Choosing contemplation or action, past or future?

People think in terms of two kinds of "defense" against what Eliade called the largely deterministic “terror of history”: action or contemplation. The revealed religions chose contemplation, at least the mystical elite did, by going inward with the Involutionary Inward Path to experience the Father Within, the God-Within. This can block the terror of history, but does it really make it go away?

It is the the Outward Path, the Evolutionary Outward Path, which takes real action against the terror of history, by helping to advance life toward Godhood in evolution. But we may also affirm the Inward Path of contemplation as the mirror, or virtual experience, of the Outward Path leading to Godhood. This is the Twofold Path of the Evolutionary Christian Church.

The past, the primitive, the nonmaterial is idealized by the traditionalist school, but we can also idealize and affirm the future with our feet on materialistic ground, because  the furthest we go is to supermaterialism, which helps define Godhood. We can contemplate the past but we don't seek to go there, we take action toward the future.

This is a truly modern religious view which says that there is not really a timeless world of shamanistic, sacred, heaven-time.  All is in time, including Godhood, which we evolve to in time. A Jungian might ask, is not Godhood a sacred, timeless, archetype, appearing at different places in time? If Godhood is an archetype it seems to be a super-instinct within the DNA of life itself, the inward, supermaterial, Spirit-Will seeking Godhood by activating life, which is outwardly shaped by the ups and downs of natural evolution.

How our moral vision has to catch up

Our moral vision has to catch up with our scientific advancements. Involution has to include evolution. Involving to the Father-Within has to catch up with evolving to Godhood in the cosmos.

But a radical break from involution to evolution is not necessary or practical. The Father Within needs to be seen as mirror experience, a virtual symbol of Godhood reached through evolution.

This describes the Twofold Path which affirms Revitalized Conservatism and Ordered Evolution rather than a radical replacement of the revealed religions by scientific evolution.

The people need a vision worthy of the future or they may perish. Progress can be dangerous but blocking progress is even more dangerous.

When the people change, the culture changes

The importance of demographics has been known for some time, but since deeper analysis runs into the barricades of political correctness (cultural Marxism) the real consequences of demographics are overshadowed.

When it is demanded of us to proclaim that people are all the same, reality is blocked. Northern Europeans govern different than Southern Europeans, and Jews, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians govern in their own ways, with various traits existing in their genetic pools, which affect the cultures they develop, and then the various cultures and environments affect the genetic pools. Differences between different groups do not disappear, even if there is some melding around the edges.  

The electoral power of Northern European whites has faded in America, while the population of other ethnic groups has sharply risen and will soon overtake white America. The changing demographics of America could pull America apart, either slowly with forced big government programs that don't work, or with attempted secessions of various regions and states. The liberal or socialist vision of President Obama will not bring America together---with all the power it wielded soviet communism could not force people to act internationally altruistic, and the union soon broke back down into separates states.

The only realistic way to hold America together with its changing and competing demographics is to harken back to the natural separation of regions and states enshrined in the Constitution, which can be home to a cooperating variety. Contrary to the utopian neoconservatives, universal, Platonic, abstract, natural rights do not rule out traditionalism and the classical conservatism of folk traditions. When we find leaders who understand that protecting the separation, independence and power of the states is the main task of government--both internally and externally--then things will gradually calm down.

On Freedom and Determinism

Freedom matters and is important but it is not what matters most, evolving toward Godhood matters most in life. Man's mind and life are not totally free of any law, natural life is essentially activated by the material Spirit-Will which seeks Godhood in evolving nature, and this is defined as objective truth. It does matter what religion and philosophy we have, this is not a relative choice, we need to have the religion and philosophy which moves us toward evolving to real Godhood, and not just an inward mirror or experience  of God as the Father Within.

In this sense, I can agree with Kant who claims the truth of his moral ideas for men of all times and places. This does not mean that Western thought is not alien to other cultures or vice versus, understanding between different cultures and ethnic groups is very difficult. But these secondary differences simply tell us about the natural variety and separation of people and states, which human nature and evolution works best with in any case.

Evolution is an unshakable truth, but so is the religious essence of evolution, which has the end-goal of evolving to Godhood. Here there is something constant, and universal, not because we want it to be so, but because it is so in nature.

We are driven and determined by the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within the world, which seeks to activate life to Godhood, and life is then shaped by natural evolution. But we do have some freedom or choice in whether we follow the Spirit-Will or not. Intelligence and reason have something to do with life getting in harmony with the Will-To-Godhood, but it also first seems to require an intellectual intuition to affirm the instinct of the Spirit-Will.

How unity of purpose can trump intellectual agreement

Unity of purpose in affirming the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood is more important than intellectual agreement. Intellectuals can argue endlessly while the Spirit-Will waits to be fulfilled.

This is not an anti-intellectual stance, it is an intellectual acknowledgment that the living object takes precedence over the idea of the object, reality trumps the abstract, the "spiritual" comes after the supermaterial.

But this is abstract in the sense of having faith and idealism in the sacred evolution of life to Godhood. This is faith in progress, a modern idea---although Walter Kaufmann claims the Hebrew prophets first thought of progress as possible. Disbelief in progress and evolution seems primitive, where only cycles could be seen with no linear progression---the traditionalist school makes this mistake.

The error of Straussian neoconservatism

Contrary to Burke, Leo Strauss seems to have rated classical natural rights over traditionalism (classical conservatism). But when we see through the fog of abstract Platonic ideas, we see that natural rights grounded in natural law actually leads to volkish traditions, which allowed humans to survive and reproduce more successfully than other forms of social behavior. 

