Trans-valuing the Great Spiritual Blockade

We have been warned for centuries by religious mystics not to equate the spiritual with objective things because the spiritual than becomes an object, an “It” rather than a “Thou.” This is the Great Spiritual Blockade against material-supermaterial evolution to real Godhood. Godhood is an object, a supermaterial object.  The “It,” the supermaterial object, not the Thou, is what we seek when we seek the Divine.
 
“Thou” requires the nonmaterial perspective of the Inward God, which is really the desire-free experience of bliss, or nothingness, attained from being desire-free, and then defined as God or the Father-Within. The God Within needs to be retained but put in its place and seen as a symbolic-experience of the real object Godhood reached through material evolution.  This is the Twofold Path.

Does seeking Divine Objects lead to “idol” worship? We want idols, material and supermaterial idols, real living objects, which help us along the way as we evolve to Godhood in the cosmos. The Pagans were wrongly condemned for worshiping idols by those who worshiped nonmaterial “nothing,” or by those who made idols of texts and definitions of God.  
 
Philosophers and theologians have tried to save religion by including real living people, by cleverly finding some value (reluctantly) in actual life, but the real goal for the religiously serious has been to rid the body of all natural desires so as to experience the Father-Within.
 
A trans-valuation of the Great Spiritual Blockade is needed in religion to save religion from fading into the nothingness which it essentially seeks.

The continuum of faith and science in theological materialism

Many years ago Nietzsche pointed out that human morals and valuations had lost the preservative function which animal instincts have, creating missing or chaotic value systems. Sociobiology tends to agree, saying human valuations in reality preserve the individual, community, state, culture etc. The almost experimental morality of modern life has all but lost its preservative instincts and lost the preservative function of values.

The evolutionary perspective of theological materialism adds the end-goal of evolving to Godhood to our valuations and morals . This necessitates preserving individuals and cultures, but it offers a continuum of valuations all the way to Godhood in the cosmos. Theological materialism follows science all the way, particularly sociobiology, but unlike Nietzsche, it also includes Jesus, Plato, Kant and Hegel in that their philosophy transcended science with the belief in a romantic “beyond.”  This beyond applies even when the beyond is truncated as an Inward God.

What theological materialism adds is the belief that science will one day affirm our evolution to Godhood, so that Godhood will then be located both in faith and in science. Virtues are looked at as evolutionary conditions. The highest beauty, intelligence, truth and goodness is attained when Godhood is attained in evolution. To adapt a phrase of Nietzsche, this is the way all the chords in tragic being can ring in splendid unison.  This path of our evolution to Godhood isn't seen as a contradiction between faith and science but as a continuum.

Branching causes with no first cause

I see the cosmos something like the way Frederick Turner sees time, “cause and effect is not a chain but a branching tree in both temporal directions.” The same cause can have many different effects and the same effect can result from many different causes.

I avoid the metaphysical and theological hairsplitting about “first causes” by not seeing a first cause. I see an endless branching of cause and effect.

This worldview harmonizes with the belief that we evolve to Godhood materially and supermaterially, a Godhood which is not the first cause.

There are always cosmos arising from a Primal Material and the activating supermaterial Spirit-Will within the primal material, never separate from it.

Religion, Godhood and even science can survive and prosper without a first cause.

There are only real objects and secondary definitions of those objects

Unreal names and concepts are worshiped, this is oddly called philosophical “realism.” This unreality has hypertrophied into an idolatry of definitions and names for God. God or Gods become a name or names only and not a real object.

In understanding Being, philosophical nominalism is primary, realism is secondary. There are only real objects and secondary definitions of those objects. “Universal” definitions and concepts are secondary to the real objects they try to define.

Godhood is an object, a living object, not a non-object, not a non-material thing, not a name only, not a text, not a blissful feeling only, not a spiritual concept only. Godhood is a real material or supermaterial object, or objects, which we evolve to become in the living world.

The Great Spiritual Blockade seen in the idolatry of names, and the blissful experience of the Inward God, have blocked our evolution to real Godhood. Should we therefore throw out religion for promoting this false idolatry of names and feelings? That would be too radical or revolutionary for practical human life.

The God of names, definitions and feelings, the Inward God, can be saved or revitalized when the feelings and names for the Father Within are understood as a symbolic-experience of the real Godhood reached by material and supermaterial evolution. This is how the Twofold Path synthesizes old and new religion.

Life itself declares its own morality

For example, life says it's good to survive and reproduce successfully, whether we acknowledge this as good or not. Contrary to Nietzsche and his postmodernist followers there is a moral phenomena within the very nature of life, which means that moral phenomena are not merely interpretations of phenomena.

The so-called “naturalistic fallacy” deriving “ought” from “is” is not a fallacy. We cannot act in a way that we are not, without having imbalance problems, physiologically and psychologically. Our actions can only reflect what we are, we are restricted by what we are. We can lead with what we are and then gradually, with ordered evolution, change. Unnatural laws offer only short-term success in the long-term evolution of life, and when unnatural laws become culture it is usually only to the selfish advantage of the promoters of the unnatural laws and doesn’t last long because the laws go against actual human nature.

Sociobiology needs to enter the humanities, the academies, and the media. Political correctness and cultural Marxism, which now dominate our cultural elites, are an abuse of human nature and an abuse of philosophical naturalism. A few gain temporary benefit for their own survival and reproduction at the expense of all the others. Human nature is the human nature as defined by E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology and not as defined by Marxism.

I believe when human nature is allowed to be itself it leads to the cultural and political configuration of ethnopluralism, where each distinct group has its own small state or region protected by a light federalism. Real human nature is kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

But in a seemingly contradictory direction, I also think we need to go beyond present naturalistic empirical science and affirm the material Spirit-Will to Godhood within life as part of life itself, activating life to evolve to Godhood. This belief in the beyond is accomplished by synthesizing other fields and intuitions into present empirical science. It is freely admitted that the belief in the beyond, like faith or theory, is necessary for the morality and values of our evolution to Godhood---science will find proof later.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

How we can all (mostly) get along

The great falsehood of modernity denies the antiquity of human nature or even denies that there is a human nature. So we can begin to solve the problems of modernity by first admitting and then affirming our real human nature, which was largely formed a million to 15 thousand years ago in the hunter-gatherer times of the Paleolithic, and we still have that human nature.

I repeat it often in this blog, human nature has throughout history been kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This nature has not changed, but modernity has culturally tried to change it.

“Multiculturalism” made an attempt to affirm human nature but took a wide left turn by demanding that we all get along in equality while living within the same territories, even as we try to express our distinct differences. This often led to civil disturbances, even civil war, or the loss of variety and distinctiveness. Government has even been used to try to force distinctly different people to all get along in equality, but this didn't work, as was seen in the short social experiment of the Soviet Union.

Ethnopluralism can correct some of the mistakes of modernity and multiculturalism by affirming our differences within small states and regions, by allotting territorial space where variety and ethnic differences can naturally live and be championed by all. Even the original U.S. Constitution could adapt to ethnopluralism because it originally allotted power to individual states and regions and protected them with a light federalism. Europe, Russia, even China could do the same thing---empires eventually fall and return to these small ethnic states in any case, as human history has shown time and again.

The task would be not to promote only egalitarian cooperation, and not to promote only capitalist competition, but to promote “cooperative competition” between distinct states with a variety of distinct ethnic groups. International research centers can be used by all to help in our continued evolution toward Godhood in the cosmos.

During this holiday season this is the politically incorrect way I think in terms of how we can all (mostly) get along in the future.

How women tend to be conservative

The political correctness of gender neutrality which rules the media doesn't want to hear it, but during this holiday season I have again seen that women tend to be conservative in this way: women closely examine character, behavior, etc, more than men do, perhaps because women have to invest so much of their bodies and time in child-rearing. Women believe in their man, they believe in the qualities and character of leadership, they give attention to the looks of a man, and then they tend to secondarily (but not unimportantly) consider the person's ideology or abstract philosophy. I use the term “tend” here because there are obviously many exceptions to any rule about this behavior.

