Overcoming the Two Worlds Doctrine

How long it is taking to overcome the doctrine of two worlds of Plato, as well as the Revealed Religions, with one world seen as as noumenal, spiritual, superior, and the other world phenomenal, material, inferior.

Science tried to kill the spiritual world,which was going too far: the God of Plato and the Revealed Religions exits as the material-supermaterial zenith of evolution in the cosmos on the evolutionary continuum. This is the true way to overcome the doctrine of two worlds.

The dissociation of the intellect, reason and spiritualism from the instincts, emotion and the natural world was a Great Spiritual Blockade against the true path to Godhood. The Spirit-Will is at the zenith of the material instincts, like a Super-Id (to coin a phrase) activating life to Godhood, and shaped by natural evolution.

The Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church is a revitalization of both worlds, the involutionary and evolutionary. The Evolutionary Outward Path is the path to real Godhood, and the Involutionary Inward Path is the first human glimpse of Godhood, but only a mirror of the Godhood reached in the Outward Path through evolution.  

Easing the stress between nature and nurture in political philosophy

Raymond Cattell used the analogy of a tennis ball in a game of tennis to show the genetic-cultural interaction, changes produced by one player affects change produced by another.

The main dynamics and concern here is the stress between our ancient, perhaps hundred thousand-year-old hunter-gatherer genetic nature, and the present, relatively new, five-thousand-year-old culture.

Our genetic human nature changes much slower than culture changes. Culture can't demand more than the genes can deliver---an example of this would be communism, which was a cultural creation with few links to our real human genetic nature.

So what can nurture-culture come up with that will work in harmony with our real genetic human nature? Small states or ethnostates work best with what we actually are. And what we are is individualistic, kin-centered, and group-selecting. The localism and regionalism of small states, or ethnostates, allows the natural bonding dynamics of real human nature to flourish. Then light federalism can help keep harmony in the larger whole of the nation or the world.

Sounds simple but is not easy to create or maintain, given the various shorter-term unhealthy schemes mankind can promote.  As Cattell also pointed out, we need to learn to tell the difference between change from ethical creative deviation, and schemes that are unethical anti-social deviations.

Evolving Beyond Plato's Republic

Great philosophers have a conception both of man and a vision of mans possible enhancement. Plato's Republic grounds the city-state in the idea of the Good, an involutionary vision of “forms,” which could then be seen or experienced by philosophers, who would then manage the city-state with that vision. This vision of forms is more or less in harmony with the involutionary vision of the God-Within of the Traditional Religions, especially in their esoteric versions.

Even though this internal vision acknowledges the importance of the city-state, or the city of man, this involutionary vision sees the material world as a lesser thing. In this view, the goal of man is to become an enlightened philosopher knowing the forms, or a saint knowing God. Plato's Republic, or the religious state, are grounded in this involutionary vision, and they seek to set up societies so that this preferred kind of philosopher or saint can most easily arise, and manage the states.

Contrary to the Traditionalists, mankind has in fact learned more about human nature and religion in the centuries since Socrates debated these concepts, which has led to other conceptions of man, and other conceptions of where man is going. The philosophy of the Theoevolutionary Church seeks to evolve beyond Plato's Republic,

The involutionary view of man and God is only half a view of man, this internal vision of God is only a mirror of Godhood, not the other way around. Real Godhood is evolved to in the material and supermaterial world, and this evolution necessarily leads to setting up an evolutionary, outward-going view of the state. It is the material world that is the sacred vehicle to Godhood by way of evolution, and this reevaluation leads to a reevaluation of states and city-states, which have previously been grounded in the internal half-view of truth and God.

The evolution of man can this way be seen as working best in a variety of small, diverse states, where improvements in evolution can be more easily and quickly reflected. These small states, or ethnostates, need to be protected in their independence and evolution by a light federalism, perhaps not unlike the original Constitution of the United States, but each state is considered unique.  And the global world certainly needs to be considered in the ethics of small states and nations.

Human nature is in fact individual-selecting, kin-centered, group-evolving and group-selecting, and to fight against real human nature in political philosophy is unrealistic, to say the least. Small states or ethnostates best reflect human nature as it really is, and they offer the best long-term chance for human order and evolution on the planet.

The Traditional internal, involutionary, vision of God, or the forms, is retained in the Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church.  This was one of the first views of God, but this half-vision of God also needs evolutionary priests and research scientists to help complete the religious and political vision, with the sacred mission of evolving to Godhood in the cosmos.