What we have to worry about is not local conservative traditions but imperialistic states, or coercive, one-race hyper-behavior, which runs counter to the independent variety of groups and small states that natural law and evolution prefer. This invalidates the marauding by neoconservatives over local traditions all over the world. Elites do naturally rise but they are local elites, hopefully not Plato's totalitarian Guardians, or the modern Straussian version of this, which William Kristol and his friends seem to think they are.

I also believe that natural law affirms the instinctive Spirit-Will that activates life, which is then shaped by evolution---this means that our evolution toward Godhood is in harmony with natural law, but that is another topic.

Revitalizing Conservatism: Opposing moral relativism in joining Christianity and theological materialism

Conservatism based in Christianity said that objective truth leads to such things as free markets and social conservatism, and objective truth does not lead to atheism, collectivism or materialism. But then the atheists and collectivists cut the ground further underfoot by refusing to argue about objective truths because they believed there were no objective truths, and that relativism therefore had to rule the various fields, and that there was no right way to behave.

This is the kind of the moral relativism taught now in our colleges and universities. Such things as post-structuralist philosophy affirmed this moral relativism with its tricky arguments, but they missed or blocked the objective truths of natural science, specifically the truths coming from evolutionary sociobiology, which provided objective truths about human nature and natural life.

It turns out that conservatism can be as defined by sociobiology as one of the best ways to survive and reproduce successfully over the long term. However, conservatives have a big problem with the materialist foundation of science, so few conservatives seriously applied sociobiology in defense of conservative principles. But conservatism has to be the Burkian kind of conservatism with a willingness to change, or more importantly to evolve. The materialism of science essentially continues to be blocked by the revealed religions and by conservatives. Can scientific materialism be included without losing the spiritual Christian foundation of conservatism? Yes it can, but it requires an epic change in religious philosophy.

The revitalized conservatism I write about in this blog is based in an evolutionary interpretation of Christianity, which sees life evolving in the material and supermaterial world hopefully all the way to Godhood. Evolution is introduced to Christianity based in what I have defined as theological materialism, which means materialism is unblocked and made sacred, since evolution leads to Godhood. The God first seen inwardly as the Father Within is a symbolic mirror of the Godhood attained through evolution. This describes the Twofold Path which synthesizes old and the new definitions of Godhood, and as a consequence prevents radical religious change.

Without this revitalization the decline of conservatism and Christianity most likely will continue---which began way back in the European Renaissance of the 14th–17th centuries---and may eventually destroy the revealed religions and the cultures and societies they defended, although there could be coercive, science-hating, fundamentalist revivals at times. Theological materialism will help unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to Godhood, and provide Christianity and conservatism with a solid foundation, once again based in objective truth and intellectual intuition.

How Religion Can Do All

It seems to me that Nietzsche first tried to destroy religion then spent the rest of his life trying to recreate religion. This is what modern philosophy, art, and even politics tries to do.

Modern philosophy and art might insist that religion is a form of art, but it is art that is a form of religion. Like religion, philosophy and art simplify the great struggles of life, or as Nietzsche put it, (“Wagner In Bayreuth”) art produces a shorter solution to the riddle of existence.

Good art does not really instruct or offer direct action, it gives aesthetic feelings which only indirectly instruct, or as I put it, affirm the sacred. But religion can do it all, with rituals, music, philosophy, art, as well as direct instruction.

Political philosophy often tries to be all things to all people but usually leaves out religious roots and goals, which is why it doesn't last very long.

In the past, religion included all the best scientific knowledge of the day, but it has not done so well in modern times. Religion should be deep enough and wise enough to include ongoing science, as it should philosophy, art, and political considerations. The theological materialism of the Twofold Path in the religious philosophy of the projected Theoevolutionary Church seeks this synthesis. 

As we drift out here in the immense cosmos, along with all the problems on our planet; our evolution to Godhood helps us affirm the sacred.

Religious Man as the Structural Source

Here are some thoughts on the philosophy of structuralism and post-structuralism:

The products of the human mind and its various cultural creations are the effects of human nature interacting with the environment. This is the biological superstructure, but not the structural source, from which human nature and culture can be analyzed. It is not a binary or dualistic superstructure, this is a superstructure derived from human nature seeking success in survival and reproduction, along with other human beings and other cultures, often in competition. This is not merely two antithetical structures fighting one another, this is all life seeking success. There is not a post-structuralist relativity of values here, human nature is founded in a determined reality seeking success in survival and reproduction, which affects all social and cultural behavior.

However, one could see a more dualistic interpretation coming from the structural source buried in the deepest part of human nature as the Spirit-Will activating life, which is then shaped by evolution. All life turns on the Spirit-Will activating life to evolve all the way to Godhood. This means analyzing or working with “religious man” as the structural source, followed by the superstructure of sociobiology. Although it is troublesome to define any part of this reality as evil, this does suggest a kind of structuralist duality, with evolution as sacred and devolution as profane, even if biological reality has life evolving up, down, and sideways at different times.

Adding Quality to Quantity

The concern for the size of the population has been understood but the next step has to be concern for the quality of the population. China is now understanding this but the West drags far behind.

A conservative Burkian dynamic can be applied which caters in genetic planning to the particular cultural demands of particular group in a particular place (tradition), while at the same time creating new improving mutations. I have called this Ordered Evolution.

Raymond Cattell points out that man adapts his environment to himself, to his ecological niche, although the environment does have the last word. More emphasis on sociobiological research needs to be used to help guide society. Nations don't have to necessarily go through the cycle of democracy, oligarchy and dictatorship with no progress ever made to break this historical cycle. However, progress is not inevitable since 99 out of 100 new mutations are for the worse, and so this needs to be conservatively, scientifically, and morally guided.