Women will tend to support their children more even when they violate the values of the family, whereas men tend to think more in terms of unemotional abstract justice. A good balance seems often to be achieved in traditional marriages between paying attention to people and paying attention to values, which can be applied to political philosophy. Of course we need both. Not giving full attention to ideology first but giving more attention to the actual behavior of people is the way most conservatives define real Conservatism.

I'm not against intellectuals, I am one, but both liberal and conservative intellectuals tend to think too symbolically, which often separates their ideas from real life. Even religion, which pays more attention to behavior, can go too far in its abstract definitions losing sight of actual human nature. Perhaps it would make more sense to distinguish between intellectuals and behaviorists rather than liberals and conservatives. Human kind can get in a lot of trouble trying to create cultures that do not reflect real human nature and real human behavior. Left more to their own natural devices it seems to me that women tend to be more realistically or at least biologically grounded, but then intellectuals and ideologies often turn women---and men---away from natural behavior, especially during these times of political correctness.

Restoring order

By rejecting religion our culture was for awhile down to thinking that it is merely art which could provide or restore order---even the courageous Nietzsche had this perspective.

But postmodern art no longer even wants to play the role of creating order in a chaotic world, it wants to reflect the chaos, or often doesn't even want to reflect that much. Now so-called high art is down to nothing, nihilism.

Nietzsche at least never lost sight of our biological nature in relation to the creations of man and culture, but modern philosophy with its arcane definitions and ideologies, and with less courage, tried to move beyond the foundation in nature.

Science also tried to find order, but science will not fill in the blanks outside of empirical facts, so science reflects a half-ordered world.

For most of human history it was religion and philosophy that affirmed order. Our Ordered Evolution to Godhood can restore religious order, an order that includes both art and science.

Nature and human nature are in accord with the Ordered Evolution of material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood, which is also the zenith of success in survival and reproduction---this can order our cultural creations and our behavior, for the long term.

Two roads diverge in transhumanism

The first road biologically and genetically modifies natural evolution, the second road moves beyond what we are to join with machines or become artificial life. I affirm the first road of conscious evolutionary modification of billions of years of unconscious evolution, from the simple to the complex, using many forms of biological enhancements.

The superstructure of genetics and bioengineering needs to rest on the evolutionary base of biology and genetics, and not become a new artificial structure without a natural base. We can enhance our genetic and biological capabilities endlessly as we evolve toward Godhood, but if we upload ourselves into silicone chips we could end natural evolutionary life, which is a diabolical end.

There seems to be something almost paranoid about those who see racism behind any talk of the improvement of hereditary qualities, which is taken to the point of preferring artificial evolution to biological evolution, as with many transhumanists. A very cynical reading could also see those who wish to stop the evolutionary biological improvement of hereditary qualities as an underhanded way to enhance their own genes, consciously or unconsciously, by stopping the advancement of others.

Ethics can be inferred from evolutionary history (what else?) otherwise we attempt to go beyond nature itself. This does nor mean we will not move beyond the human species, ethnocentrism, for example, has been a stopping off place to secure beneficial mutations before moving on to the next stage, the next pause, the next species.

Vulgus and Virtus

Let me try to broadly define vulgus and virtus. Devolution defines vulgus, and evolution defines virtus. Cultural values stem from this base, and both sides need to be addressed. Religion is traditionally the primary teacher of these things and other cultural institutions follow.

As actual history has shown us, all great civilizations develop out of a religious base and when the religion falls the civilization falls. But religions are primarily promulgated by people, specific people, and when the people change, or fall, the religion and cultures change, or fall.

As ethnopluralism develops naturally across the world in the future, in small states and regions, these definitions will be better attended to, for long term success in general. Change by way of evolution becomes the mold or form, not change merely seen as the ordered liberty of conservatism, but conservative change as Ordered Evolution, an evolution which practically deals with both vulgus and virtus for all groups.

And where is evolution going?  Toward higher and higher truth, beauty, intelligence, power and goodness, with the goal of Godhood as the absolute zenith of these things, the Godhood first partially seen as the God or Father Within.

The Twofold Path supersedes the blissful but dead end of Nirvana and Inward Heaven

According to Buddhism (Sthiramati) true reality is emptiness, which we can only see when we do not “cling” to self and phenomena, and thus see true reality. This is called “liberation” from bondage. The goal is to feel neither attachment or aversion to the world. This is called liberation and nirvana.

This is also hedonism, this is the description of the bliss felt (however great) from freeing the mind and body of all material desires. This project indicates hedonism only, and it is not the goal of the Evolutionary Outward Path to real Godhood, it is the goal of the Involuntary Inward Path to the nirvana of the Inward God or Father-Within, the Heaven-Within which Jesus Christ also sought, and found.

We can have both, but the Inward Path applied exclusively stops all life, progress and evolution in the world in the interest of bliss. Northern India, the home of Buddha, was very good at doing this, and Christian monasticism also was good at this same deep ascetic procedure (the beatific vision), which was not unlike dying. But bliss can be gotten both from having no desire, and from completely fulfilling desire.

It is time to evolve out into the cosmos toward real Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution, while keeping the Inward Path as a first symbolic-experience of what real living Godhood may be like once we attain it. This is the Twofold Path.

Being as Thou, It, or as Object?

We are told to consider things as Thou, not It, not as Objects, but this theology has been abused. We try to stretch our “love” beyond natural limits, beyond our natural love for self, kin, extended kin, and ethnic community, because in reality love naturally decreases as we get further away from our biological-genetic connections, which is perfectly natural.

The theologians and philosophers have attempted to save the Thou-attitude toward All by misdefining God as beyond nature, beyond the world---they do not define Godhood as a supremely evolved supermaterial Object in the cosmos, as we do. Defining God as beyond nature and only spiritual sets up a false ontology that leads to trying to emulate a way of living and loving that is beyond our natures, and beyond the real world, even beyond real Godhood.

If we can first admit our natural connections and boundaries then we can have a better chance of finding realistic ways to try to get along and respect those who are not close to us, for example, by affirming ethnopluralism. When we try to demand that we love equally those close and those far away we demand actions that have never really worked. We can all evolve to Godhood but we first have to admit who we actually are, and what Godhood really is.

Answering Nietzsche

Nietzsche thought Christianity ruined mankind for the benefit of creating the good meek man, and as a consequence mankind was in danger of perishing, owing to an ideal that was hostile to life. The demands of the species were ignored in affirming the weak individual, leading to the ruin of the species. The unnatural became law. Nietzsche asked the question, was Christianity really worth anything, and his answers was “no.”

Nietzsche believed that Christianity reverses the principle of natural selection, but I see this as exclusively confined to the Involutionary Inward Path to the God or Father Within, which requires the blocking of all material desires---this does not apply to the Evolutionary Outward Path of material-supermaterial evolution to Godhood. This is the transformation seen in the theological materialism of the Evolutionary Christian Church.

The ancient Inward Path can be included in the ancient Outward Path. The symbolic-experience of the Inward God becomes the real Outward God of evolution. Nietzsche's philosophy helped lead to the horrors of World War Two, and the nihilism of post-modernism, rather than the health and strength Nietzsche wanted. Religion can be conservatively transformed in the Ordered Evolution to Godhood, the golden alchemy of the Twofold Path transforms the material and the spiritual, science and religion, and brings them together. Goethe's Faust and Nietzsche's Superman might have hoped for such a transformation.

The embarrassment of Sweden's gender neutrality

Political correctness (or cultural Marxism) has gotten so bad on the gender-neutrality front in Sweden that I could even be banned in my grandfather's homeland for merely saying that I am embarrassed by it! Have they never heard of the science of sociobiology?! Science has found incontrovertible evidence of the biological origins of much of cultural behavior, including gender differences! Sweden might have been better off imposing the “other feminism,” the Camille Paglia version celebrating gender differences and even considering the female superior.