The middle way as economic nationalism

A central trait of the Left seems to deny or avoid competition, and the Right seems to affirm it. This may be why the Left seems more idealistic, more romantic, and the Right seems more practical and realistic (some think of these as gender traits). Then the fringes of Left and Right carry it further to communism and fascism.

Ironically from this perspective, in seeking to block competition the Left seems reactionary, and the Right in affirming competition seems revolutionary.

We could say that it is the Middle that is the conservative position, the economic nationalist, who tries to modify competition without getting rid of it, accepting change and competition but modifying it to traditions.

Diverse Human Evolution

Knowledge regarding the progress of voluntary Ordered Evolution for the human species is meant to be shared internationally with diverse people, while retaining that diversity which is good for evolution, and necessary for more harmonious survival.  Therefore, we must not be afraid to evolve for fear of evolution being labeled nepotism, privilege, or even racism---and I am aware of the devastation to careers that these charges can bring.

Cattell was right in defining “human rights” as needing to be able to distinguish between creative individuality and unethical, anti-social deviation. The idea of divine rights for either the state or the individual Cattell called “expensive nonsense.” Evolution is the divine path and evolution necessarily changes both states and individuals, but it is better accomplished in evolutionary rather than revolutionary ways, which affirms Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism.

The Order of the Outward Path is designed to research the progress of evolution toward Godhood in the cosmos, and is meant to be shared knowledge for diverse people living in many small states. An international voluntary guidance from religion and science is what the Outward Path to Godhood is all about.

Humans and human culture could stagnant and perhaps even die for lack of this long term sacred evolutionary direction, and we might never progress toward Godhood, the goal of life.

Limiting future wars

It appears that territoriality arose to protect food sources (see “The Social Conquest of Earth," E.O.Wilson), and group selection and ethics emerged as the successful way for individuals within the group to retain food sources and retain their territories, over other competing groups.

The overpopulated world seems to assure more and more competition for food and other resources which means more territorial battles. Also an abundance of food allowed the relaxation and lowering of territorial standards which increased populations density, and that increased disruptive competitions from within.

Total imperial state control of resources over large territories between often unlike people can only be managed with great suppression and constant revolts, therefore, cooperation in the form of many small states, or even ethnostates, protected by a light, but strongly protecting federalism, seems like the best way to prevent future battles for resources and territory. Without the protecting federalism, imperialism and various attempts at supremacy will try to overrun small states.

Better to have little squabbles from little states, often along with cooperation and the sharing and trading of some resources, where population control seems more naturally structured by available resourceful within the boundaries of the small states.  The Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution seem to have had something like this in mind.

Beyond the evolutionary advantages in having a variety of small states, with dysgenic wars limited, progress toward Godhood can continue in a variety of ways with an Ordered Evolution.

Fusing faith and hypothesis

Thinking very broadly from the religious or poetic worldview back to the biological or scientific experience, one can decide if there is proof, or harmony there, when big patterns or systems fit well with small patterns or systems, this can then be evidence for the worldview being either correct, or in harmony, even if parts are yet to be proven empirically, or experienced poetically.

Faith is required to believe in ones hypotheses, which is where science and religion, empiricism and existentialism, analytic and continental philosophy can come together.

My religious philosophy, theological materialism, leans toward naturalism but respects, intuitions, faith and hypothesis. We can do better than the Augustinian idea that science and religion cannot directly contradict one another since science can only consider nature and God is outside of nature: Godhood is supermaterial, not nonmaterial, so science can apply to the examination of faith.

We are evolving to Godhood activated by the material-supermaterial instinct of the Spirit-Will, which is then shaped by natural evolution, this combines faith-hypothesis and religion-science.

This is both existential-poetic and empirical-scientific religious philosophy.

Universal, specific and personal ethics unified

The universal, the specific, and the personal can describe the three unified divisions of ethics. Evolutionary natural selection takes place at the specific group level but works along with universal and personal selection.

Central ethics derive from the needs of the specific group, then universal and personal ethics follow the lead of group ethics. For example, an ethics of universal federalism along with the specific small state ethics within the federation, and then individuals within the state also compete with one another within the boundaries of group ethics, as group success helps individual success.

One can see the danger to these three connected ethical divisions which can come from totalitarianism, anarchism, imperialism, etc. Light federalism with small states, or ethnostates, like good parents, encourages the independence of each child, it does not favor one child over the other, and it separates squabbling children to keep the peace.