Religion needs to catch up with science so that science can be given the moral vision it has generally not had. Religion can ground evolution in the sacred evolution of life to Godhood. We can perhaps avoid some of the problems of a revolutionary new religion such as Cattell's noble "Beyondism,"---which wants to replace the revealed religions with a religion from science---by holding to religious tradition even as religion includes the new science of evolution, as we do in the Twofold Path of the Evolutionary Christian Church.

Who is against improving the quality of the population and why? When answering this we can see mostly selfish and hypocritical groups and lobbies, counter-evolutionary religions, and scare tactics due mainly to ignorance of sociobiology. Coercive systems, such as China has, are not advocated in this advancement toward human quality, representative governments protecting the independence and power of their individual states can work very well with this evolutionary perspective.

The Inauguration Party

Beyoncé lip-syncing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the inauguration ceremony for the President was just one of the cheapening events of the weekend, also included were Jennifer Hudson loudly emoting an old soul-tune while the president and his wife danced sexy and slow. Alicia Keys, Stevie Wonder and the gaily happy cast of 'Glee' also did their thing. It seemed like a dress-up party for rich adolescents.

Speaking of the utopian dreams of adolescence, the president's inauguration speech was about virtually nothing but big government doing for us things that we can never afford to do without economically wrecking the country, with no mention of adult self-sufficiency or not depending on the mommy-daddy state to do all things for us. Equality of opportunity, certainly, equality of results, a Marxian dream.

Will we ever again hear European classical music or at least classical American jazz at one of these events? 

Maybe we should just let big government continue to cheapen and decline, as long as the individual states increase their power and independence---as the Constitution intended.  Then they can party all they want in the White House and it won't much matter.

Godhood does not transcend the supermaterial object

Defining God with human language has been difficult, so language has often transcended the object it cannot fully explain. This has helped create a duality between religion and science, and between the material and the spiritual, which should not be there.

Mystics tend to see the image that they expect to see from their training. The claim of being ineffable, unexplainable, can be an alibi for inaccuracy, which of course is understandable given the difficulty. But I like the attitude taken by a few rabbis in the Talmud who have their God saying, “My children have won against me,” although the God they define is not the Godhood defined here.

Great religion and science define the previously undefinable. When the mystical experience transcends material or supermaterial objects then it goes too far toward unreality. The Inward God or Father seen by the mystics is only a mirror, a symbol, a mystical experience of the real supermaterial object Godhood which is reached through material and supermaterial evolution. 

This creates a more prophetic and inspirational religion than a mystical religion.

Here is a quote from William Law:  "There is nothing that is supernatural, however mysterious, in the whole system of our redemption; every part of it has its ground in the workings and powers of nature and all our redemption is only nature set right, or made to be that which it ought to be." 

Introduction

Introduction To Art in the Theoevolutionary Church.

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The transfiguring goal for Friedrich Nietzsche in his early writings was the creation of great men, a republic of genius. Although that is important it is not nearly enough. Renewal requires the religious goal of our evolution to Godhood in the cosmos, which brings a far more exalted renewal of consciousness, and contains the power to revive religion, philosophy and art in the enlarged modern world.

It is not tragic music, as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer thought, which expresses “the immediate language of the will,” it is evolution. It is not the Will To Power but the Will To Godhood that activates life, which evolution then shapes, that is the real source for a renewal of mythopoetic power. Evolution is the super-epic for art, glorifying the struggle to attain Godhood. Art can bring religion to life but it is not religion.

Religion and philosophy can recognize evolutionary religion as what we need, politics can help create it, and art and religious rituals can affirm it. Our evolution can even be democratic, with a federal system respecting and protecting the independent parts of the whole, maintaining the separate variety which advances evolution best, only now with cooperative competition in evolution, as we gradually evolve beyond the human sub-species toward Godhood.

The Twofold Path brings together inward traditional religion with outward material-supermaterial evolution. The Twofold Path offers conservatism and synthesis to religion, and science, and allows the new to work along with the old, without the damage of revolution, and most importantly offers the divine evolutionary path to real Godhood.

Early Nietzsche could not see his way out of the loss of both religion and science other than through the rebirth of art-myth as a guide to truth, along with creating individual great men as the goal of culture. Nietzsche thought that this loss of myth was the result of the reasoning of Socrates which supposedly destroyed myth, and also after the “historical sense” and the abstract pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake in modern times further destroyed myth and religion. Kant helped this destruction along by showing the limits of knowledge, and Schopenhauer by adding the Will as the superior force to all knowledge.

I did not erect theological materialism on the ruins of Christianity, as modern thinkers did with science and the humanities, I wanted to renew the building, not tear it down. This rebirth was done through the Twofold Path, where the God-Within, the Father-Within, is seen as the first glimpse, or the mirror of the Godhood reached through material and supermaterial evolution. But this was a revelatory insight and not done simply to retain Christianity, and not done because I in fact do respect the conservative thinkers who see the great value for life in traditions.

Theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church revive both religion and science after modern life could not retrieve them as a satisfactory guide to truth. This brings along the religious-cultural goal of evolving increasingly great men, and also the sacred goal of attaining real Godhood in evolution in the Outward Path, the God first seen and mirrored in the Inward Path of the great religions.

****

Theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church suggest that we don't need duality in the art world any more than we do in theology or philosophy. With evolution the incomprehensible infinite of the Romantic becomes the clarity of the Classical. Beauty becomes truth and truth beauty. This is the goal affirmed in the art philosophy of  Evolutionary Realism.