Sweden has virtually dropped “He” and “She” (Han and Hon) for the pronoun “Hen”! Gender neutrality is now virtually the state religion! They have a “Minister for Gender Equality” and it is not a Monty Python sketch! Your career can be ruined if you openly object! The government and other institution are legally imposing the the destruction of gender itself! Sweden is not seeking equality it is seeking to erase the male gender! As James Kalb wrote, erasing the real distinctions of human nature, such as gender, culture, family, ethnicity, religion, leaves only the far more superficial class, money, style, occupational level, and educational certification to define or identify who we are.

The Nordic brain is magnificent, Sweden of all country’s should have been able to develop a solid meritocracy letting gender, race, etc, go where they naturally go. But the Nordic brain is also capable of exaggerating the neo-cortex, the newer rational brain, over the other two parts of the brain, the ones that are involved in gender differences, hierarchies and even xenophobia. Whole people learn to harmonize the whole brain, otherwise they are half-people. Real human nature is still there, as Jung said, the river-bed can only temporarily dry up.

There is a Swedish word called “jantelagen,” the ingrained aversion to standing out (North Asians seem to have it to), which has perhaps helped them sacrifice themselves heroically for the good of the larger group. Maybe the best that can come of Sweden's immolation of itself is that they will serve as an example for other people who might want to impose the same dangerous absurdities on their people.

Two kinds of overcompensation

I've wondered if Nietzsche realistically realized the savageness of the noble barbarian warriors which he championed over the taming of them by Christianity, and if he might have been overcompensating. When Achilles dragged the dead body of Hector around the walls of Troy, Achilles was civilized compared to the usual scalp-taking savage barbarians. They did need taming, but I would agree that the taming should not have been to the degree that the Inward Path of the great monotheistic religions tried to tame them, in ridding the body of all desires to see-experience the Father Within.

Rome did fall at least to some degree from having accepted the non-warrior humility and individualism of Christianity, although there was passive martyrdom, the individual was made to be so important that he could not be sacrificed for the demands of the group, which is the base of the heroism often needed to defend the group. This was done in the face of group-selection being the primary unit of selection for survival and reproductive success, which is to this day still true (see the sociobiology of  Wilson)

Ordered Evolution toward Godhood can tame or civilize mankind more realistically and less harshly than the barbarian-yet-culture-creating-beast of Nietzsche on the one side, or the ascetic denial of nature and human nature by religion on the other side. Ordered Evolution can retain the Inward Path to the God Within of the great religions but transform it to the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood--- which is evolutionary not revolutionary, and actually conservative.

The whole man in political philosophy

Here is a thought experiment in political philosophy applying the use of the three brains of humans, the reptilian, limbic, and new mammalian brain including the frontal neocortex. The far left and modern liberals want to use only the newest neocortex in their egalitarian idealism, virtually ignoring the other parts of the brain, the far right want to apply only the primitive territorial reptilian brain, ignoring the other parts of the brain, and the Burkean conservatives and perhaps centrists tend to include all three brains.

So what happens when the whole man is not utilized? As I have written before in this blog, physiological psychologists like Cattell and Eysenck talked about the difficulties caused by our triune brain which evolved in stages, with all three brains still working almost as complete brains in themselves.

As Eysenck saw it, modern neuroses arises when there is conflict between messages from the primitive brain and the less powerful second neocortex system---the rational neocortex recognizes the “inappropriate” nature of the feelings (anxiety, fear, anger, etc) but it seems powerless to override the primitive system.

Modern cultural/social schemes seem to want to drop the primitive brain entirely which then allows the neocortex to think up all manner of cultural/social schemes which may not relate to real human nature or the three brains. Biologically based traits such as gender differences, age-grading, marriage-making, hierarchy, ethnocentrism, religion-making, group-selection, which help define a more whole human nature, seem to derive mainly from parts of our brain that are millions of years old---trying to ignore them creates a general modern form of neuroses.

Reality has always been difficult to see or face for humans. The denial of the three-brained human nature becomes a modern neurosis, the affirmation of whole human nature becomes the way to health. What to override and what not to override is the cultural question. Coordination of the three brains seems important to our health. We want to continue evolving and improving, watched over by the rational mind, but we can't ignore what we still are and be healthy, or even survive, as we evolve. This seems to affirm the conservative way of evolving, that is, with Ordered Evolution, taking into account the whole man, and not with radical revolution using only selected parts of human nature.

Beauty and Godhood

We may not want to center only on Beauty as the best metaphor for defining life evolving to Godhood when we have the other fundamental qualities of the highest truth, intelligence, and goodness, etc., but beauty needs to be brought out more than it has been. Truth is powerful yet somehow beauty seems more basic to our material-supermaterial evolution to Godhood. The sense of beauty seems like a more directly understandable metaphor for Godhood than truth or goodness, which are more abstract.

There was always something appealing and real about the attitude of the Ancient Pagan religions toward beauty, think of Greece, and much of this was lost when the monotheist religions concentrated on the Inward Path and the desirelessness which was necessary to experience the God Within, which is a blockade of the senses. In the theological materialism of the TC, the Godhood first seen in the Inward Path is attained in the Outward Path, at the zenith of evolutionary survival and reproduction, and this is definitely related to the real world of the senses.
 
Godhood can be seen as the zenith of beautiful living objects, the best of the world, not outside the material world but at the zenith of the supermaterial world, even as Godhood is also defined as the most intelligent, truthful, powerful etc. This is how beauty can be centered on.

Toward the healthiest means of taming the beast

“...the last step was reached, and this was the absolute demand to deny nature.” (Nietzsche)

Is there a need to tame man as Nietzsche thought Christianity did? Nietzsche spent much of his life studying the pre-Socratic heroes which he thought of as magnificent beasts not in need of taming. But Nietzsche seems to have gone too far in defending untamed man---did Nietzsche consciously overcompensate? Nietzsche in fact preferred the pre-Socratic heroes to the Christian martyrs.

The way to civilize the beast can now be seen in our Ordered Evolution toward Godhood, taking into account the conservative wisdom of bringing the new into the old, in the manner of natural evolution. What we now know about evolution and real human nature---which is among other traditional things, kin-centered, ethnocentric, and altruistically group-selecting---points toward a world that can no longer proclaim one noble nation or chosen people over all others without initiating constant civil strife or war, which brings human evolution and perhaps human life to a halt.

We need now to think in terms of ethnopluralism with distinct regions and small states for distinct people, which people tend to naturally gather into in any case. The “higher spheres” we may postulate for mankind need to first sanction real human nature. Then we can all get on with the religious mission of evolving to Godhood, with variety, which is the healthiest means of “taming the beast.” The Inward Father-Within of Christianity, or the God Within of other religions, is brought along and transformed in the Godhood reached by Ordered Evolution.

Why we need wisdom

The conservative message is that we do not have the wisdom to order the world and so we should not declare absolute ideologies. But we do have life, which deterministically wants to at least find ways of living successfully in survival and reproduction. So we try to order the world using whatever wisdom we have, and if not direct wisdom we use probabilities of wisdom. This is how we develop our cultures.

Where do we look for wisdom to try to order the world? Conservatives tend to look to religion, modern liberals look to science and perhaps philosophy, but we need all of these. What often happens, however, is that power orders the world rather than wisdom, because power can lead to success in survival and reproduction. But without wisdom, power often offers only short-term success.

I define the longest-term success of all as evolving to Godhood in the cosmos, which is where evolutionary religion enters the worldview regarding how to order the world. The abstractions of the inward religions distance us from the concrete and they need to be transformed into real life and real objects evolving in the world. New culture forms around the synthesis of the traditional Inward Path of religion and progressive Outward Path of religion and science.

What can be shared among distinctly different people and cultures is not absolute sacred dogma but the shared practice of evolving. For this we can apply the wisdom of religion, philosophy and science which can helps us negotiate the ambiguities of our evolution to Godhood. Projected international research centers come from this perspective.

