Nature is not a principle

"Nature is not first of all this or that thing, like a tree or neuron, but the principle from which natural things arise." see Just Thomism blog.

But nature is this or that thing, a tree or a person or a God, nature does not arise from a principle, a principle arises from nature.

Balancing Aquinas With Darwin

Goals of Higher Learning

According to Russell Kirk, quoting John Henry Newman (Redeeming the Time), the primary end of higher learning in all lands and all times has been the training of intellect to form a philosophical habit of mind. The idea was to develop “right reason” and imagination for the sake of the person and the republic.

Higher learning is concerned with abstractions, difficult abstractions, and most people don't like abstractions. But what is meant by “right reason,” to think like St. Thomas Aquinas? No doubt Aquinas was a very great theologian and philosopher in his adaptation of Aristotle for Catholic Christianity and the West, but in the end, Aquinas essentially believes only in the Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul or Spirit within of Tradition.

Right reason needs to balance Aquinas with Darwin and therefore the Theoevolutionary Church includes the Evolutionary Outward Path of Evolution to God. This balancing is the true goal of education. The “centre” did not hold and “mere anarchy” was loosed upon the world because the right reason of Aquinas was insufficient to hold the centre. You cannot virtually extirpate materialism and expect life to hold firm. A reluctant nod to the needs of the flesh is not enough to support the needs of life and evolution.

A Great Spiritual Blockade against evolution was instituted, which inadvertently helped anarchy to be loosed upon the world, since spiritualism alone could not and should not have expected to hold the centre.

Higher learning in the Theoevolutionary Church pursues both Paths, the Involutionary Inward Path (Aquinas and others) and Evolutionary Outward Path (Darwin and others).

Exhuming Materialism And Evolution For Religion

John Lukacs and Russell Kirk too quickly announced the end of historical determinism (The Passing of the Modern Age). Our will is not as free as they wish it to be.

History may be a teleological process, as John Lukacs writes, (Historical Consciousness) but it is not only or merely moving toward that end of mankind and the Day of Judgment in the sense of the Involutionary Inward Path alone, or in the Traditional religious sense. It is not a purely spiritual teleology, it is a spiritual teleology which activates material evolution, or the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood.

And Lukacs, again, too quickly announced that our evolution will be only the evolution of our consciousness (Teilhard de Chardin made the same mistake). This was another side-stepping, and perhaps unconscious slight-of-hand, of the controversial subject of human evolution. This was a serious mistake which stunted Conservatism and stunted true Western progress. Men are so terrified of the “armed ghost” of historical determinism (and perhaps rightly afraid), that they create another ghost, the end of materialism. We are so afraid of Stalin and Hitler (wrong or evil as they may be) that we murder materialism.

It is true that quantum physics has made scientific certitude less possible, but this does not mean that scientific certitude does not exist, as Lukacs wishes it, and this does not mean that materialism is dead. We are simply too ignorant at this point in our evolution to have scientific certainty in these things. Nevertheless, the Evolutionary Christian Church exhumes the material evolution to Godhood, with the Evolutionary Outward Path, while maintaining the religious teleological end of the Involutionary Inward Path of Tradition. That is, we can have both Spiritualism and Materialism. One dare not kill the other.

Avoiding The Great Spiritual Blockade

Reforming man does not mean only “ tearing him away from the reign of the passions, from the cult of matter, quantity and cunning, and reintegrating him into the world of the spirit and serenity, we would even say: into the world of sufficient reason.” ( Frithjof Schuon, Understanding Islam) This is the way of the Involutionary Inward Path. However, advocating this Path Alone leads to The Great Spiritual Blockade.

What we must first do is understand the sacred, not the profane, direction of the “passions,” which are related to the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution. If we extirpate the passions we may see the Soul or even the Spirit within but, no matter how difficult it is to attain, this is a limited goal. The instincts and passions most essentially seek the goal of Godhood, the Ideal of the Instincts,which we must evolve to.

Is Esotericism Necessary?

Plato didn't really reject the religion of the old Greek Gods, as Western Philosophy sometimes suggests. Plato more or less opened another school of the old Tradition resembling more the Eastern Tradition, such as Advaita Vedanta.

