Ending the religious-science wars

“That which is below is as that which is above, and that which is above is as that which is below.” The Emerald Tablet

The metaphors of religion probably do say more about human life than science, as some have remarked, but this can only be fully true if religion includes science in its stories. The war between religion and science can end when religion realizes that the material-supermaterial world which science studies is the means to evolve to the God of religion, but also when science realizes that there is a Godhood goal to evolution, which has been the specialty of religion. The Twofold Path works with both religion and science, the Inward God of religion is the mirror and symbol of the Outward Godhood reached as a supreme object through evolution.

What needs to be done?

Once political correctness, or cultural Marxism, is understood to be the fraud that it is, and once the science of sociobiology deflates these intellectual pretensions with the fact that there is a biological origin to cultural behavior, including gender differences and ethnic differences, among many other things, with an inborn deterministic drive to survive and reproduce successfully, then we can move on to what needs to be done.

Is “cooperative competition” between different states and ethnic groups possible, as Raymond Cattell's brilliant “Beyondism” called for? It had better be possible because noncooperative competition, or wars, seem to end up destroying us to the point where no competition at all is possible and therefore no evolution is possible. Cooperative competition is not merely a hopeless ideal, it is necessary for our survival and evolution. One-state totalitarianism or one-race imperialism do not sustain for long and they tend to snuff out variety, individualism and creativity which are necessary for human evolution.

We need to promote the freedom of each small state and its people to be what they are, with the freedom to diverge from the others in their survival and evolution if they need to do so. The idea is to avoid the total destruction of any group, while still avoiding overindulgent humanism and hedonism which destroy innovation and real evolution. It will take courage at first in moving away from bogus and destructive political correctness or cultural Marxism.

Independent small states or even ethnostates within a light and protecting federalism, guided by sociobiological research, and the evolutionary church, seem to be the best way to organize a future evolutionary world. Different ethnic groups now living within states and cities need not contradict the general tendency of regions and states to take on their own distinctive identities, especially if variety and divergence are championed rather than fought against. Secession of states does not seem like a good option because federalism in the end is what protects the independence and variety of the states, internally and externally.

This variety, independence and cooperative competition of small states, even evolving into ethnostates, with a light protecting federalism, is an ideal that had better be more than an ideal if humans are to survive and evolve on earth and out in to the cosmos. All states, all groups will ultimately benefit from such a worldview, although the imperialists and stateless may not, which is why they will oppose it. The original Constitution of the United States already has such a structure in place, more or less, although it has been corrupted with a huge national (and international) government and the loss of power for the states---but it could be redeemed. 

Overcoming the waste, fraud and destruction of modern intellectual cultural movements

Totalitarian political correctness, or cultural Marxism, is the watered-down intellectual base of hedonistic, nihilistic, anarchistic, popular culture. Postmodernism is the more esoteric version of this, claiming that all philosophical and religious truths are relative, other than its own. Although intellectually complicated and very damaging this cultural movement really is almost total crap. Nietzsche seems to have been the inspiration for much of this thinking, although he himself believed in the values of national ethnic culture in his early writings, and the cultural-biological creation of superman in his later writings, which of course is not the politically correct way to interpret his writings.

The science of sociobiology alone demolishes these intellectual pretensions. We are alive with all the drives and passions involved in being alive. There is a biological origin to cultural behavior, including gender differences and ethnic differences, among many other things, with an inborn deterministic drive to survive and reproduce successfully, which cannot legitimately be denied no matter how clever the denials.

The Traditionalist School has attempted to counter these modern intellectual frauds with a fraud of its own which essentially denies any real importance to the material world, although like much of religious theology it has made very cunning attempts to include the real world in its life-hating, science-hating, evolution-hating religious philosophy. We need to move beyond the waste, fraud and destruction of these movements. We have the freedom to choose but it is a freedom within limited choices. Emerging religion and philosophy affirm real life and real evolution, as life itself seeks to evolve to Godhood in the cosmos, and it is the sacred mission of human beings to help it along the way.

Can the church and the state work more in harmony than they now do?

The religious error of the separation between the spiritual and the material seems to have eventually led to depriving the state and society of religious significance---the desacralizing of politics, in religion as well as in modern liberalism.  Religion in the West has affirmed the separation of politics and religion, but religious thinkers and scientists can still help guide society, whether there is a separation of church and state or not. This does not single out any particular political philosophy, although some may be better adapted to our successful survival and evolution than others. I prefer, given historical reality, the Republican form of government and the federalism of the American Constitution with its separation of church and state. But religion can, if the people desire it, be formally part of any state. Separated or joined religion and politics are grounded in material evolution and ultimately in our sacred evolution to Godhood.

