping the Earth Mother. We could say the former worshiped the Spirit, the latter the body-soul-ego. By rejecting the Earth Mother, or the body-soul-ego, the patriarchal religions became lost, perhaps even allowing daemonic elements to enter their religions.

The Evolutionary Christian Church restores the Earth Mother to the Earth Father by bringing the body-ego-soul back to religion through the needs of the body-ego-soul to evolve to the Spirit and God. The material is not contrary to the material-spiritual.

On Science and Technology

“Technology is way ahead of our ability as a society to think about the consequences.” (from www.popsci.com

Science and Technology should not be rejected, as the Traditional School tends to do. Science and Technology must be made subordinate to the needs of the Spirit, the Will to Godhood. Evolution can apply the discoveries of science and technology on the path to Godhood.

More on the Fall

If we follow the guidance of the Spirit we can reach Godhood, if we do not we may not. This is the essence of the idea of the Fall of man. In the Garden of Eden man was following the track of the Spirit evolving toward Godhood. When he stopped following the Spirit, and allowed the Soul-body to dominate, then he fell from Grace into sin.

When man is centered on his Soul, ie. his ego or psyche, he acts differently than when he is centered on the Spirit. When centered only on the ego-body-soul, evolution may stop, or move sideways, or move back from the direction of the Spirit. Humanity can even be destroyed.

When we stop the guidance of evolution by the Spirit and follow instead the ego-only-soul, then as Genesis says, “The earth will bring forth thorns and thistles.” And women “shall bring forth children with pain.” This was symbolized by Adam and Eve being turned out of Eden.

The way of return is not easy or simple. This present world will pass away. New species will rise, as Noah and his sons survived the flood.

Direct and Indirect Spirit

The Involutionary Inward Path is the indirect-- not direct--experience of the indwelling Soul.

The Evolutionary Outward Path eventually directly experiences and attains Godhood-- and not “merely” indirectly; the goal of the Spirit and the Soul is Godhood.

Do we have free will?

We seem to be free to accept or reject a few determined paths. When working well our minds can discern divine laws of nature, and this is a kind of freedom, but the required intelligence for seeing is also largely determined, the rest is determined by nurturing. Lucky for us Godhood seems to be best seen with our intuitive intelligence, which all men may have, and not only the intelligent.

When to support and not to support state and church

Christianity has said that the state's main function is to keep the peace and that salvation does not come from the state but from religion. We are therefore to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. But if the state commands us to worship false gods then we can disobey.

We say the same about religion. We can affirm under established religion what is not false, and render this unto the Church. But if we are asked to worship false gods or false teachings then we are under no moral obligation to obey. Religion must act according to the natural law, God's law, and the laws of nature.

Yet there is no perfect thing on earth, we end up choosing the least evil. The Church is usually right and just, but not always. Change or correction does not call for revolution, it calls for Revitalized-Conservatism.

Our Fusion

There are seven rather than five streams of conservatism, in the Theoevolutionary Church, and  in Revitalized-Conservatism.

According to the excellent writer Fred Hutchison, the five streams of Conservatism are: Traditionalist conservatism, Neoconservatism, Christian conservatism, Natural law conservatism, and Libertarianism. But this does not include the deeper stream of Sociobiological Conservatism and the seventh stream relating to our evolution to Godhood seen in the philosophy of theological materialism, that is, Revitalized-Conservatism of the Theoevolutionary Church.  Taken alone, without fusion into the other Conservative streams, sociobiology is religiously stunted. However, when the modern understanding of our biological human nature was left out---it was drummed out of the Conservative movement by William Buckley and others---this left the Conservative movement handicapped and missing the deepest view of natural rights and the richest design of nature, which are now included in theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church.

For example, when the great conservative historian Russell Kirk says that America inherited almost nothing of our civilization from Anglo Saxon England and that most of our laws and culture came after the Norman conquest of England, and from Rome, this seems mainly correct, but he undervalues, like most conservatives, the bio-racial elements involved in Western civilization.

The consequences of drumming the modern biological aspects of social behavior out of the Conservative movement have been damaging, and have given Conservatism a bias against our deep history, and against science, which has kept so many good people away from the Conservative movement; this could be the one thing that eventually dooms the Conservative movement in the West.

The Theoevolutionary Church also synthesizes the sociobiological Beyondism of Raymond Cattell into Traditional Religion. We believe that the design of the nature of man (natural rights) most essentially includes our divine bio-spiritual evolution to Godhood, and this is the seventh stream of Conservatism which political and religious Conservatism has not seen. This is the deepest political and religious aspects of nature and evolution. This design of nature, the evolution of life to Godhood, along with the other five streams of Conservatism, allow for the true “full flourishing of our nature according to the design of that nature.” This is our fusion.

"That by which we fall is that by which we rise"

The old tantric saying “that by which we fall is that by which we rise,” can be seen in the Inward and Outward Paths of the Evolutionary Christian Church, and in our saying, “ Involve and awaken. Evolve and arrive at who awakened you.” The inward renunciation of the body to unite with the God-Within, and the outward evolution of the body to Godhood, can be reflected in this saying.

However, Tantra remains involutionary in that it seems to teach the method of changing the "outgoing current" into the "return current," which "releases" or "liberates," thereby considering the outgoing current as the "fetters created by Maya." If anything, we think the opposite of this, the Outward Path of Evolution is only blissfully reflected in the Inward Path.

Innate ideas?

Adjusting Descartes

Contrary to Descartes who said the mind is not matter, the mind is matter, and the Soul is the zenith of the body (which some call the psyche). The Spirit-Will within is the zenith of the Soul. The Soul and the Spirit-Will are not “without matter,” at the most they are supermatter.

It is here, within either the Spirit or the Soul that “innate ideas” seem to exist. The mind can perceive (barely) these innate ideas. The Inward Path to the Father Within of the Soul can show us the innate Outward Path of the Spirit-Will and the material evolution to Godhood.