And Plato and the Eastern School didn't really go against the later Orthodox Judaism (e.g. the Kabbalah), which was influenced by Eastern Traditions during the times of enslavement (Egypt and Babylon). Plato and the Eastern Traditions may have gone against some versions of Judaism and Christianity, which did not see God as a philosophical First Principle, as the esoteric versions did. (eg. Gnosticism)

There is no legitimate battle between matter and spirit or religion and science. We cannot presuppose a dualistic distinction between mind and body. Mind is part of body, mind is real in relation to the body. What is required is a philosophy of the body, a religion of the body, a religion of biology and sociobiology, which is true to the body. Our primary encounter with the world is not outside the body.

This does not suggest a Godless world, as one might expect, because God too is a body with a mind. That is, Godhood is the attainment of Supreme Body with a Supreme Mind. And furthermore, the natural world of bodies and minds can evolve their bodies and minds to Godhood.

We can now ask, if Godhood is the highest evolution of the material and supermaterial world, are Esotericism and Philosophy necessary? One could answer that the Evolutionary Outward Path utilizes Western Science and could perhaps stand on its own; but one doesn't radically turn one's back on the Gods of one's fathers, which are valid and useful in the Two Paths to Godhood. Techniques for approaching the Soul and Spirit Within were developed over thousands of years and can still help us understand Godhood, human nature, and the cosmos. The Theoevolutionary Church applies this old Tradition in the Involutionary Inward Path. The term “Ordered Evolution” suggests the balance between the Evolutionary Outward Path and the Evolutionary Inward Path.

False Separations

We cannot presuppose a dualistic distinction between mind and body. Mind is part of body, mind is real only in relation to the body. What is required is a philosophy of the body, a religion of the body, which is true to the body.

This does not suggest a Godless world, as one might expect, because God too is a Body with a Mind, that is, God is the Supreme Body with the Supreme Mind. And furthermore, the natural world of bodies and minds can evolve their bodies and minds to Godhood, the Supreme Body and Supreme Mind.

Therefore, there is no legitimate battle between matter and spirit or religion and science. Spirit exists within matter as the Seed of the Kosmic Beginning. The Zenith of Matter, or the Zenith of the Mind in Matter, is the Soul, which the Spirit activates to evolve. And the Highest Matter is God, who can also be described as “Spiritual,” but He is really the Highest Evolution of the material world and is not separated from the world any more than the mind is separated from the body.

Those who separate the mind from the body also tend to separate God's Body from His Mind, claiming even that God's Mind is superior to His Body. The Mind of God requires the Body of God. Some call the separate Mind of God the “Father,” when the Father is really the Mind of God, or a Supreme Definition in the Mind of God.

Misleading and Demeaning Definitions of Nature and God

Mystics like to reduce nature to a blind force, even if infinite, which they say is “substituted” for God, a force below the thrown of God, but this is misleading or demeaning.

Nature is not “blind,” it seeks to evolve, through material evolution to Godhood. “All, no matter how different a grade, is still animated.” (Spinoza—Ethics). Godhood is the Zenith of Nature, the Zenith of Evolution.

There is a tendency of intellectuals and mystics to prefer the definition, to prefer the Word denotating or defining God rather than Actual Nature of the Object Godhood.

Past Ages and Unborn Ages

We would change the following old saying : “ Ye unborn ages, crowd not my soul,” to “Ye unborn ages, fill my Spirit but do not crowd my Soul, which contains past ages.”

The balance or tension in Ordered Evolution between Order (past ages) and Evolution (unborn ages) must be maintained.

This helps define the Involutionary Inward Path(Soul or past ages) and the Evolutionary Outward Path (Spirit or unborn ages).

Our View of History

When we say the Evolution to Godhood is the terminal event in history, this is a religious as well as a scientific view of history, although both religion and science have yet to affirm it. Who will be the new Thucydides of our history? Perhaps a religious sociobiologist within the Evolutionary Christian Church will be the new Thucydides of our history?