Democracies have problems with envy and demagoguery, but as Raymond Cattell pointed out, "many-voiced democracies" make violent revolution less likely, and with a Constitution like that of the United States, progress can be achieved in an evolutionary, not revolutionary way, by amendments to the Constitution.  But revolutions do happen.

Long term evolution of the human species, with the sacred mission of evolving to Godhood, needs the slower changes of controlled evolution, with the stability of Revitalized Conservatism, not revolution. The new needs to be attached to the old, as the higher cortex of the human brain was attached to the lower brain, without completely replacing it.

Evolution and Instinct

Evolution takes place with each step taken, each change, as a natural selection response, the adaptation response, to the conditions prevailing in the environment that is around the species at the time and place. But I go further than science in saying that there is a sacred instinct from within, a prompting, or activation of life itself from within, defined as the Spirit-Will to Godhood, which is then shaped by evolution from without.

“Instincts” are always being blamed in contrast to rational intelligence by both religion and science regarding such things as the human destruction of the planet. But it is an imprecise or shallow understanding of instinct which always make it the bad guy of civilized folks. The Zenith of the Instincts, the Spirit-Will, seeks Godhood, which makes it a sacred instinct, it activates material and supermaterial life to evolve to Godhood. This instinct, which has probably been around since the Primal Beginning of this cosmos, certainly tries to save us from destroying the earth, otherwise we could never evolve to Godhood, its sacred goal.  

Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going, and how do we get there?

We come from Primal Matter at the beginning of at least one cosmos. Matter has a great urge from within to evolve, which is shaped by evolution from without. This urge is the activation of the material Spirit-Will within matter, which seeks Godhood through material and supermaterial evolution. In reproduction we seek the best of our kind which we are able to find, or win, choosing the most beauty, power, intelligence, goodness, complexity, etc. This moves us ever upward in evolution, with side-tracks and backward-goings along the way, shaped by outside evolution, ever evolving toward Absolute Truth, Goodness and Beauty, until we attain Godhood at the Zenith of Evolution. Our societies and cultures can be shaped, religiously and scientifically, around this sacred mission of life evolving in the cosmos all the way to Godhood. In human history there have been various kinds of societies and cultures, and the one which seems most suited to our sacred mission of evolving to Godhood, and most equitable with the real ethnocentric human nature of all groups, appears to be a nation, or a world, of small states, or ethnostates, protected in their independence by a light federalism, and bonded and guided in this sacred mission, voluntarily, by religion and science.

Charles Murray's attempt to redeem himself

In “The Bell Curve” Charles Murray wrote one very carefully edited chapter about the intelligent differences between racial groups, for which he was shunned and exiled.

Now comes Murray's attempt to perhaps redeem himself with his latest book, “Coming Apart,” by moving in the politically-correct opposite direction and saying that America is coming apart do to class differences, not ethnic differences. The reality is that both race and class are breaking apart America.

It is almost unbelievable how the media, from the popular media to the academic media, have blocked the idea that there is a biological as well as a cultural component behind human behavior.

Will Murray's sacrifice of realism in the interest of acceptance welcome him back in the cultural Marxist fold? It would have been better to toil out in the wilderness and tell the truth.

The denial of the reality of sociobiology has served the interests of the deniers in attaining power in business, the academic world and government, but in the process they have destroyed the founding American values of marriage, honesty, industriousness and churchgoing. It requires both genetic and cultural actions to change the intelligence of people or to change cultures, and to deny this does not make it go away, indeed it makes things worse in the long term.

On Reincarnation

Our position is that “reincarnation” is the ancient understanding of evolution. As taught by most religions, eg. Orthodox Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Druidism, and the ancient religions of Egypt and Babylon (but apparently not taught by standard Christianity), souls reincarnate many times until, with the right moral actions, they finally reach God.

Reincarnation is really the evolution of the material body, which includes the soul at the zenith of the human mind, all the way to supermaterial Godhood. The Soul-State is a condition attained by ascetic discipline whereby the desires of the body are blocked out, leading to a blissful state that can be seen or compared in a human way to virtual Godhood. It is the Spirit-Will rather than the soul that seeks real Godhood by activating the material world, which is then shaped by evolution, to seek Godhood.

Is this political progress?

Intelligent, inventive people invent, intelligent managers manage, then a free business climate develops work for the population producing the inventions of the creators, managed by the managers. This dynamic in America led to the highest living standard for its people in human history.