It is more than admiration for the infinite which causes our art passions to be exited, as Burke said (which Jung called the numinous mystery), it is more essentially the Spirit-Will-To Godhood, the zenith of the instincts, that excites our passions, which can be fulfilled only in our material-supermaterial evolution to Godhood. Here the infinite becomes clarity, beauty becomes truth. This is also how we counter Kant and say that reality can be known.

Certainly we are imperfect, as the Christians demand, but our evolution to Godhood can bring perfection, which means we should not permanently dwell on our imperfections seen only in the Involutionary Inward Path, it is in the Evolutionary Outward Path where we can reach perfection in Godhood.

There is a sacred totality here: we arrive at health by fusing self, society and Godhood with the Spirit-Will activating life to evolve to Godhood. Evolutionary therapy, art, political philosophy, the sciences, etc., can fuse in this mission. In this holistic view religion is the way out of the problems seen in these now separated areas. It is perhaps this religious perspective that is the “total art work” that we have been searching for in the West since the Ancient Greeks, which art can only affirm.

****
 

The philosophy of the Theoevolutionary Church is whole because it has its roots in ancient religions, the tribal, the classical, the romantic, but also affirms the Enlightenment, which gave rise to the science of sociobiology now seen as an aid in our evolution to Godhood, the God first mirrored inwardly in the great religions.

This is not only religion adapting to preserve itself, which is indeed a noble Burkean action, this is a deeper and more accurate understanding of Godhood. The TC at last brings the sacred and profane together since Godhood is not a non-material spiritual being opposite the material world, Godhood is the zenith of the material world reached by material and supermaterial evolution. 

****

The revealed religions tell us that no object is divine, and therein lies the problem. Godhood is a living supreme object, or objects, Godhood is supermaterial being at the zenith of natural evolution, not an abstract symbol or word, not a non-material being.

We cannot find Godhood by going inward in ascetic contemplation, we can find only the mirror of Godhood inwardly. The inward God is a good start but is not the place to stop, even if the experience is blissful. We need to evolve in the material and supermaterial world to reach the Godhood we first saw inwardly.

This defines the Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church, which is the way out of the Great Spiritual Blockade of religious history. The Twofold Path is different from what the world believes, but we go forward anyway. We need to progress from the conformist mumblings of present religion and be nourished by new inspiration. All the fields from science to poetry can come together in the Twofold Path.

****

A new/old religion, a new worldview, a new philosophy and psychology rising, with evolution as the common ground, is preserved in the religion and philosophy of the Theoevolutionary Church, with the Twofold Path, which does not take away the old religions, or take away the nationalism, group separateness and uniqueness of each group. A world based on the evolution of all groups, all races, all people, while preserving ethnic distinctions and national identities as significant in the ongoing evolutionary dynamics. All the parts are seen as independent yet part of the nobler whole, with the parts working together in cooperative competition, since competition is healthy for evolution, guided by an international religious-scientific center. Persuasion rather than coercion is the method of this religious philosophy in the world. We all can affirm the evolutionary mission, bringing forth beauty and intelligence and character as evolution proceeds. Wisdom is shared among the whole of planetary life, each contributes, knowing they are part of the greater sacred mission of evolving to Godhood in the cosmos.

 ***

Of course it sounds like grandiose delusions or inflation to say so, but to look into the abyss and see that the God defined in the past is not there, or is there only inwardly in the human mind, leaving humanity without solace in the cosmos, this calls forth a remedy, the healing balm of religion and art, which Nietzsche saw as the deepest origin of ancient culture. That is, revitalized religion, bringing God back redefined as Godhood reached by way of material evolution.

This is the new myth-religion-art brought forward by nature itself through human beings, to help make sense of existence, to make existence bearable, to help man reach the goal of nature itself, which is to evolve to Godhood.  This turns our gaze away from the horrible to the sublime as ancient religions once did.

This myth-religion-art is desperately needed once again, and no less than this is the mission and task of the religious philosophy of the Theoevolutionary Church.

Human nature and human culture should not be mutilated by grafting the incongruous Inward Path of mystic religions on the deeper and far stronger Outward Path of material evolution, like a superficial veneer over a natural oak. We need to go back, but religiously, to our neglected deeper roots and give the material world a better chance to evolve to Godhood.

We do this not by rejecting the Inward Path to the God Within, or Father Within, which is a mirror or virtual glimpse of real Godhood evolved to in the cosmos in the Outward Path. Human nature and conservative human history tell us that we need Ordered Evolution not radical revolution.

In the Twofold Path the Inward Path is synthesized and fulfilled in the Outward Path which can heal us and create religious, psychological and cultural wholeness. Biology, science, art and social philosophy can legitimately join religion.

*** 

 Our main access to religion seems to be through feeling, reason follows after feeling, but feeling is driven by biology, and biology is activated by the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within biology. This whole sequence is affirmed in the Twofold Path and in the theological materialism of the Theoevolutionary Church.

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How do we make sacred our modern, non-sacred, moral and aesthetic values without losing our extraordinarily successful technological and economic development? How can we keep an anthropocentric culture working within a theocentric culture? By affirming that the material world evolves to Godhood, that is how. The Inward God is a mirror of Outward Godhood reached through material and supermaterial evolution.

Modernism and traditionalism need not reject one another as they have done, we can have a transformation of the sacred, not a rejection, the inward God first seen in the great religions is realized in outward Godhood, bringing the new into the old. The great division between the spiritual and the temporal does not exist when the spiritual is seen as supermaterial. Science can join religion.