Mending Our Ways and Divine Wrath

If there is to be a “coming of Divine Wrath” should we not mend our ways? How do we mend our ways to pay heed to this old Hebrew Prophesy? Human nature is largely biologically derived, we must affirm this before we can mend our ways.

Our definition of “Ordered Evolution” is not exactly the same as the Ordered Freedom of paleoconservatives. Ordered Evolution is the basis of our Revitalized Conservatism, which is the way we will avoid divine wrath.

Progress Was Not The Monster

Was it really the notion of “ineluctable progress” that brought on all the monstrosities of the modern age and the disintegration of the West? The “Permanent Things” of Conservatism did not prevent this disintegration. Why? Perhaps because the permanent things did not really include biological and cultural evolution.

The Great Spiritual Blockade against evolution and the material world petrified the “Ordered Freedom” of Conservatism. The Evolutionary Christian Church seeks to revive progress within the Ordered Evolution of a Revitalized Conservatism.

Expanded Path, Contracted Path

The Evolutionary Christian Church affirms both the Expanded and Contracted Paths but we unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Contracted Path, or the Inward Path, leading to the Soul and Spirit within, by also affirming the Expanded Path of the Outward Path, which can take the Spirit and Body (Soul) in evolution to Godhood. Thus religion can join science and physics can join metaphysics.

Justice in nature and perfection

Plato's justice can be seen in the Evolutionary Christian Church as man doing what it is his nature to do, which is, to evolve by his nature to Godhood. This is described as the way that leads to perfection in the Bhagavad Gita, which is speaking of the Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul or the Spirit within, whereas when we speak of perfection of our nature we are speaking of the Evolutionary Outward Path to the Zenith of Evolution, Godhood.

Conservatism and courage

Paleoconservatives have come closer to a philosophy of history and to affirming sociobiology, but they still more or less deny these things mainly because these things do not correspond close enough to their traditional religious view of history, they tend to exclusively affirm the Involutionary Inward Path of Traditional religion. This way lacks courage.

Einstein thought that imagination was more important than knowledge, and Nietzsche thought that courage in philosophy was more important than intelligence. The Evolutionary Christian Church affirms a Revitalized Conservatism in which we affirm imagination and courage in religion and science, as well redeeming the great traditions of perennial religion or philosophy, which takes us deeper and higher into religion and science than traditional conservatism.

On Naked Apes

Russell Kirk said that we are “more than naked apes,” (Redeeming The Time) but what is this “more?” Are we naked apes who seek “only” the involutionary God-within, or are we naked apes who seek an evolutionary God-without?

“Spirituality” should not virtually exclude “materiality,” especially since the Outward Path of material evolution is the way we attain true Godhood, and not “merely” the way we attain the God-within (no easy task in itself), which is really not God but is the Soul or the Spirit within as Enlightenment.

Debating God, Man Loses

When a spiritual master can debate God and defeat Him, as in some religious traditions, then it is not God who is being debated, but a human version of God. This is absurd and highly arrogant, although typical of mankind. Winning a debate with God is like an atom overpowering the Kosmos. We can only try to evolve in harmony with God and the Laws of the Kosmos, this is difficult enough, especially since most of the laws are yet to be understood.

Knowledge may be difficult to obtain from “The Tree Of Life” but this does not mean that knowledge is “forbidden,” and we do not defeat God when we obtain knowledge. We defeat the devolutionary forces that are, or can be defined as Satanic, but not defined as God. Satan does not help us obtain knowledge, he hinders us. God helps us.

Are we Platonists or Aristotelians?

We seem to be Both. Plato doesn't really look up (or point up), as in Raphael's portrait, Plato looks inward, and Aristotle concentrates outwardly, although both do look in and out. From the perspective of theological materialism, Plato more or less lives in the Involutionary Inward Path of ancient metaphysical Tradition, Aristotle lives more in the Evolutionary Outward Path of Science, which is more forward looking.