The unworkable utopias of both modern liberalism and modern conservatism

Modern conservatism and modern liberalism make the same mistake of trying to impose one culture on diverse people. Even the paleoconservatives want one English-speaking, religion-oriented traditional America, no matter how diverse the population may be. And modern liberalism wants one politically-correct or culturally Marxist creed promoting a Utopian kind of diversity and multiculturalism where all people, no matter how diverse, live happily together happily tolerating one another. Given human nature, both ways have proven to be virtually unworkable in the varied populations of the modern world.

One-world, one-people creeds or philosophies seem to have kept mankind from seeing the real dynamics of human history, where small natural ethnostates and ethnopluralism always decay into imperialism and multiculturalism. So why not try to maintain ethnostates and ethnopluralism in the first place? To do this the Left would have to adopt the real unwritten traditions and unwritten natural behavior of the people, and the Right would have to adopt the Enlightenment view of a human nature which does not show a divine preference within human nature for one religious creed, or one people.

The United States seen as a Republic with largely independent small states, and a limited federal government designed to protect those small states, internally and externally, could lend itself naturally to ethnopluralism, which could then harmonize with all we know about general human nature, which is, among other things, kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. One-world creeds, Left and Right, need to adapt to a real world of cooperative competition between distinctly different people living in different regions, with small states protected by some sort of light federalism, rather than deadly imperialism.  Radical revolution, which otherwise seems more likely, needs to be avoided. Then perhaps we all can get on with the sacred mission of evolving toward Godhood.

Avoiding the death of the West while retaining tradition and modernity

“...Last year's words await another voice.” T. S. Eliot

Conservatives are for God, Family and Country, but how and why we are conservative is important. Do we harken back to the Classical and Christian heritage only, as most conservatives do, or should we go back much farther to the Paleolithic?

By studying the Paleolithic and its importance in forming the human nature we still have to this day we can better deal with modernity, which began around the time of the Enlightenment in the 18^th century. Science, modernity, sociobiology, have affirmed the conservative view of human nature, but minus the religious perspective---no small minus. This sociobiological affirmation of the conservative view of human nature is important, as often listed on this blog, human nature is kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection, among other things.

The next step comes with retaining the Inward symbolic-experience of the Father-Within but transforming it to the real Godhood reached in the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution. This can bring the Classical, Christian (and other religions) and Modernism together so that we can go on affirming Godhood, Family and Country (or ethnopluralism), and we can also affirm at least some of the science, evolution and culture of modernism.... Without basking in the incomplete metaphysics of sin and guilt, the death of the West can be averted.

The differing proofs of hedonism and evolution

Happiness as proof suggests hedonism. Success in evolution is also proof which can be rated higher even than successful survival and reproduction, although they are connected. We need to do more than merely survive and reproduce, more than science has so far affirmed, we need to evolve higher toward Godhood. This is the evolutionary base largely missing from traditional religion and largely missing in modern culture.

Evolution is the primary dynamic of the Evolutionary Outward Path toward Godhood, the Godhood first experienced in the Inward Path, and here evolution ranks as a higher proof than the happiness of hedonism. To adapt a Nietzschean idea, evolution is in danger of perishing do to an ideal which is hostile to life. We don't want the brute or the beast back but civilizing the beast does not mean destroying the passions and motivations of life itself.

It is a tricky business to know the difference between refining mankind and subduing mankind. The Twofold Path points out that there is a difference between refining mankind in the Outward Path of evolution and suppressing mankind in the exclusive Inward Path of traditional religion. The Father Within of the Involutionary Inward Path is a taming process of subduing all desires, which is necessary for the hedonistic bliss of experiencing the God Within. But the experience of the Father Within is then carried forward in our Ordered Evolution toward real Godhood.  The old is not rejected it is conservatively carried forward with the new.

Compassion and otherworldly religions

Abstractions have of course allowed us the brilliant technology which improved our world, but abstractions can limit concrete compassion when built into an abstract view of God. Making God an abstract definition or occult equation beyond or unconnected to the material world can distance God and religion from people.

Seeking salvation from the world seems not as physically and psychologically healthy as seeking harmony with the material world. To advocate ending suffering by the extreme measure of ridding the body of all desires seems inherently unfair and deceptive to real life. If your left hand offends you cut it off?!

When Godhood and religion are seen in and of the world, at the evolutionary zenith of the world, and not seen as a religious abstraction or occult definition, this can bring more real compassion to concrete life. We evolve to Godhood by way of the material world, and cutting out the material world can cut out real compassion, and more importantly, it blocks the attainment of real Godhood. That kind of salvation almost seems diabolical.

But rather than the extreme, uncompassionate, measure of cutting religion out entirely, as Nietzsche tried to do, the God or Father Within, which is reached by a few people in all the great religions by way of the ascetic discipline of ridding the body of desires, needs to be seen as a partial symbolic-experience of real Godhood reached through material and supermaterial evolution. This is the grace of the Twofold Path.

Immanentizing the Spiritual

The primacy of culture over politics in a world that now places politics over almost everything? How about the primacy of biology over culture and politics? This takes it deeper, although culture and biology are co-evolutionary. Turning around the old conservative cleverness, we in fact want to biologize the eschaton, contrary to Voegelin, since it is biology and evolution that take us to the end-goal of Godhood, rather than burying biology in wordy asceticism, which is where the great religions in reality are most comfortable. We can have both the Inward God within as well as the Outward Path of evolution to real Godhood. Religion needs to stop looking down its thin nose at the very evolution which brings us to Godhood---the Inward Path to the Father Within has only partially seen or symbolically experienced the real supermaterial Godhood reached through evolution in the Outward Path.

The perfection of faith?

I like to think that science can be the perfection of faith. We usually hear from religious thinkers that faith is the perfection of reason, rather than seeing reason as the perfection of faith. I see religious faith as resembling hypothesis which science can later verify. This is how I think of joining religion and science, which gives respect to both approaches to knowledge and wisdom. Science also creates hypothesis of course and religion can affirm scientific truths.

Again, it is the false duality between spirit and matter which I think sets up this tension. Religion tends to want to make the material essentially spiritual and science wants to make the spiritual material. I see the spiritual as supermaterial which helps relax the tensions.  Then religion can enter the real world again, legitimately and not begrudgingly, without rejecting it, especially as we evolve to Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution.

The basic philosophical-religious framework

There are material Objects, some alive some inanimate, and there are non-object definitions or abstractions of objects made by material human minds---I think in these terms rather than “thing-in-itself.” Each object is only as “free” as it can be within the determined choices of its nature, and this largely defines the object.

Human nature also has freedom within determined choices. Human nature was developed in Paleolithic times, and modern human cultures developed out of this Hunter-Gatherer human nature interacting with the environment. Human nature is therefore kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This human nature seems to be the most harmonious in survival and reproduction with some form of ethnopluralism in political philosophy.

Godhood is also a material-supermaterial Object (or Objects) but a supremely evolved Object. Godhood has the most freedom, intelligence, beauty, power, etc. of all objects and these superior traits were developed in the evolution of the material object to supermaterial Godhood in the cosmos.

The great religions discovered the symbolic experience of seeing-experiencing Godhood inwardly, in the Inward Path, and the actual life of objects were unfortunately sometimes thought of as not much more than an illusion. Jesus Christ was a martyr for the ascetic cause of bringing the Inward Father to the people, whereas Buddha, who lived a full life, taught more or less the same Inward God. The Twofold Path helps us resolve the metaphysical nearsightedness of seeing only a God Within at the zenith of the human mind, by also affirming the Outward Path of the evolution of material life to the real supermaterial Godhood.

The Dynamic of the Paleolithic and the Problems of Modernity

Thinkers on the conservative Right advocate going back to the Classical and Christian heritage which created the West to solve the problems of modernity which was initiated by the Enlightenment, but that does not go back far enough in our recovery. We need to go back and study the Paleolithic where human nature became what it still is today. The long Paleolithic period not only gives us insight into modernity and the classical and Christian heritage, it gives us insight into the human nature which helped create and develop these things.