The West can lead the way in this because we have for centuries been bringing Biblical faith together with Greek philosophical inquiry, along with the Roman heritage, whereas the East has been religious traditionally without this sort of Western tension, at least until the few short decades of Marxist totalitarianism, and even that has a nondemocratic Asian ethos to it. We can now add a third stage in the development of Christianity, from Neoplatonism to Catholic Scholasticism to the theological materialism of theTheoevolutionary Church.

The present attacks on the West by the trendy followers of the Traditionalist School (ie. Guénon and Evola), led by French and Russian intellectuals, goes against this rapprochement of tradition and the modern world. Many western intellectuals in this movement are in effect supporting the East over the West. Yes, the West has problems, with big enemies from within and without, yes, southern Russian was probably the home of Indo Europeans, but it is Western culture that evolved the great developments of science and evolution. Modernism in search of theology can find it in the rebirth of religion grounded in our sacred evolution to Godhood. 

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The difficult narrative of ancient human history, and beyond

Truth can bring success and power and so it seems inevitable that truth does eventually surface, even if  it is unknown or blocked for centuries, depending upon the powers that be, or perhaps the luck of discovery.

Nicholas Goodrick-Clark and others have pointed out that up to the mid-Eighteenth century, European scholars traced the descent of European man from the Garden of Eden and Noah---an astonishing long time. During the Enlightenment a new source of European history was discovered in India, which began a new historical narrative by obscure Irish scholars, the Schlegel brothers in Germany, Sir William Jones, Max Muller, and finally it was incorporated into German nationalism. Discoveries in linguistics and archeology further developed the narrative regarding the Indo-European or Aryan migrations from East of Eden into Europe and into the Middle-east, largely founding Western civilization. This was a big change in the narrative of ancient history. 

With the first flush of the new discoveries of their origins, Europeans felt pride in their ethnic history, after many centuries of being taught only Biblical Middle-eastern history, this pride seemed natural.  But much of the pride that Europeans felt in discovering their ancient history was soon stopped, following the atrocities of World War II, which is certainly understandable. Soon few people wanted to talk about ancient Indo-European history. Political correctness in the form of cultural Marxism took over the academic world, demanding that people be considered all the same and that differences do not matter and needed to be equalized---and the popular media went along with this censorship.

Then gradually and very slowly the study of sociobiology helped us realize that all people, all groups, naturally feel pride in their own kin, their own heritage, and that even basic ethics were created because altruism helped ones own group survive better than groups with less altruism, and this trait was therefore passed on through nature and nurture in culture and religion.

Now comes the understanding---but still not widely understood---that it is the human species itself which needs to be surpassed as we evolve out into the cosmos. We need to love and protect our own groups, states and nations, as human nature and our human instincts intend us to do, but we also need to think and move beyond the human species toward evolving future and better species, all the way to Godhood.

I have personally spent time in each of these stages, but it does seem that people become trapped within the various stages of this narrative. 

The optimistic religious view of nature

It seems to me that the catastrophic end-of-the-world myth of the Germanic Ragnarok is the northern version of Greek tragedy, along with the Germanic catharsis of great feasts, drinking and poetry, whereas the ancient Greeks handled the more or less same sense of tragedy with their catharsis of tragic dramas. This was a cyclic worldview, which did include life surviving somehow and coming out the other side of the great catastrophe. Many modern philosophies seems also to be existentially tragic, or at least try to be, taking their attitude from Nietzsche's ideas on life and tragedy.

This blog has an ultimately optimistic religious view of nature, seeing tragic cycles within nature, but always seeing a steady linear evolution of life from the simple to the complex. Heroes and martyrs and tragedies occur but ultimately life evolves all the way to Godhood in the cosmos.

However, along with this cosmic optimism it is vital that a utopian vision, a religious vision, is built not merely on abstractions and visions, which most utopias are built upon. Utopian and religious visions need to be combined with an Edmund Burkian kind of conservatism, then the vision supplies the sacred goal, and tradition does not stagnate as it is prone to do. Ordered Evolution defines this dynamic. Also theological materialism grounds the end-goal of Godhood solidly in biology and in material and supermaterial evolution.  The Twofold Path brings the Father-Within of the revealed religions in harmony with our outward evolution  to Godhood.

“We the States”

"...When the Founders created the American republic, they did so by inducing constitutional conventions in each of the original 13 states to ratify the new Constitution. The idea they presented, and the thesis accepted by those ratifying conventions, was that the states are sovereign; they derive their powers from the people who live there. The purpose of the Constitution was to create a federal government of limited powers – powers that had been delegated to it by the states. The opening line of the Constitution contains a serious typographical error: "We the People" should read "We the States." As President Ronald Reagan reminded us in his first inaugural address, the states created the federal government and not the other way around.

Notwithstanding the Constitution’s typo, the states delegated only 16 unique, discrete powers to the new federal government, and all of those powers concern nationhood. The Constitution authorizes the feds to regulate in areas of national defense, foreign affairs, keeping interstate commerce regular, establishing a post office, protecting patents and artistic creations, and keeping the nation free. The areas of health, safety, welfare and morality were not delegated to the feds and were retained by the States.

How do we know that? We know it from the language in the Constitution itself and from the records of the debates in the state ratifying conventions. The small-government types, who warned at these conventions that the Constitution was creating a behemoth central government not unlike the one in Great Britain from which they had all just seceded, were assured that the unique separation of powers between the states and the new limited federal government would guarantee that power could not become concentrated in the central government.