Adjusting to Real Human Nature

Adjusting to the real conditions of human existence means more than adjusting to the norms of culture and history, which has largely been the Conservative definition of adjustment. The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) also affirms the deeper adjustment to biology and genetic human nature, leading to a Revitalized Conservatism. According to conservatives normative knowledge is found in Revelation, Authority and Historical experience, but we would add biological or sociobiological knowledge, which has been neglected by most conservatives. Knowledge of sociobiology must be included in a revitalized view of the human existence within conservatism. This evolutionary perspective informs the Evolutionary Outward Path in ECC which works in conjunction with the Involutionary Inward Path informed by the old Traditionalism.

Moral Imagination In Religion

The Evolutionary Christian Church is applying the power of “moral imagination” (Burke and Kirk) in religion and not merely in art, we are expressing afresh the old standards while at last including the Evolutionary Outward Path within the traditional Involutionary Inward Path. We seek to revive the religious foundation but we also seek to unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade against material evolution to God. We can be both new along with bearers of the old standards and the “permanent things.”

Revitalized religion can be imaginative and artistic even if it is more difficult to develop a great religion than a great work of art. Religion is greater than the arts and it should be portrayed better than a great novel or a great political philosophy. The Outward Path can work with what Burke thought of, negatively, as the “idyllic imagination” (eg. Rousseau), and even the “diabolic imagination” (the occult), making religion fresh and new while remaining grounded in the old dogmas and manners. This is Revitalized Conservatism.

Rainbow Bridge

The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) will last and endure because it has affirmed a Rainbow Bridge that goes from the past to the present, (Ordered Evolution) and another less seen Rainbow Bridge that goes from the present to the future. Where the ends of the Rainbow come together the Evolutionary Christian Church stands, as the watchmen Heimdal stood at the Rainbow Bridge (Bifrost) in ancient northern Odinism.

Metaphysically universalists but practically or operatively exclusivists

“...Perennialists say, of course, that there is more than one saving Path back to God, but they’re equally adamant that a man must follow only one of those Paths. Metaphysically, we’re universalists, but practically—or operatively—we must be “exclusivists”...” (from the Cutsinger weblog)

A Solution To U.S. Trade Deficit

..."Anyone who examines U.S. trade and tariff history quickly learns that the USA did not practice free trade before 1933. From the early days of the republic until 1933, America practiced a policy of high tariffs expressly designed to protect domestic manufacturing..."

Continued here, from Economy In Crisis

On Beauty

The Traditionalists say that beauty pertains to cognition (A Coomaraswamy). But we say more importantly beauty pertains to the object, the physical object, which cognition can only describe or try to describe. God is more than the Highest Cognition which describes or defines God or God's Mind, the Father. God is the Supreme Object.

If we apply Beauty as the first or most important test in either mathematics or in theology there is no real place for ugly theology. The patterns must be beautiful. The proof should connect many different things and ideas. Yet beauty can look very simple, childishly simple, and still have far reaching results.

Beauty (the Son) has to do with the ideal of the Instincts, the dreaded senses of Plato, whereas Truth has to do with “knowledge” more than the object defined by knowledge. “Goodness” has to do with actions (essentially the Holy Spirit).

Toward Noble Art and Popular Art In the Evolutionary Christian Church

The Traditionalist School doesn't like Renaissance art, or the ancient Greeks because they think here art shifted from the inner presence to the outer presence (see Ananda Coomaraswamy), or from the future to the present, from spiritual to material, from Godly man to animal man. But we say this was a necessary shift, however, it shifted too far, too radically away from the Involutionary Inward Path to the point of rejecting spiritual man and religious art entirely in the modern world. Russell Kirk said that decadence can be defined as the loss of an end goal.

Noble Art is basically the art of the Involutionary Inward Path, concerned with the Goal Itself, the ethical perception of God, iconography, sacred objects. Popular Art is the art of the Evolutionary Outward Path, concerned with progress toward the Goal, variability, common but religious objects. The Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution to God needs to supplement not supplant the Involutionary Inward Path of Tradition which seeks the God within.

Both Noble and Popular Art are concerned with theology, both are “heavenward leaning.” The distinction is between theological and nontheological, not between cultured or primitive art. There may only be a difference in the degree of refinement. As it turns out the so-called ignorant masses may be the only ones to preserve traditions, sometimes without even understanding them, as the higher social levels have all but broken the links.