For example, group-selection has in reality set ethics and morals since the dawn of mankind. This does not mean that individuals do not matter, it means that our individual survival depends on the survival of our group---altruism in human behavior, later codified in religion, grew from this source. Demanding that all individual life, no matter how damaging, no matter how it hurts the group, is always sacred can be seen as immoral when that selfishness damages the overall evolution and survival of a people. Such controversial things as abortion and genetic engineering can this way be seen as grounded in these considerations of group survival, and even deeper in our sacred evolution toward Godhood. This is how the state can be considered eschatologically significant, if the evolution of life to Godhood is understood as both natural and sacred, since political life and social order relate directly to our evolution. This suggests some of the conditions for a civilizational shift to where the church and the state could work more in harmony than they now do.

Speculating on the direction of love in materially evolving to Godhood

Aristophanes said love is our longing for the other half, but there is something even deeper activating life and that is our primal longing for Godhood as the ultimate success in survival and reproduction, which activates life and applies to love. 

 Socrates said love is immortality, striving to be God as far as you are able to, immortality is sought through physical generation. The scriptures said “Ye shall be as God,” but they were speaking of the nonmaterial God of the Inward Path, which is a Half-God, only a definition, a mirror of Godhood.

This longing for Godhood has its source in the inward material activation of material Tirips or the Will which activates material life to outwardly evolve to supermaterial Godhood, by way of increasingly complex and successful survival and reproduction, shaped by outside natural evolution.

Philosophers and religious mystics demand that God cannot be objectified, but that is precisely how real Godhood needs now to be understood. The demand that God cannot be objectified blocks real Godhood.  Godhood is a living supermaterial object not a non-material spirit. Sociobiological artists can help us understand what evolved Godhood might be like in addition to theology.

We can ascribe predicates to Godhood, the Outward Path does objectify Godhood, even as the Inward Path does not. The prophets warn us that it is a sin to objectify Godhood, but objectifying Godhood is real progress in understanding Godhood as the supermaterial goal of material evolution.

It is time to leave the dreamy religious nursery. We cannot merely be “as God” in our human forms, we can see what Godhood may be like inwardly with religion, or by using the intellectual reason of philosophy. but we must evolve to Godhood in newer and better material and supermaterial forms.

Aspiration and definition are not the sole goals of religion and philosophy, the goal is to actually evolve to supermaterial Godhood. Religion and even reason prefer to fly free of material grounding, but religion and reason must return to the material and then the supermaterial world. Godhood, although rare, is not a dimension of no material or supermaterial habitation.

Yes, this supermaterial Godhood is also an ideal, a faith, a dream, but it is more concrete than Inward Path definitions, it is grounded in the ordered evolution of the material world. The truth, spirit, and reason of the Inward Path of philosophers and religious mystics only defines and mirrors the concrete Godhood of the Outward Path. Defining love truth, spirit and reason, or seeing a mirror of love, are not enough; these things seek their better half: real love in real life, and real Godhood materially evolved to in the cosmos.

What would Nietzsche think of sociobiology?

In his early notebooks Nietzsche wrote: “My task is to comprehend the internal coherence and necessity of every true culture.” The study of sociobiology since Nietzsche has more or less done that.

Sociobiology would probably be what Nietzsche called “Socratic-Alexandrian” rather than “Tragic-Dionysian,” which is not the direction early Nietzsche thought Germany (and the West?) needed to go to save culture.  Postmodernism seems to begin here and has not been able to get past Nietzsche's solution.  Nietzsche preferred the Tragic-Dionysian as more true to human nature and human culture, and he thought science was not up to the task of defining the real truths of life. But sociobiology has excellently defined and explained human nature and human culture. What we need is a new field to help make cultural sense of the sociobiological perspective in human nature and culture, call it philosophical sociobiology.

What would Nietzsche think of sociobiology? I think he would have been courageous enough to affirm it, but he would have expanded it into the humanities, which also happens to be what the founder of sociobiology, E.O.Wilson has called for. Sociobiology also points toward another recurring theme of early Nietzsche's, the necessity of a “master of drives” and an “exalted and overall transfiguring goal.” The reflections in this blog have pointed in that direction regarding theological materialism and the Evolutionary Church, which brings sociobiology into new/old religion, even as we have kept the old intellectual intuition and the old faith somewhat independent from science, yet open to future scientific synthesis.