It was articulated even by the big-government types in the late 18th century – such as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton – as well as by the small-government types – such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison – that the new government was limited to the powers delegated to it by the states and the states retained the governmental powers that they did not delegate away. At Jefferson’s insistence, the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to keep the new government from interfering with natural rights such as speech, worship, self-defense, privacy and property rights, and the 10th Amendment was included to assure that the Constitution itself would proclaim affirmatively that the powers not delegated to the feds were retained by the states or the people.

The Supreme Court has ruled consistently and countless times that the "police power," that is, the power to regulate for health, safety, welfare and morality, continues to be reposed in the states, and that there is no federal police power. All of this is consistent with the philosophical principle of "subsidiarity," famously articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas argued that the problems that are closest to the people needing government intervention should be addressed by the government closest to those people. Its corollary is that all governmental intervention should be the minimum needed....

...The Constitution expressly prohibits all governments from infringing upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms. This permits us to defend ourselves when the police can’t or won’t, and it permits a residue of firepower in the hands of the people with which to stop any tyrant who might try to infringe upon our natural rights, and it will give second thoughts to anyone thinking about tyranny...

The whole purpose of the Constitution is to insulate personal freedom from the lust for power of those in government and from the passions of the people who sent them there..."


Excerpts from “Guns and the Government” by Andrew P. Napolitano     January 2013

New Mysticism

Mysticism is the stage of development before greater precision is reached in defining God. The traditional mystical experience supposedly transcends the subject/object realm, but when the object is hypertrophied by evolution into Godhood then the object is seen as evolved to rather than transcended. This leads to a new materially-grounded mysticism.

The blocking of the material world along with desires by the Gnosticism inherent in all religious mysticism blocks real Godhood which is attained by the very thing Gnosticism rules out, material and supermaterial evolution.

Unlike Gnosticism, theological materialism does not block out the other side or call it evil, the Inward God or Father Within is affirmed and expanded outward to the Godhood evolved to in the cosmos. This means better seeing the previously ineffable object while always evolving to see better.

Linear and cyclic history

It has been claimed by Traditionalist historians that it was the Hebrews (as Eliade called them) who broke with the cyclical idea of time and the ancient idea of “the eternal return,” by linking God with linear time. “The Hebrews,” he writes, “were the first to discover the significance of history as the epiphany of God.”

This may or may not be how linear time was discovered, but science and modern history more or less affirm the linear idea of time, and I agree with the idea of linear progress in evolution. Progress can even be blocked by the cyclic view of time and history which is always looking back to a better golden time in the past. The Traditionalist School has no time for scientific evolution, which is absurd. There is a cyclic dynamic in the history of culture but it happens within linear biological history, in the form of sociobiologically explained evolution.

Evolution goes back, forth, and sideways at times, but we have evolved from the simple to the complex, and this continues on as we evolve to real Godhood (not merely the Inner God of Tradition) through material and supermaterial evolution, if we don't block it.

Plastic Awards

The declining rulers of the Roman Empire corrupted their people with bread and circuses, but Hollywood is a media state unto itself. Hollywood films and television manipulate the seductive power of beauty and guns toward their version of political correctness, which is cultural Marxism infused with frenzied hedonism and the open hatred of traditional values. Hollywood likes nothing better than to gradually turn innocent new actresses and actors into foul-mouthed, self-indulgent sensualists, with awards such as the 2013 Golden Globe Awards.

There were awards for the indecent “Girls,” the sentimental left-leaning “Les Miserables,” Jodie Foster's cheesy acceptance speech affirming her lesbianism, the clever anti-Islamic film “Argo,” and so on, and so on, with many of these films done with artistry. But how do we stop the ongoing Hollywood assault on healthy traditional values? Somehow we need to put money and power behind alternative films and television, we need to break up the economic monopolies concentrated in Hollywood.

The affirmation of the sacred in evolutionary art

In an essay on the various views of art regarding nature, Peter Kellow points out that Roger Scruton suggests our attitude toward art is not much different from our attitude toward natural beauty, but Kellow says that Kant saw a difference in that art is a presentation of a beautiful thing whereas natural beauty is a beautiful thing.

I think serious or high art has always been an affirmation of the things that we have held sacred, which included religion, nature and human beauty, unserious or low art did not affirm the sacred. But popular art often still included a portrayal of the sacred but with less sophistication. The highest art affirmed Godhood, which was valued higher than nature or human beings although these things were included in the overall affirmation of the sacred.

Much depends on how culture defines God or Godhood. When Godhood is defined as the supreme life we evolve to in nature, then nature and human beings, and future species, become a vital part of the sacred path to Godhood, and the subject of art---the beings evolving to Godhood in nature, and nature from which they evolve out of, are nearly as sacred in art as the Godhood they are evolving to.

Evolutionary realism is the form of art that can best affirm this view of the sacred, although the artists can feel free to create anyway they want to, yet knowing sacred art is the ideal. Definitions of human beauty relate to Godhood as the zenith of beauty, and so perhaps the ancient Greeks were on the right track in their idealized realistic art creations of the Gods. Modern art forms have been mainly devoid of the sacred, or they hold individual hedonistic expression as “sacred,” and reaching a social audience has not been a concern of theirs, they tend to communicate only with each other or with critics hip to their experimentations, as Tom Wolfe wrote about so well.

How Nietzsche paved the way for the renewal of evolutionary religion

According to the excellent Quentin Taylor, early Nietzsche thought we needed a rebirth of myth-religion and he believed that science was incompatible with myth. Science had destroyed myth-religion, science would eventually prove itself unable to meet the full mythical-religious requirements of mankind, there were limits to reason and science, as Kant and others had shown.

