Being-as-evolving-life

It is said that to live well is to live in a way proper to our "being," so defining being becomes critically important. I have no problem combining the Enlightenment with traditional religious metaphysics because I define being-as-evolving-life.

Faith is then seen as mainly affirming the end-goal of evolution, and this need not get in the way of reason because reason is grounded in evolving life. Faith enlarges reason by seeing and helping life evolve to Godhood.

Godhood is not separate from evolving life, Godhood is the zenith of evolving life. Life is then not individualistic but is “relational,” we evolve together with others, indeed, as sociobiology has brilliantly brought out, group-altruism is at the very origin of our ethics bringing success in survival and reproduction.

Much of the over-complicated religious metaphysics has been involved in trying to reconcile a spiritual world separate from the material world. Unity is found in the spiritual and material because the Spirit-Will itself is material, or supermaterial. The material needs the Spirit-Will, and the Spirit-Will needs the material, because the Spirit-Will activates material life to evolve to Godhood which is the very goal of the material Spirit-Will.

Science does not have to “prescind” itself from the “metaphysical” when theology is based in theological materialism, which fits almost comfortably within the philosophical naturalism of science. Religion and science can enter the public order together by seeing government and culture as aids in our evolution toward Godhood.

Being-as-evolving-life helps us resolve such questions as: free and limited government versus big state coercion, by asking the question, what is the best way for us to evolve over time? The reasonable answer calls for variety, separation, small states and limited government to best coordinate evolution over the long term.   Evolution is the central dynamic of transformation for all people and not just one people.  Ordered Evolution is better than radical revolution in that we have a very long way to evolve to Godhood and good changes, good mutations need time and order to prove themselves. Freedom is seen as grounded in the natural instinct to evolve, and a light federalism can protect the right of others, states and individuals, to evolve.

Being-as-evolving-life is a constant throughout history, influencing all forms of culture---compared to this other forms of metaphysics seem false to reality. Life is first the instrument of the activating Spirit-Will and is later shaped by natural evolution. Ontology is grounded in evolution. Godhood is the zenith of evolution, ever evolving.

Traditional religion found God by gazing inward and by blocking the desires of material life in order to do so, in silence and stillness. This is the Involutionary Inward Path. But the God seen inwardly was only a mirror, a symbolic experience of the Godhood which is evolved to in the Evolutionary Outward Path. Both paths are included in the Twofold Path, but being-as-evolving-life defines the Outward Path as most proper to our real being.

(These comments were my response to the essay, “Philosopher of Love,” by Jeremy Beer, The American Conservative, January 2013)