The Right often makes the recovery of the Classical and Christian heritage seem like the solution to all are problems, period, but this heritage also has problems which the Paleolithic can help us solve. Sociobiology has studied the Paleolithic, among other things, and revitalized the idea of human nature being truly kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

This points toward political and religious forms that can harmonize with real human nature and nature itself. This calls for a sacred which is really not foreign to nature and to human nature. This does not suggest radical revolution---the classical, the Christian, and modernism can be revitalized---each of them alone is not enough. Real conservatism does not throw away the past as modernism has more or less done, but conservatism also would not throw away modernity as the traditional religions more or less do. The great error comes from separating the city of God from the city of man, but this derives from the other great error of separating the material from the spiritual. We evolve in the material world to supermaterial Godhood, which is expounded upon in the religious philosophy of this blog.

In America we were a continental Republic which made a great mistake in becoming a global empire. We need to get back to a continental Republic. Power needs to be given back to the states and regions and the central government needs to be shrunk to being mainly the protector of the states, internally and externally. Furthermore, we need to eventually acknowledge the distinctions between different ethnic groups in America and orient ourselves toward regional ethnostates, protected by a light federalism. This is what can calm present and future civil disorder, and this is what can harmonize with the Classical and Christian heritage to help solve the problems of modernity.

Where we stand with the various movements

This seems like a big transitional period in the West, when the religion and values of the West are declining fast, something like when the Roman Empire was declining, and new movements are vying to fill the great gap. Our religious philosophy very generally grew out of Raymond Cattell's “Beyondism,” Kirk and Buchanan's “Paleoconservatism,” and Wilson's "Sociobiology." I was encouraged in my early writings by Wilmot Robertson, and a few notable times by Cattell, for a period I considered myself a racial nationalist, although I was never a member of anything, but none of these movements affirm my work now in theological materialism, the Twofold Path, the ECC, or in ethnopluralism, at least not openly.

Religion in general is considered archaic and not viable and is mostly despised on the intellectual far right, other than the Traditionalist School which is now led mainly by Russians who tend to despise science and evolution and very much dislike America. The science-oriented don't like us because we affirm religion, the paleoconservatives don't like us because we affirm evolution, the Beyondist's aren’t fond of our including traditional religion, revolutionaries don't like us because we prefer the slower change of conservatism, and the Left doesn’t like us for most of the reasons mentioned above.

Given this situation one needs to learn to live as an outsider. This can be positive because we are mainly working under the radar, which frees us to do independent work. We welcome help if it is going in our same direction, and encouraging words are much appreciated---we sometimes feel like we are walking a tightrope, with people only waiting to see if we fall off. But we believe there is a positive future for our religious and political philosophy.

Pluralism and Authority in Religion and Science

When the “Authority”of God or of great sages is seen in religion as the main foundation of faith, then religion tends to conflict with science. I would rather look at religious versions of ontology and epistemology as another kind of hypothesis or theory which will one day more or less be affirmed by science, and likewise think of science as one day gaining new knowledge from religion. I don't see a real conflict here.

As to the problems of pluralism in religion---with one religion claiming to be the only truth over all the others---this too can be resolved in the Twofold Path. The Father Within of the Inward Path, in all the great religions, is a symbolic experience of the Godhood reached in material-supermaterial evolution in the Outward Path. The Outward Path allows for the differences and variety that are actually good for evolution, while the Inward Path is the basis for ecumenism.

Acknowledging ethnopluralism in political philosophy, protected by some kind of light federalism, can also help harmonize these many differences in pluralism and authority. This means too that the struggle against Nature and human nature, as often seen in both religion and political philosophy, needs to change toward harmonizing with human nature, which has been generally or basically affirmed throughout human history as being kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

Against dualities

It does not seem that the earth's purpose and the cosmic purpose is to directly manifest us, but is to manifest the general evolution of life, to Godhood if possible. All life-forms in the cosmos would have a chance as we do to evolve to Godhood. This seems to indicate a materially Deistic sort of structure in that the cosmos sets the conditions for life and evolution and lets evolution and natural selection do as it can do.

Spirit doesn’t seem to manifest as Matter, Matter manifests as Spirit, or more accurately as supermateriality. This is opposite the usual religious understanding. There seems to be no real separation between mind and body just as there is no real separation between Matter and Spirit---the Spirit-Will, like the higher mind or the Soul, is supermaterial. The Spirit-Will activates life from within toward evolving to Godhood, and life is shaped by outside evolution. The Soul is seen as the zenith of the mind-brain, where the “enlightenment” of experiencing the Father Within takes place if all material desires are first ascetically blocked.

The mind, the Soul and the Spirit-Will all seem to be materially and supermaterially based, designed to help the body they dwell within survive and reproduce with ultimate success. As we advance toward Godhood our minds and bodies, our Souls and the Spirit-Will, all advance, as these special things always reflect the level of evolution of the body they necessarily dwell within.

Harmonizing Christ, Nietzsche, Cattell and Wilson

The religious philosophy featured in this blog, seemingly megalomaniacally, seeks to harmonize Christ, Nietzsche, Cattell and Wilson. Rather than rejecting Christianity as Nietzsche did, or ejecting naturalism as Christ in essence did, or rejecting God as Cattell did, or ejecting religion for science as Wilson in essence did, we include all of these sages and thinkers, mainly by way of the Twofold Path, the Involutionary and Evolutionary Paths.

The God or Father Within of Christ (and of traditional religions) is retained in the Inward Path, where the Father Within exists at the zenith of the material mind and can be symbolically experienced with the ascetic discipline of ridding the body of all material desires. The drive toward superiority and nobleness of Nietzsche is affirmed in the Outward Path where real Godhood can be reached through material and supermaterial evolution, activated by the Spirit-Will and shaped by outside evolution---this is the God first seen or experienced symbolically as the Father Within of the Inward Path. The sociobiological science of Cattell and Wilson is utilized in advancing evolution toward Godhood. Cattell's intimations of a political ethnopluralism are expanded here also. Even “Conservatism” is acknowledged in that past religion and traditions are largely retained as we move toward the next stage with Ordered Evolution.

Natural and anti-natural religion

One difference I see between ancient and modern pagans is that the modern pagans will talk about how they affirm nature and natural values but then they often go on to affirm the unnatural values of cultural Marxism (political correctness) or modern liberalism which does not correspond well with real human nature, which was perhaps more harmonious with ancient paganism, such as being kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This human nature still remains, it has not disappeared, it has been corrupted by anti-natural values.

There is a “right wing” paganism which relates more to real human nature but they tend to go on to support imperialism or the superiority of one race over another rather than seeing the more natural ethnopluralism, which fits better with real human nature and nature itself.

I believe it is wrong to deny the real material world in religion, or to try to live outside the orders and structures of naturalism. Some of the problem stems from a false duality seen between the spiritual and the material rather than thinking in terms of materialism and supermaterialism. Religion needs to relate to real human beings living in the natural world, with Godhood reached by way of material and supermaterial evolution.  Science is also then not shut out of religion.

This becomes a less radical perspective when the Godhood reached for in evolution is understood as the God first seen and experienced symbolically as the God Within or the Father Within in the Inward Path of traditional religions. The old and the new can then better harmonize in centering on Ordered Evolution within the natural world.

The forgotten or blocked natural purpose of virtue

The natural purpose of virtue is culturally blocked everywhere. Sociobiology has made inroads in bringing nature into morality but it has been generally shoved aside by the media and the academic world. Why?

It seems that natural wills to power prefer hypocrisy or lies, in what Nietzsche called a triumph of anti-naturalism. Meanwhile the voices for natural virtue are deemed politically incorrect by cultural Marxism.

Altruism and compassion are very old within human nature, going way back to pre-human group animals, where strong social connections were needed for such things as hunting success and child rearing. That is, altruism and compassion are not new rational and religious human inventions. Man is a social animal and selection still takes place at the group level with natural ethnocentrism.