Nietzsche thought as science collapsed as a guide to truth, an old/new “tragic insight” could be the remedy, and in his early work Nietzsche had Wagner's art-work in mind for this mission, at least to a certain extent. But as we know this didn't happen, or was made too imperialistic to happen, so man became myth-less man, man became abstract man, roving philosophically, culturally lawless, unchecked by myth-religion, consuming knowledge for knowledge sake, grubbing for roots. Life became a science, not a life. Postmodernism is mostly non-life and non-material conceptions.

The cure I reflect upon in this blog does not rest merely upon tragic art as Nietzsche advocated but with revitalized religion, religion which can master science, philosophy and art, where both science and religion can supervise our material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood, yet a religion tied to past myth-religion in that the Godhood sought through material-supermaterial evolution is the God or Father-Within mirrored or symbolized in the inward path of the great religions.

This can bring the renewed moral and symbolic world we miss and need. Cultural revival requires the renewal of religion. And what is the goal of true culture and religion? To evolve great men and women forward from a cooperating variety of separate evolving people and bonded groups, and ethnostates, as human nature prefers, evolving beyond the human species all the way to Godhood in the cosmos...This is how I think Nietzsche paved the way for the renewal of evolutionary religion, even though he declared God dead prematurely.

Can we be objective about tribalism?

The science of sociobiology, and its more politically correct version of evolutionary psychology, have made valiant inroads in trying to be objective about tribalism, or its newer term racialism, which they have found inherent in human nature, but the media and the academic world have mainly remained very emotional and nonobjective on this subject. This emotion is certainly understandable given the atrocities of WWII. But is it possible to ever be objective about this subject? Some have given up and remain silent on this subject believing it is impossible to be objective about these emotional things. Others soldier on, even when they are smeared by emotional opponents.

Tribalism and racialism have always been a very strong element of human nature, related directly to the group-bonding of altruism which created the basic ethics of all cultures. We have a world of many tribes, many regions, many states, loved by their citizens, and this is not a reversion to evil. All the attempts by various imperialistic and one-race totalitarians throughout history have not stopped it, including the recent, but now fading, “neoconservatism,” which has tried and failed to rid tiny Afghanistan of its tribalism-tied-to-religion.

The religious philosophy reflected upon in this blog attempts to speak to higher religious elements regarding the evolution, and future evolution, of all tribes, which necessarily has a political element, because we are all evolving to Godhood by way of non-abstract sociobiological dynamics, and this necessarily includes politics. We do not need to, and should not, try to break up tribes or make the world all one tribe, this is not good for real evolution which requires separate variety, and is impossible in any case, as human history has shown. We need to look for ways to synthesize and harmonize real human nature with culture. For example, this is the basis for my affirming the original American Constitution, that is, the separation of powers, many small states and regions, which need to have their independence protected, in this case, by a light federalism. 

Can we be objective about these things? I will certainly try to be.

Our Future Evolution

There has been no discernible evolution of brain capacity since Cro Magnon 12,000 years ago, with the easing of fierce selection pressures. In addition to ridding mankind of terrible genetic diseases, we also need positive improvements. What is desirable? Raymond Cattell suggested, continually evolving intelligence, emotional stability, altruism, good health, energy, good sensory organs, and longevity. Even with no institutional over-site, assortative mating, that is, similarity in pairs, for example, brings 20 times as many leaders with high IQ's as random, nonassortative mating.

We have paid attention to the quantity of people on earth but have avoided speaking of the quality of people on earth. The values we create arise from both genes and culture, and the gross fact is, if the values within a group degenerate, then it is between-group selection that will have the final say in who survives and evolves. Many historians have affirmed this.

We need to begin our conscious, positive evolution, which is the true and sacred mission of  life in the cosmos. That is, a voluntary, democratic, non-coercive evolution for all groups. We are evolving outwardly, materially and supermaterially, all the way to Godhood, which was first seen or mirrored inwardly as the God Within or the Father Within of traditional religions, so traditional religions need not block our evolution to Godhood.

The ironic other side of the indescribable

Walter Kaufmann said that great art and great philosophy begin on the other side of the indescribable, but I think that is also where religion can advance. Mystics insist on the ineffable, in not describing their God, but it is the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution to Godhood that gives an objective correlation to the Involutionary Inward Path to the God or Father Within.

Understood as the basic mystical foundation, the Inward God is the sole goal of the great religions, and that is fine, good, traditional, but it is the Outward Path of evolution that completes the real path to the Godhood which is first experienced as the ineffable Father-Within.

The ironic thing is, the only way to see or experience the God Within is by blocking the very means to reaching Godhood in material-supermaterial evolution! Having no material or sensual dependencies, which is the condition required for experiencing the Father-Within, is the mirror experience of fulfilling the material and sensual dependencies in attaining Godhood through evolution!

The Twofold Path does not reject the Inward Father Within because it is a great virtual experience of real Godhood attained through evolution, we do not reject traditional religion. The Outward Path helps explain the ineffable qualities of the Inward Path, as great art, philosophy and religion should do. And we open up the Great Spiritual Blockade against attaining real Godhood in the cosmos.  Now it is the real Godhood of evolution which will become more describable as we evolve.

Beyond Spengler

Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) was brilliant in finding cyclic patterns and similarities between the rise and fall of various civilizations, but I don't admire Spengler's complete rejection of the “Idea of Progress.” I think there can be both cycles and progress, like a winding path up a mountain which sometimes descends before it rises again.  Evolution is the basis for accepting the idea of progress, life has evolved from the simple to the complex, and although modern human advances in saving lives has slowed harsh natural selection, progress in evolution continues.

