Scientific and Religious Evolution

The heroic Raymond Cattell said that science grasps little more than a meaningful pattern to evolution, little more than the evolutionary process, and that the best we can do on earth is follow this path until our minds our equal to the answers. But religion will go where science will not go, and the theological materialism of the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) perceives a Godhood goal to the pattern of evolution. Also, the TC sees life activated by the Spirit-Will before evolution, with all its randomness, shapes life.

The TC connects this evolutionary religion with the traditional God and Spirit of Christianity, and the great religions, which are now seen as precursor experiences to the Godhood attained through material and supermaterial evolution. Symbolically the Spirit-Will also connects with an even more ancient idea of Father-Spirit and Mother-Earth. This religious philosophy avoids some of the radicalism of Cattell's superb Beyondism (religion from science) while highly valuing and applying science in religious evolution.

The Spirit-Will is not the gnostic “God above God” because it seeks more than it is, it seeks Godhood, which is why it is formally called the Spirit-Will-To Godhood. Material life and the Spirit are never separated, material life is the evolutionary vehicle of the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood.

This evolutionary religion moves beyond mankind out into the cosmos, but we arrive at our goals through the love of the earth, and with the evolutionary group-selection of basic human nature, made possible by small independent states, cooperatively protected in their variety with a light federalism. Evolutionary science and religion can work well in this environment.