People being people, greed develops among some of the producers and managers, and the people suffer from being exploited by the greedy, who do such things as close local factories and move them out of the country, keeping the extra profits for themselves which came from destroying the jobs of the people.

In a democracy people are polled and vote. But this dynamic often seems like applying an ax rather than a scalpel to problems such as greed. The politicians, of course, exploit the feelings of the people using demagoguery. This is a weakness of democracy.  What bothers me is that the swings from left to right in our democracy often damage the intelligent inventive people and the intelligent managers who can be lost, and this ends up hurting society as a whole because society depends on these people for progress in jobs, inventions, and so on.

In the presidential primary elections the left is taking an ax to the productive class, and the right is propping up greedy and imperial members of the old productive class. The intelligent inventors and managers seem to be the losers, and this is the biggest mistake we are making. We need to above all protect and encourage the intelligent, inventive people, and the intelligent managers.

I think the middle ground of economic nationalism is the fairest way to balance these dynamics. But even Ron Paul wants very few checks on individual greed, which is a weakness of libertarianism. It is at the group level more than the individual level where the strongest selection takes place, as E.O. Wilson has recently gone back to affirming, and it seems to me that this affirms the protections that come from economic nationalism, along with free enterprise and trading with the world.

There are no economic nationalists running for office, but there could be one day if trends continue.

Saving both religion and science

Biology, or more specifically, sociobiology, has been the missing weakness of the humanities, as E.O. Wilson has been pointing out. Awhile back philosophers overlooked psychology. The weakness of religion and philosophy was to have more or less overlooked materialism, as Nietzsche and others pointed out, but the weakness of science, and Nietzsche, was to have overlooked religion.  

Theological materialism, the religious philosophy of the Theoevolutionary Church, redeems both materialism and religious philosophy with the Twofold Path. Religion joins science (at least future science) in the knowledge that the material world evolves to supermaterial Godhood. The God of the Inward Path of traditional religions is attained as the Godhood of the Outward Path of natural evolution, at the Zenith of Evolution.

Objections to this worldview come from both sides, from religion and science. Even so, we save them both.

Universal and Specific Ethics

As Raymond Cattell pointed out, the common ethics of universalism (eg. in the Revealed Religions, and in Marxism) are centered around basic survival for all of us, for the world. However, if only common basic ethics are allowed, there can be little creativity or evolution (remember the Spanish Inquisition, and Stalinism).

A natural separation of the world into small states allows for a more specific ethics related to place and time. That is, more creativity in ethics along with the common universal ethics of basic global survival. This way evolutionary change can take place, which is the basis of natural life, as well as the basis of our sacred mission to evolve to Godhood.

It is important to state that we require evolution not revolution, this is a central point in Revitalized Conservatism. The new needs to be synthesized into the old. Old conservatism must include new sociobiology. The ethics of traditional conservatism is grounded in the God-Within of the Inward Path. The inclusion of the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood, along with the Inward Path, needs to be affirmed, and it is affirmed in the Theoevolutionary Church.

Conserving “the best elements of our civilization” as called for by Russell Kirk, means not only conserving the ethical elements of the Inward Path to the God Within, but conserving the highest truth, goodness and beauty of various people and states, sociobiologically, all of whom are on the evolutionary Path to Godhood in the cosmos.

People are part made and part born

It continues to be nearly impossible to speak in any depth about the fact that people are part made and part born, and that classes of people have different levels of intelligence as well as differing cultures, which E.O. Wilson, Raymond Cattell, Charles Murray, and others have said for years.

We have understood the need for free cultural mobility enabling the working class (proletariat) to rise to the middles class (bourgeois), but we have not accepted the fact that there are also differences in intelligence between the classes, and if we want the proletariat to rise to the middle class, the proletariat also needs to raise their rate of intelligence to bourgeois intelligence and enterprise levels.

This blog often speaks of the theological errors of religion and the political errors of Marxism which have stopped these truths from entering our societies. Traditional religions exclusively center on the non-material God Within, with little connection to the real supermaterial Godhood, which needs to be evolved to in material-supermaterial evolution. Marxism, and the cultural Marxism of Western politics, center on the cultural origins of human behavior and deny the biological or genetic origins of behavior.