Enlarging not reducing science and metaphysics

We try to ground our religious and philosophical convictions in rational argument and science, but we won't be restricting our imaginations or our metaphysical convictions to these things. We believe that ultimately metaphysics can become physics, religion can become science, and vice versus, not by reducing metaphysics but by enlarging metaphysics with science, not by reducing science but by enlarging science with metaphysics.

On Absolute Reality

I agree with a writer on the Object-oriented philosophy blog when he says that “scientific claims about absolute reality are inadequate, and need supplementation by a metaphysics of objects.” But I think in turn metaphysics is also inadequate to explain absolute reality. I think we will one day find the scientifically discernible qualities of the Spirit-Will, Soul and even Godhood which were formerly “explained” by metaphysics. Godhood the Supreme Object first IS absolute reality and second Godhood's Mind reflects, defines and detonates absolute reality within the Object Godhood. This helps define the real and the mirroring equations of the real. Godhood is not merely a mirroring equation, as so many Traditionalists assume. The material world of evolving objects is vital and needs to be exhumed, since Godhood is reached this way.

The Mind is the mirror of the Body

(a poem by Shen Hsiu:)
"Our body is the Bodhi-tree,
And our mind a mirror bright.
Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,
And let no dust alight."

(to which Hui Neng, the 6th Patriarch, replied:)
"There is no Bodhi-tree,
Nor stand of a mirror bright.
Since all is Void,
Where can the dust alight?"

-Platform Sutra from World Wisdom

The poem above illustrates the difference between the Gnostic belief in Truth as Nothing over truth as Object. The first poem is more accurate than the second although the Traditionalist's believe the second is superior. The Mind is the mirror of the Body, as Absolute Truth is the mirror or Mind of the Object Godhood.

Identifying with the Soul and not the Spirit

The Traditional Involutionary Religions identify with the Soul, which is Zenith of the Mind, and not the Spirit, or the Will to Godhood of the Body and the Soul, and that is the source of all their difficulties. The Soul and the Spirit need to be balanced in the evolution to God.

Basics

There is one universal Spirit from which all the Kosmos evolves. Devolution is not necessarily the “antithesis” of evolution but is natural, and the resulting selection struggles in the Kosmos involves the entire Kosmos, including humans.

Ethics and morality are necessary to ensure evolution and happiness in nature, and balance and harmony with the Spirit within nature, which helps activate life to Godhood in conjunction with natural selection.

Evolution will ultimately prevail over devolution at which time Godhood is Attained in evolution.

A Deeper Adjustment To Norms

When Russell Kirk and other conservatives speak of the real adjustment of humans to the norms of human existence (See “The Perversity of Recent Fiction”), conservatives usually underemphasize the biological origin of much social behavior (See Sociobiology), which requires an even deeper adjustment to norms. Biological roots must also be nurtured and restored rather than restoring only old history.

The Evolutionary Christian Church is revitalizing conservatism in this direction of biology and social behavior, or Ordered Evolution. Attaining Godhood rests upon the evolution of biological life to Godhood, which is the most vital adjustment to the norms of nature.

Balancing The Paths

When you “starve desire to death” you can stop desire, at least with religious discipline. But this can also describe the Great Spiritual Blockade of the exclusively Involutionary Inward Path of Traditional religion. The Inward Path needs to be balanced with the Evolutionary Outward Path, the biological path of evolution to Godhood. This balancing describes one of the main tasks of the Revitalized Conservatism of the Evolutionary Christian Church.

God is precisely an Object or Objects

God is precisely an Object without any reference to knowledge or ignorance. Godhood is Absolute Truth in reference to knowledge or ignorance. But Absolute Truth only denotes Godhood the Object, Absolute Truth is not a thing-in-itself. To name what Godhood is: Godhood is made up of Absolute Beauty and Absolute Good, which are the highest evolved Spirit-Will and the highest evolved Body in the cosmos, and defined as Absolute Truth. The Mind of the Object or Objects of Godhood, or the Soul of Godhood, is Absolute Truth, or Godhood thinks Absolute Truth. Life in the cosmos evolves toward Godhood. Life in the cosmos contains the Spirit-Will or the Seed following the birth of the cosmos at the beginning of Evolution. The Spirit-Will or Seed within life helps activate life evolution toward Godhood as the general pattern of evolution, working within the natural world of material evolution, which can also devolve. Human science has yet to define or understand the substance of Spirit-Will-To-Godhood or the substance of the Object or Objects of Godhood. The higher we evolve the more we will know.