Anti-naturalism assumes that distinctly different people and cultures are exactly the same, natural laws affirming realistic self-preservation for distinct people and cultures are actually denied or blocked, with disastrous results in civil disorder.

Natural virtues can be seen in the political philosophy of ethnopluralism, which harmonizes with real human nature, for all groups, with small states or ethnostates, which can be protected by a light federalism.

The more realistic hope is that we will indeed “all get along,” but with variety and with cooperative competition, applying real natural virtues, where sociobiologically engaged religious research centers (which Cattell first talked about) can be utilized by all groups, so we can all continue on with evolving in the natural path toward real Godhood.

On both Nietzsche and Religion lacking the Twofold Path

Nietzsche said nature is expelled from morality when it is said, “Love ye your enemies,” nature says love your neighbor and hate your enemies, and studies in human nature over many years have confirmed this. But Nietzsche was seeing things outside the context of the Involutionary and Evolutionary Paths, or outside the Twofold Path.

Jesus said love your enemies within the needs of the Involutionary Inward Path to the Father Within, which requires the blocking of such territorial and xenophobic instincts as hating your enemies, among other things, because they are obstacles in the way of the desire-less state of the Father Within.

Paul carried the Church away from the primitive purity of Jesus and the Inward Path. In this way the Church was, as Nietzsche said, the barbarization of Christianity, and this became the deception of Christianity. But Nietzsche sees only the Will-To-Power of the Church, he did not appear to properly acknowledge the goal of the desire-less state of the Father Within or the God Within as preached by Jesus, which has been experienced by sages through the ages, mostly in India, applying much the same ascetic formula.

Nietzsche does not see human nature within the context of the Twofold Path, which can show us that there is no need to expel Christianity. We evolve to real Godhood in the material and supermaterial world, activated by the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood---not the “will-to-power”---shaped by outside evolution and natural selection, and this is the God first seen in the Inward Path as the Father Within, which is a symbolic experience of real Godhood reached by evolution. Here is where religion, on the other hand, needs to acknowledge the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Science can join religion. The spiritual can join the material. Culture can join biology. Nietzsche can join Christ, in the Twofold Path, giving religious and philosophical direction to the modern world.

No changeless end

When simple life takes advantage of various opportunities in the environment to live and thrive, this is done even before the advance of moral choices, it is the natural activation of life toward a goal. This is more than an outward action or reaction, this is an inward vitalism working with and shaped by outside evolution. This is the activation of the will to life, or when it is amplified it is seen as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood. To be alive is to be activated to live and evolve.

In evolution life is taking advantage of opportunities to live in better or more successful ways, to be represented for longer and longer times, moving toward eternal representation, the zenith of success in survival, if it can. But perfection or a changeless end may not ever be attained, we have only abstractly equated perfection to changelessness. We can fulfill drives and desires in a temporary way, or we can block desires with ascetic discipline, but we are never beyond the needs of life and evolution.

I see no good reason why this wouldn’t take place even when Godhood is attained. Godhood would lead to higher Godhood. There is no evidence of a final end or a first beginning to the cosmos or to Godhood, other than the natural ending of individual life. If there is a “Fall” it happens all the time when life devolves, of falls back, and begins again from a simple state. It is the human and post-human task to find a way to sustain our evolution to Godhood and beyond, fulfilling the sacred activations of life and the environment..

Resolving Nietzsche's mistaken radicalism

Nietzsche said that the big challenge of Christianity was to declare all property, acquisition, police, state, Church, art, the military, etc. as only sinful obstacles in the way of happiness and enlightenment, while at the same time trying to build up a Christian organization in the world. This led to the elaborate theology and religious philosophy developed to salvage actual life within an essentially anti-life religion. We see how the Papacy and later Reformers never were able to conduct politics in a Christian way and were Machiavellian, gradually adopting everything they originally rejected. Nietzsche then proceeded to utterly condemn Christianity calling for its destruction.

What Nietzsche did not see was that the anti-life religious philosophy in Christianity, and in Eastern religions, refers only to the Involutionary Inward Path to the Father Within or the God Within, where it belongs, which is reached only by ridding the body of all desires, and it does not apply to the Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood. This led Nietzsche to a radicalism which does not fit well with conservative human nature, which is basically kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, religious-making, and with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. Duality between life and anti-life therefore is not necessary. The Father Within is the symbolic-experience of the real Godhood reached in outward evolution. The Twofold Path resolves Nietzsche's mistaken radicalism, and more conservatively retains some of his hope for the future.

How perfect completeness in not full awareness of Godhood

Is perfect completeness the full awareness of Godhood? Are we ever free of desire or need? The Father Within, the God Within, is attained by blocking and ridding the body of material desires, as all the great ascetics have told us throughout history, including Jesus Christ. But the Father Within is the symbolic-experience of real Godhood, or a symbolic-experience of full awareness, the blissful feeling of what Godhood will be like when obtained by unblocking material desires and refining materiel evolution to evolve to Godhood.

Godhood becomes Godhood through the desire and the need of life to attain eternal representation, or the zenith of success in survival and reproduction, which does not seem to be fully reached no matter how far we advance in evolution. This is why evolution becomes the important dynamic of life and religion, this is why desire, or the activation of the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood is a central dynamic of life and religion, to be refined, not blocked, in the Outward Path, but blocked in the Inward Path. Both are applied in the Twofold Path toward understanding and reaching Godhood.

This also suggests a cosmos with no final perfection, no final awareness, a cosmos with no beginning and no end. Godhood is defined as ever-evolving truth, intelligence, beauty, goodness, etc. Ever-evolving life seems less satisfying because we have been taught to believe in a final-perfect-end as full awareness, and as God, which has so far only been attained on earth in the Inward Path.

The religious, philosophical, psychological and physical transformation necessary

The morality that is contrary to Nature, necessary in the ascetic discipline of reaching the God Within or the Father Within, as seen in Christianity and the great religions, and as examined in the great psychological studies of Frederich Nietzsche, needs to be seen in relation to the Twofold Path of theological materialism. Rather than affirming only the Involuntary Inward Path to the Father Within, or utterly rejecting it as anti-life, as Nietzsche did, the Inward Path needs to be transformed in the Evolutionary Outward Path, retaining, not rejecting, the Father Within, but seeing the Father Within as the symbolic-experience of the Godhood reached in the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood in the cosmos.

With this transformation the wisdom of conserving the past, of conservatism, can finally harmonize with the present and future. The anti-life morality necessary in the ascetic discipline of reaching the Father Within by ridding the body of material desires, can be redeemed in the pro-life evolution of Nature toward real Godhood in the cosmos, the God first seen only inwardly. Science can join religion, the spiritual can join the material. Could Nietzsche have made this transformation toward accepting what he bitterly rejected? Can modern atheists and scientists make this transformation? Can traditional religion make this transformation? Are they religiously, philosophically, psychologically and physically magnanimous enough? Life on earth, and future life, and ultimately Godhood may depend on the answer.

Contrary thoughts to Kirk's view of the machine

When Bradley Birzer points out (American Conservative, Dec. 2013) that Russell Kirk considered attacking “the machine” as one of the most important aspects of his life and writings, that is, the machine---whether governmental, corporate or educational, this can put conservatives, who claim not to approve of ideology, in their own box of saying that anyone who claims to know something other than what the conservatives say we can know is feeding the machine. Also, there is a box created by claiming that humans are freer than they they actually are, which can make any deterministic definition of nature and human nature look like affirming the machine.

Man does have freedom limited to the choices and strictures of human nature and nature, but within these strictures, is not nature and human nature more like a machine than not? If you affirm an idealism, romanticism or spiritualism which claims to soar beyond human nature and beyond nature itself then it can appear as if nature must not be defined as a machine---a too large claim of freedom can take away the “dignity” of a freedom which does not exist. It is through nature, material nature, with its natural laws, that we evolve to Godhood. In this, to adapt what some sage said, nature is a machine for evolving to Godhood.

