On the Origin and Direction of Life

Biologist Harold Morowitz describes “metabolism” as the chemical reaction that allows cells to turn energy and atoms into molecules. The molecules then play a role in other chemical reactions that lead to bio-molecules, like amino acids, and eventually to genetic molecules such as RNA. That is, metabolism comes first before cells or replication, before life as we know it. There could even be a kind of molecular natural selection in geochemistry, with some molecular chains out-competing others for the planet's resources.

Ken Wilber says, with some courage, that these molecular mutations are not at all random. Wilber sees a force pushing randomness in a driven evolutionary process. He also speaks of Eros-love as the drive of upward evolution, and Agape-love as embracing downward or involutionary love.

I can affirm much of this using the terminology of the Theoevolutionary Churchh. The Involutionary Inward Path is of Agape, Christian love of the Father-Within, and the Evolutionary Outward Path is Eros, reproduction, evolutionary love, leading to Godhood in the cosmos. We can think of heroism as a the virtue of the Outward Path, and saintliness as a virtue of the Inward Path. The Twofold Path then affirms both Paths, but gives precedence to the evolutionary Outward Path to real Godhood.

I see no duality between the noumenal and phenomenal world of Agape and Eros, I see the so-called non-material as supermaterial.  Natural forces make up the world, concrete things exist, abstract names or the numbers of things do not.

The Primal Material gives birth to the world through such things as geochemical metabolism and mutating biological molecules, but there is more to this birth than environmental events. The Spirit-Will, or Super-Id within life, at the zenith of the instincts, activates life toward Godhood, which is then shaped by evolution. This is the basis of theological materialism.