Connecting the temporal and the spiritual

Bringing back the Divine to normal life

Evolution works best in small separate states, and evolution is activated by the Spirit seeking Godhood: this connects the spiritual and the temporal.

Religious or state imperialism is forbidden in the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) as imperialism greatly damages the evolution of separate states, thus blocking the evolution to God.

The Church has always been responsible for “care of the souls” but this should not affirm imperialism. The Order of the Outward Path in ECC is more like a research center for evolving to Godhood (see Cattell's Beyondism, which, unlike ECC, is minus the Involutionary Inward Path(which makes it more radical)) States can of course defend themselves applying the Just War laws.

The Spirit is not separate from the Will but is the Will to Godhood, and the Will is connected to the Soul (reason/science) and the Soul is connected to the Law. The Spirit is guided by the Soul (the Zenith of the Mind).

The Spirit is primary but this does not suggest a dictatorship of instinct over reason. The Spirit, or the Will to Godhood, is the power behind human reason and the Soul and contains the Truths of God.

We are under the Law of God as we are under the law of nature, and it is ever our task to better and better understand the Law of God.

In this way we seek to bring back the Divine to normal life.

Essential Theology

Will-Spirit, Mind, Divine Nature, Church And State

The Will, which is the Spirit in the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) cannot be subordinated to the mind, the mind must align itself with the Will-Spirit. This is not such a fearful thing when we see how faith in the Goal, or reasoning toward the Goal of the Will-Spirit, helps us understand life evolving to Godhood through natural evolution activated by the Will-Spirit.

The mind at it's zenith, defined as the Soul, must learn to understand the Will-Spirit and then help guide the body in the direction of Godhood, the Goal of the Spirit.

This defines the Divine as what is true in nature. The Law of God is what is in nature.

The “personal” aspect of God is the Will-Spirit within each individual that can be contacted and harmonized with the evolutionary path to the more "impersonal" Godhood. The “logos” is thus both personal and impersonal.

It is not the separation of church and state that is primary, it is adapting the state to the church in any given history or environment that defines the primary relationship between church and state, just as it is not a separate mind and will which is primary but adapting the mind to the will that defines the relationship between them.

We are not free from Divine Law yet we have a certain amount of “freedom” in how we adapt to Divine Law, just as natural selection in evolution can diverge, go sideways, go backwards or forward but still be activated by the Spirit toward the pattern of evolving to Godhood, the Zenith of the Will-Spirit.

It seems that the only way Traditionalists can be free is to be free from true nature and the natural world. This Gnosticism defines God as a denotation, an equation, not an object, not a Supreme Object. We cannot and should not be free from the very nature that takes us to Godhood by way of the Spirit.

(For an alternative discussion of these things see “A Symposium on Remi Braque's The Law Of God,” Modern Age, Winter 2009)

Gerald Celente Interview : It’s the end of the world as the Greater Depression hits after 2010

"...Mr. Celente follows over 300 trends: family, crime, war, education, consumer & business patterns which Trends Research Institute synthesizes to predict the future..."

"...We predict state secessionist movements will rival the breakup of the Soviet Union."

"The only way we can ever recover is to return to individual community, personal responsibility, local government. Next, average will disappear, Quality will return. Look at GM. Junk cars financed by junk bonds. Now owned by a junk government. As a consumer, don’t consume quantity -- consume quality."

"How will it all end?", we queried. Will the dollar survive?

"The dot com bubble should have burst and gone away in a short sharp recession. But the boys at the Fed re-inflated the economy by lowering interest rates to a 46 year low -- and in turn created the real estate bubble -- much bigger than the dot com bubble. "

"Now they’re creating the bailout bubble -- which will ultimately dwarf the real estate bubble. It will cause the implosion of the global economy world wide -- which will not be able to be repaired by creating yet another bubble. Every time the government fails, it tells a bigger lie and then a still bigger lie..."