To Kirk and other conservatives, who have influenced me as much as sociobiology has influenced me, divine intent rules society as well as ruling consciousness, but I think this needs to be revised to the divine intent of the activating Spirit-Will, which activates material and supermaterial nature toward real Godhood, shaped by outside evolution. I understand that Kirk later revised the term “divine intent” to a belief in “a body of natural law,” which seems better.

Consciousness and spiritual awareness as dependent on physical bodies

If consciousness is stored experience, as someone once put it, we may not always have the wisest stored experience to “let ones conscious rule” regarding our future. Consciousness in religion needs to be seen as dependent on physical bodies, spiritual awareness takes place within physical bodies.

Virginia Ross discussed the brain's religious experiences in Zygon a few years ago suggesting that the transcendence-function was probably happening with the integration or equilibration of the cerebral hemispheres, and also involving pathways in the limbic system and brain-stem. The state of “unity” perhaps happens in the supratemporal-parietal-limbic areas of the right brain.

This relates to the Soul at the zenith of the brain-mind where the Father Within, the God Within is experienced in the Involutionary Inward Path of traditional religions, and also seen in the Twofold Path of the ECC, aided by ascetically blocking material desires.

New bodes of experience beyond the death of the body? Very doubtful, but we can evolve materially and supermaterially to new dimensions of existence. Beneath consciousness, or at the symbolic zenith of the Soul in the brain is the activating drive of life, the Spirit-Will, and here is where we can better relate to the sacred task of evolving to real Godhood in the Evolutionary Outward Path, shaped by outside evolution. Here material desires are refined in evolution rather than blocked.

This is how Godhood relates to physical or superphysical evolved bodies, as does consciousness. This is the change in religious perspective needed, which can revive religion.

The simple and complicated truths of ethnopluralism

Speaking the truth seems simple, but it can be complicated. Conquered or subjected people tend to lie more, or they are more round about, even humorous, often to save their lives, which can even become an identifying ethnic trait. Then there are those who have such horrible truths in their lives they cannot think about the truth, or they avoid it with various addictions. And there are those who rise to power through lying, either knowing or not knowing the truth, their strong wills-to-power overwhelm the truth. But there also seems to be a balancing here when the stark truth is not always what you want to hear, say, in the evening after a glass of wine when music or humor feels better.

Generally speaking though I think speaking the truth, assuming you have the truth, is a better way to live in the world, even if you have uncomfortable truths in your life. The truth is something like love with the strong need or desire we have for perfect understanding. The truth needs to be seen as something to love more than fear. But escaping the truth with lies or humor can also be dangerous when someone is about to be truly run over by a bus.

Ethnopluralism speaks the truth about human nature and political philosophy. It counters the lies of political correctness, which is really cultural Marxism. Sociobiology has affirmed the ancient truths of group behavior as the main unit of selection among human beings (E.O. Wilson's superior revised interpretation). Ethnopluralism harmonizes with the truth about human nature being kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This is why different groups are included in this worldview, the variety and independence of small states, protected with some sort of light federalism, is the best means of creating civil order, and the best environment for continuing evolution.

Are conservative's gradually crawling out of their selfish radical money-making individualism and centering more on localism and the family? One hopes conservative's soon move on to interest in the larger extended group rather than leaving it to the Left who want to use big government for all things, forcing unworkable equality for all the conditions of human life. But how much of the truths of ethnopluralism will be seen and valued, or even allowed? Are we inevitably a subjected and conquered people unable to see or speak the truth? I don't think so. The truth always rises, especially when our backs are against the wall of survival.  This has been true throughout our long history.

On becoming essentialist

I think “anti-essentialism” was wrong, it couldn't have developed without the nature/nurture debates which made the nurture side politically correct, dominating the nature side. This suggest that Marxism was at least one of the fathers of anti-essentialism.

Sociobiology is the “essentialist” science, backing up our essentialist nature. The sociobiological theory of human nature pokes holes in the idea that we only differ from one another (men/women/ethnic groups) as a consequence of social forces and not also, perhaps predominantly, do to heredity, or genetic differences.

Human nature is “essentially” kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

The "freedom" that the existentialists dream that we are “condemned” to seems to be mainly built within in our brains to give us various choices between still-determined choices, restricted by our human nature and our outside environments. This is a kind of freedom which gave us a bit more flexibility in trying to survive, but not the freedom to create human nature all over again, other than in a bogus or artificial way.

We are not really free to be anti-essentialists, which seems to be mainly the will to power of the people who apply it. Essential, largely determined, human nature, and the natural will to power, motivates anti-essentialists as it does essentialists. The true “deconstruction” should be the deconstruction of anti-essentialism, universalism, equality, and free will.

Becoming who we are, becoming “authentic,” as the existentialists go on about, means to return to our essential human nature, even if it doesn’t fit well with the dreamy ideologies of anti-essentialism, deconstructionism and Marxism.  Essentialism points more naturally toward ethnopluralism that can work even in democratic Republics which give small states ample independence. It also points toward a revitalized and transformed evolutionary religion, which is the central theme of this blog.

Transforming the spiritual to the supermaterial

“From fullness comes greater fullness” (Gus DiZerega)

When it is said that there are no boundaries to the spiritual but there are boundaries to nature, material and supermaterial evolution are usually not considered. Religion has all but blocked matter from evolving by trying to block the desires of the world and the flesh, rather than refining them in evolution.

The old spiritual is transformed into the supermaterial. This can help end the great antagonistic duality between matter and spirit, science and religion. Desire implies a lack and God does not lack, say the classical philosophers, but it is evolution to Godhood which material desire ultimately seeks.

Perfect completeness with no further evolution is an abstraction, an idea, or God as only an idea. Godhood exists when we evolve to Godhood. Godhood is conditionally rooted in the conditions of the material and supermaterial world.

Humans are a stage along the evolving path to Godhood---love, life, suffering, victory occur within this evolutionary stage. When we fail or succeed it is our own fault or our own strength, not Godhood, and it is not the fault of the Spirit-Will which inwardly activates life to Godhood, shaped outwardly by an evolution that is not always upward, often do to our own ignorance.

Where is the focus of evolution today?

Anthropologist's have shown us that man generally has collaborated and bonded on a group basis, and even though mutations occur in individuals, it is the group continuum and its gene pool that is transmitted to future generations. That being said, Raymond Cattell's evolutionary position was that races are a transient thing and in the future there will be a self-conscious selection process by each cultural-ethnic group. In the long term Cattell thought that homo sapiens would split into more than one species, as evolution proceeds.

Where is the focus of evolution today? Long ago the focus was in the sea, which was nine/tenths of life on earth, then the focus moved to the land, where evolution moved faster to the changing conditions. Now the effects of evolution have relaxed with the easy survival of modern civilization, which has shifted evolution away from pruning the less adapted forms. This has generally led to a genetic load of genes that are not all that healthy.

Can we take over evolution from nature? Can we escape natural selection? I have heard that our control of evolution can proceed 10 million times faster than natural selection. The question is: evolution toward where? Which goals? Absolutes generally define the goals, Absolute Beauty, Absolute Truth and Intelligence, Absolute Goodness and Power, these are the general guides for our evolution---Godhood is defined as the zenith of these things. Activating Tirips or the Will within  activates material life, and is shaped by outside evolution, and it knows its goal.

Ethnopluralism says that the enslavement of a people or a state by one imperial group over another goes against long-term evolutionary ethics and survival. The ecumenical plan of the Theoevolutionary Church regarding future evolution is that all people, all small states, all ethnic groups, rise separately together, and cooperate with sociobiological evolutionary information, even as they compete.  This is Civilizing the Beast. Territoriality formerly prevented demographic instability and infighting among distinctly different people. It also provided time for desirable adaptations to accumulate over generations, and allowed for a more orderly evolution. Eventually we hope that ethnopluralism  will be seen as the most humane way to proceed.