These sociobiology truths remain volatile to many, but eventually they need to be faced or we will continue to have endless violent revolutions, as classes remain fixed and increasingly resentful of one another. Biology and genetics, and even voluntary eugenics, need to be considered along with the political ways to enhance social mobility, including the small independent states, protected by a light federalism, which we affirm.

We are all evolving to Godhood, which requires our advancement in intelligence, truth and beauty, but our advancement will stop if we cannot face the fact that people are part made and part born.

The Metaphysics

If one asks, is ultimate reality will, or matter, or spirit, I answer matter---both will and spirit are part of matter in being supermaterial. Theological materialism grows from this perceptive.

This new metaphysics attaches itself to the old metaphysics, Godhood Itself is supermaterial, and the dynamic of material-supermaterial evolution shapes material life, activated by the Spirit-Will to Godhood.

This philosophy can close the gap between the natural and supernatural, between science and religion. Science still needs to discover and define the Spirit-Will activating life, therefore faith and idealism need to remain as part of this natural metaphysics.

God and Corporeality

The message of theological materialism says that traditional religions, perhaps without exception, say it is a transgression to attribute corporeality to God. Some religions mean this in the sense of anyone defining man as God, but all religions mean this also in the sense of God having no corporeality, material body. Reality is the opposite of this, it is a transgression to attribute no corporeality to God.

The problem comes from the confounding of the Inward and Outward Paths. It is in the Involutionary Inward Path that one seeks to block out corporeality, the material world and its desires, so that one may glimpse the God within the Soul of man. This is behind the disciplines of the ascetics.

The Evolutionary Outward Path is the Path to Real Godhood, the Path to supermaterial, supercorporeal Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution. Whereas the Inward Path is only a mirror seen in the Soul of some of the power of Real Godhood, the opposite of Plato.

The Outward Path does not cancel out the Inward Path, but traditional religion does cancel out the Outward Path. This is a theological error.. Both Paths are affirmed in the Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church.

Balanced Values In The Twofold Path

It may look at times that less importance is given to the Involutionary Inward Path than to the Evolutionary Outward Path, but this is not the reality. The Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church requires both the Inward and Outward Paths.  And all of religious history has been almost exclusively devoted to the Inward Path.

The brilliant and misunderstood Raymond Cattell spoke of two wings of the ethical system, the universal maintenance values of the larger world group, and the evolutionary values of the specific national group. In the Twofold Path, the Inward Path has been the universal path, the path for maintaining traditional society, which sees the same God-Within in all people and can therefore call for a universal value system. This is the base of universalism in religion.

The Evolutionary Outward Path can be more evolutionary, more experimental, indeed it must be, as it is responsible for the evolution of life to Godhood in the cosmos, the God first mirrored in the Inward Path of traditional religion.

But the key here is to have evolution not revolution, the Inward Path can synthesize the new into the old, and can balance the Inward Path with the Outward Path, in an evolutionary and not revolutionary way.  This is also the base of a Revitalized Conservatism. But when only the Inward Path maintenance-values are applied the society stagnates.  

The various temperaments of various people and groups in relation to evolution and revolution make our overall evolution more difficult to apply, but it nevertheless needs to be done if we are to survive on earth and fulfill the sacred mission of evolving to Godhood in the cosmos.

Small States and the World

One place Religion and the Enlightenment worked together was in turning upside down the gradation of values in human nature. The world was placed at the top of human valuation and the small group, the small state, at the bottom, by both idealism and rationalization.

Human nature places the small group, the small state, above the world, genetically or instinctively. This does not mean that the world is not important to survival but that human nature is far less bonded to the world than to the small group.

This transvaluation may have been done out of ignorance in some cases but it was also exploited by those who gained hierarchical power from insisting on non-hierarchical world values. For example, both Lenin's communism and global capitalism insisted on an globalist value system, which needed a dictatorship to make it happen, until the world could think globally, a time that never came.

Kin-centric, ethnocentric and region-centric human nature can be denied, even forcefully, but that will not make human nature go away. Repressing or suppressing it will bring all kinds of problems and exploitations. Better to have a sociopolitical system which declares that the world may be important to ultimate human survival, but if it excludes the small group, the small state, the world will fall apart, back to small states and small groups.  History shows this to be true.

Competition is not evil, but cooperative competition is needed. Those who insist on a noncompetitive, non-hierarchical world end up forcing the world to be unequal, ruled by an unequal hierarchy. Better to have many hierarchies, many small groups, many small states, guarded by a light federalism. This does not go against real human nature. Then we can all get on with evolution.