The rest of the interview here, from Human Events.

The Confounding of Reductionism In Art

The Ideal of The Instincts

It seems to me that one of the difficulties conservatives have with imparting a “moral imagination” (Burke, Kirk) derives from the difficulty that comes from disdaining and denigrating the “naked ape” notion of man.

When you try to teach morality by appealing only to “spiritual things” while demeaning the instincts and material things, you are ignoring the 1000 pound Gorilla in the room. It is not the instincts that are bad but the teaching of goalless instincts that is bad. The Ideal of the Instincts is Godhood, what could be higher? This is far more than a mere naked ape view of the instincts.

How We Are Moral Beings

Natural Law And Divine Law

“Law for Man” Or “Law for God”? Emerson and Kirk separate these, but they need not be separated. God is also a “Thing,” an “Object.” God is as much of a “thing” as man, only God is the Zenith of Things, and the Zenith of Nature. This is how natural law can be the same as divine law.

We are moral beings in this sense of having natural laws within us, which are also divine laws; the natural laws lead in evolution to the divine laws of God. When we deny this or are ignorant of this we can be defined as immoral.

The Body And Object Too Can Be Noble

When St. Thomas speaks bitterly of man who could not “think of anything nobler than bodies” (Sum. Theol.), he is speaking of the God of the Inward Path, as the Buddha and others also saw, which defines the God seen in the Revealed Religions. This more precisely defines the Soul Within, the Zenith of the Mind. To reach Godhood requires the Outward Path of material evolution to Godhood. The Body and Object too can be noble.

Contemplation and Action as the Two Paths

Contemplation is not superior to action, both help define the Two Paths, the Inward and Outward Paths. It is through the Outward Path of evolution and action that we evolve to the God seen in the Inward Path of contemplation.

We are more than naked apes but...

Revitalizing the moral imagination

Our age requires the moral imagination that Burke and Kirk wrote about, we must make Traditions fresh and new, but this includes more than literature. Religion has rejected science and evolutionary human nature for long enough and it needs to be revitalized. If the end of moral imagination is to teach us what it means to be human then we can no longer ignore evolution in religion.

Spiritualizing Evolution

We are more than naked apes, but this is not because we reject Darwin and evolution but because we spiritualize evolution. We accept that we are animals but we are animals on the great Path to Godhood. We do not wish to puff ourselves up with definitions of a human Godhood that rejects the animal instincts. The instincts carry us to God, activated by the Spirit.

Relaxing the tension between faith and reason

The synthesis of reason and revelation has been thought to not be possible. The tension Leo Strauss saw between God-directed, revelation, and Darwin-directed, reason, can be relaxed when evolution is seen as evolving to Godhood, as it is seen in theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church.

There is not true tension here, but there is a goal-directed, or teleological evolution, requiring a combination faith-hypothesis, which says that science and reason will eventually find proof of the Godhood goal of evolution now known mainly by faith or intuition. The activation comes from the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within life which is itself material/supermaterial.

Laws of God

We have the basic laws of God within our nature, we must learn to follow the laws, after first seeing what they are.

We need to orient ourselves toward the evolutionary laws of the Kosmos, toward the Godhood of the Evolutionary Outward Path, while also seeking to know God, the goal of evolution, through the Involutionary Inward Path. This is the Twofold Path.

We can learn about the world by learning about God, but we can also learn about God by learning about the world.

The Eternal Law is the same as the natural law yet to be fully discovered. Natural law, human law and divine law are the same law in its full extent. The highest culture would harmonize these laws.

Transvaluing the Being-narrative

Being does not begin with abstract non-Being, Being is a force of nature which is only reflected or mirrored in abstract non-Being. God is in nature as the highest evolved Being, God is the goal of life and evolution.

The Being-narrative does not pass from symbol to idea to nature, Being is nature, symbol and idea only reflect the nature of Being.

The Spirit-Will is also part of nature, It is not non-Being. Spirit-Will is yet to be defined and discovered by modern science, but one day it will.