On the deep ecologists

The world view of Edward Goldsmith, who was one of the deepest of the deep ecologists, sees evolution ruled by behavior designed to maintain the stability of the whole earth biosphere, that is, the living world together with the geological substructure. He sees mainly a closed system. The whole is the sum of the parts.

Is the “whole” explained only as the earth's biosphere, where we stop with the earth and circle or cycle back in the old cyclic way of the old pagan and traditionalist religions? The old religions see an orderly world, with order called various names, such as, R'ta, the Tao, and the Dharma, and evolution is largely left out of this worldview---they do not-see life evolving from the earth out into the cosmos. Deep ecologists affirm a teleological goal to life but it is confined to maintaining the stability of earth. Purposiveness is an essential feature of living things, but the goal of evolving to Godhood is not one of the goals of the deep ecologists.

Goldsmith sees natural systems actually geared toward the avoidance of change, which brings to mind the feud between Burkean conservatives who see change as a part of the maintenance of conservatism, and the traditional school whose goal is stability without change. Evolution works with both in what I call Ordered Evolution, which is not centered solely on evolution or on order, both are required as we evolve. Any violation of order in traditionalist and pagan cultures calls for a strong religious activity restoring the order and supposedly saving society. This works in cycles to the traditionalists. While order is vital, it can also block evolution, and often has.

What happens first, the changing parts followed by the changing whole, or the whole changing the parts to maintain itself? It is some of both, but the deep ecologists and traditionalist school see only the parts changing to preserve the whole. I see the the Spirit-Will within as activating life toward evolving to eternal representation in the world, toward the highest success in evolution, or Godhood. We need both the whole and the parts working in an Ordered Evolution, activated from within but shaped by outside evolution.

J. P. Lamark said that randomness only expresses our ignorance of causes. Scientists have often used randomness as an argument against teleological principles. When an overall project or direction to life in the cosmos is not seen then randomness is easier to justify. I affirm the Promethean enterprise over the Gaian enterprise, while still affirming the natural ecosystem of the earth. We are not bound by the cycles of the earth even as we need to pay attention to them. To affirm higher evolution is not to deny the importance of the natural order. We don't want to become trapped on earth like astronauts breathing oxygen from tubes because we cut all the trees down.

Deep ecologists prefer to think that competition yields to cooperation when systems become more stable. We will of course need cooperation if we are to evolve to Godhood, but cooperation does not mean no competition, cooperation does not have to mean communism or fascism. What we realistically require is cooperative competition, otherwise we tend toward civil war if we try to stuff distinctly different groups together into Marxist-like utopias, ecologically sound or otherwise.

Diversity rises to stability for Goldsmith, but thinking forward we see stability rising to diversity again, just as evolution has continually moved from species to subspecies, and on to new species and subspecies. The organizing principle of nature for me is evolution. Maintaining earth's equilibrium is important but only a part of the picture. Competition does not stop when we move beyond “pioneer conditions” and end solely in cooperation. The best we can hope for, and should hope for, is cooperative competition.

Deep ecologists want education to be a matter of socialization, not unlike the Marxists. But education should also be the teaching of evolution. Reintegrating with actual human nature means being kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. Our greatest problem is to reintegrate with actual human nature and the natural world.

It is not a natural fallacy to argue from “is” to “ought” as Goldsmith brilliantly points out. What we are, what nature is, is how we behave and therefore how we ought to behave. “Ought" from “is” is usually rejected because “is” does not fit with with the political correctness of the day. Why is arguing from “is not” to “ought” better than arguing from is to ought?

We do not evolve solely to maintain the order of the biosphere, as the deep ecologists believe, evolution seeks Godhood beyond our biosphere, even as we try to work in harmony with the biosphere.

The desire to transcend the living object

The false duality of the desire to transcend the living object perhaps stems from the desire to transcend death. It seems to me that it is here where the split begins between the spiritual and material, which has caused unreality in religion and philosophy.

The other confusion in transcending the living object has been with the God-Within or the Father Within, which has been seen as transcending the material world, when the experience of the Father Within happens within the material soul-brain-mind of human beings.

When Godhood is seen as an object, a supermaterial living object, or objects, attained at the zenith of human evolution, and when the Father Within is seen as a symbolic-experience of what Godhood will be like when attained in evolution, then the fears and false splits between the material and spiritual can be unblocked.

We can feel sympathy for the attempts over the centuries to understand life and death, and to alleviate suffering, because we are limited by our humanness, but future evolution can bring increasing intelligence and understanding. Matter is said to have “boundaries” in relation to a fanciful spirituality, which supposedly is not bound by death or by the material world. The truth is that matter seems to be only limited by its level of evolution. The Godhood we have been seeking for many centuries is found in material and supermaterial evolution.

The thing itself and the structure of scientific explanation

November 8, 2013 at 10:45 am (Uncategorized)  from Just Thomism

"Plato famously argues in Phaedo that the natural science of his time did not give causes, only conditions or correlated factors of things, while he said that the cause of X is only “X itself”. Whether Plato was right about all the features of the “itselfs” – like their separateness and eternity – is debatable, but the basic point is right, since the point of a systematic investigation into X is to find “the X itself” or “the real X”. Once we find the cause of malaria (a parasite) we call it “the malaria parasite” or just “malaria”, and if a crime gets carried out by a subordinate (like a goon breaking into the Watergate Hotel) then you can’t be said to find “the real criminal” until you find the one who is ultimately responsible for the goon being hired.

And so the structure of all systematic investigation is ordered by the search for the thing itself or the real thing, as opposed to what is only a condition, correlated reality, or subordinate actor or instrument. This is why, on the classical understanding of things, it is very difficult to systematically investigate truth, goodness, or existence without positing something that deserves to be called God."

Is there a best metaphor for the Divine?

Is “love” the best metaphor for the Divine or is it beauty, truth or intelligence? Or is it evolution?

Evolution describes the method to the divine goal of these things, which is Godhood. And Godhood can be defined as the zenith of all of these things, love, beauty, truth and intelligence.

Different fields seem to prefer one of these divine attributes as their model, such as art and beauty, truth and religion/philosophy, intelligence and science, and each field seems to love best their model goal.

But does one of these rate as the best metaphor for the Divine? I am unable to choose, so I have to apply them all.

On second thought, perhaps for me, the best metaphor for the divine might be a beautiful, intelligent, truthful, loving and evolving woman. This fulfills the need for a metaphor to bring religion and philosophy back to the Divine supermaterial object. The Greeks applied this quite well to both genders in their sculptures of the Goddesses and Gods.

When the identity of any people is taken away

When the identity of any people is taken away we can end up with what someone once called a cultural sewer. This has been happening to the West exponentially. Who or what causes the identity of a people to be taken away? The worst betrayers of a people are often its own people, for example, various global capitalist's have been willing to sell-out their own people for personal power and cash. And various immigrant groups have also trashed the cultural identity of their hosts to expand their own, natural, wills-to-power.

In all fairness various forms of imperialism or supremacism, or the dominance of one ethnic group over others, internally or externally, needs to be replaced with ethnopluralism, which can be the savior of all people, all groups, on this crowded planet. Rather than spending all our time trying to unravel all the cunning causes of the decline of our identity, we can cut the Gordian Knot and simply promote our own identities again, this time with ethnopluralism---the enemies will then present themselves. This is the future social and political structure that best reflects actual human nature. We need to be working on how to make the cooperative competition, or discordant concord, of ethnopluralism work. For example, it seems to me that the Constitution of the United States, with its separation of powers and states, could legally harmonize with ethnopluralism.

The natural inclination has always been for species to continually divide into separate sub-species and then evolve into separate species. Human nature has continually presented itself throughout human history as being kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. Ethnopluralism can finally accommodate what we all actually are. Civil strife would be greatly reduced, the inevitable  internal civil war between different ethnic groups can be prevented, identities can be restored. What's not to like about that solution?