Spengler speaks of a “mysterious cosmic force” that influences man, but he does not at all tie it to biology. I define the activation within life of material Tirips or the Will, which is tied to biology, and is later shaped by evolution. This is the force that is universal within life and is therefore within distinct civilizations and cultures. Universal evolution does not suggest only one people or one civilization, which could be destroyed by one disease or one disaster. Human evolution has always worked within a variety of people and cultures, each evolving in there own fashion---we would hope that their independence could be protected by a defensive federalism, while cooperating with one another in the overall evolution of human beings, even evolving into new species out into the cosmos, as Raymond Cattell suggested. 

 

Evolution also answers Spengler's attempt to define the “Prime Symbol” of each distinct civilization, eg. Faustian-Western, Apollinian-Greco-Roman, Magian-Arabian, etc. The real prime symbol is the universal symbol of evolving life, the activation within life of material Tirips to ascending levels of supermaterial Godhood which activates all life forms, even when each culture and civilization is uniquely shaped by evolution in its own environment and by its own genetic traits. Spengler thinks real unity is more cultural than biological, when the reality is the other way around, there is a biological origin behind cultural creations  which basically enhance survival and reproduction, and ultimately enhance success in the sacred drive to evolve toward Godhood. As Wilmot Robertson suggested we could continue to counter Spengler's prediction of inevitable fall in solving the age old problem of union in America by forming an ethnopluralism of ethnostates adapted from our Constitutional separation of powers and states, for all groups, black, white, brown, yellow, or red, and then protect the ethnostates from marauding imperialists, supremacists, global money grubbers, and social justice warriors, with a defensive federalism.

We can pay attention to the signs and cycles of the rise and decline of civilizations, which Spengler was brilliant in finding, such as the deterioration of the roots and traditions of the founders, the fall in birthrates, the rise of dictatorships, etc. but it is the ongoing evolution of  life and in various group selections on the sacred path to Godhood whichcounters the ominous pessimism of Spengler.

The moral foundation of capitalism

We better hope that the moral foundation of capitalism comes mainly from nurturing and education and not only from genetic traits if we expect to have a fair and equitable nation with widely varying ethnic groups and businesses in America.

The moral foundation behind capitalism has eroded. We now have crony capitalism where big business and their lobbies control the political process. This means that the magic of creative competition and meritocracy cannot work well.

Contrary to many libertarians, government has an important place in controlling monopolies of power and keeping healthy competition open and free. Narrow economic efficiency is not the only criterion for public policy. Destroying everything else to make the trains run on time, as fascism tends to do, is stupid.

Light federalism works best for controlling monopolies of all kinds and for protecting the rights of small states, but it needs to have teeth to do the job. Economic nationalism, protecting American manufacturing and jobs with tariffs on foreign-made products, this is part of the protection government needs to supply.  Freedom, merit, and most importantly evolution can take place between varying groups and businesses by controlling monopolies. This is the moral foundation of capitalism. America has had the nature and nurture to do this perhaps better than anyone else.

The rebirth of religion as an answer to Nietzsche

Early Nietzsche could not see his way out of the loss of both religion and science other than through the rebirth of art-myth as a guide to truth, along with creating individual great men as the goal of culture. This loss of myth was the result of the reasoning of Socrates which supposedly destroyed myth, and also after the “historical sense” and the abstract pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake in modern times further destroyed myth and religion. Kant helped this destruction along by showing the limits of knowledge, and Schopenhauer by adding the Will as the superior force to all knowledge.

I did not erect theological materialism on the ruins of Christianity, as modern thinkers did with science and the humanities, I wanted to revitalize the building, not tear it down. This rebirth was done mainly through the Twofold Path, where the God-Within, the Father-Within, is seen as the first glimpse, or the mirror of the Godhood reached through material and supermaterial evolution. But this was a revelatory insight and not done simply to retain Christianity, and not done because I in fact do respect the conservative thinkers who see the great value for life in traditions.

Theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church revive both religion and science after modern life could not retrieve them as a satisfactory guide to truth. This brings along the religious-cultural goal of evolving increasingly great men, and also the sacred goal of attaining real Godhood in evolution in the Outward Path, the God first seen and mirrored in the Inward Path of the great religions.

The overall guide of evolution

The religious and social philosophy of theological materialism does not center on class, race, the individual, or the Father-Within, but on the evolution of these things. Totalitarian systems tend to center on only one these things, for example, class-communism, race-Nazism, the individual-capitalism, and the Father-Within-mysticism, and so on. If you center on only one of these things you tend to block evolution.

Real evolution requires a variety of states, classes, races, and individuals, with enough separation to insure time enough for good and bad mutations to present themselves. Defining these things begins with such things as intelligence, good character, beauty, along with the absence of dangerous inherited diseases---and the zenith of these things is found in our evolution to supermaterial Godhood.

This suggests nations of small independent states protected by a light federalism, where class, race, the individual, and the Father-Within are guided by evolutionary religion, with the overall cooperative and voluntary world-goal of evolving to Godhood. Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism work best in this long term mission, and not revolution.

In theological materialism, the Twofold Path does not center solely on the God-Within or the Father-Within of the Inward Path but on Godhood in the Outward Path of evolution, which is blocked if we center only on the Inward Path.  The God-Within is a mirror only of Godhood evolved to in the Outward Path.

How corrupt are Ivy League admissions?

If you haven't already read it here is a stunning essay by Ron Unz. It is long but absolutely necessary reading.

 "The Myth of American Meritocracy, " from "The American Conservative," November 2012.