Transvaluing the gnostic abstractions of science, religion and philosophy, and saving religion

Let the abstractions of science, religion and philosophy be seen as only the mirrors of real life and secondary to real life. We don't need to reject the abstractions of science, religion and philosophy, but they need not be placed before or in front of real life in value, as they tend to be. And real life need not reject science, religion and philosophy, but these fields need to see real life as their Hero, they need to define real life scientifically, religiously and philosophically without downplaying or even rejecting real life, as they tend to do. Sometimes myths are real and don't need the abstract explanations of science, religion, and philosophy, or the more modern interpretations of Jung, Eliade or Campbell.

The Inward Path to the Father Within, or the God Within, has been considered virtually the only path, interpreted abstractly, which has been the central concern of the great religions, as well as the main concern of modern mythologists, psychologists and the Traditionalist school. Mystical abstractions regarding God need not reject real supermaterial Godhood, abstractions are only mirrors (opposite Plato), they are first glimpses of what real super-physical Godhood is like when attained through material evolution.

It is time for the Inward Path and the abstract nonphysical Gods to step back and take a position less in value from the Outward Path leading to real Godhood which is reached through material and supermaterial evolution. The material-supermaterial reality of Godhood needs to be released from the abstract spiritual bondage of science, religion and philosophy so that we can get on with evolving to real Godhood in the cosmos. Gnostic abstractions need to be trans-valued and made real. Religion is not lost this way, it is found this way.

Cattell on democracy

Raymond Cattell had some interesting things to say about democracy. He acknowledged the advantages of democracy, with its open discussion, orderly progress and the importance of the individual, he also hoped that while democracy could help us find the goals (needs) of people by democratic vote, we could more successfully transfer the means of reaching the goals to technical elites. Cattell hoped that somehow society could lose its bias against judgments by technical elites, perhaps better defined as “selected bodies.” Cattell's interest was primarily in the sociobiological sciences and psychometric testing. People could be chosen through open, completely objective meritocracies, with great freedom to enter and leave.

Cattell hoped we could somehow find a way to measure votes toward more responsible individuals. Perhaps we should have a common tax paid by all, terminating at incomes under a low amount, so that the burden of taxation isn't on the above average people, who we need most to help solve our many problems, since unfair taxation keeps them from having children, while the below average have more children. Cattell tentatively asked: what if only tax-payers voted? This might eliminate the vote from the 10 percent who swing votes in their own self-serving, nonworking, directions. Alas, people believe that to question this is to question democracy itself. The man in the street thinks in terms of rich and poor when 80 percent of the population is neither.

As many philosophers have pointed out, the problem with democracy is that representatives can make a good living giving the people not what is actually good for them but what they want.  Cattell reminded us that Jefferson thought the Constitution could be revised every 20 years or so. Cattell is to be commended for thinking that democracy is not beyond improvement.

Ontology or Godhood Expanded (not reduced) to Physiology or Supermateriality

Ontology, the nature of being, can be expanded (not reduced) to physiology, or supermateriality, and so can psychology, in that we evolve to Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution, which is our deepest desire. This is the essential activation behind the basic needs of food, drink, sex, love, security, property and pleasure.

Philosophers have often built their systems centering on one thing almost exclusively, as Walter Kaufmann pointed out: property (Locke), security (Hobbes), pleasure (Bentham), and mystics and philosophers exclusively center on God and ontology. These things each have their own value and place and can be arranged in a value system which points to the greatest need that they are all aiding, that is, our evolution to Godhood.

Applying the Twofold Path we do not concentrate exclusively on the God Within, as the ascetics of the Inward Path do which is the real “reduction.” This means there is an order and harmony in our various desires and drives, a totality, a wholeness. We need the Outward Path to expand our evolution to real Godhood which was first seen in the Inward Path.

This is not a God beyond or outside the physical plane, this is not the Inward Path, Father Within, which is only a symbol, a mirror, a reduction of Godhood. This is ontology expanded, not reduced, to super-physiology or supermateriality and to real Godhood in the cosmos.

The fourth way: working with what we have as we evolve

The realistic base of conservatism is working with what we have, with slow change rather than radical change, bringing the new into the old. In America this means working with our Constitution which, as the Founders envisioned it, is realistic. Often the choices are between two different evils, perhaps even more than we have clear choices between right and wrong. Our increasingly diverse people will require the affirmation of separate states and regions within the union while rejecting racial hatred and racial decline. This is the realistic way to deal with our differences. Then we must protect these differences internally and externally with a light federalism.

This affirmation of separate states and regions within the union is what the Republican and Democratic parties should be working on, otherwise they may eventually be facing various secessions of states or a dictatorial big government impractically attempting to create order in a no longer homogenous nation. So called free trade needs to be modified to fair trade with economic nationalism rather than global corporation monopolies. This is hard reality but it needs to be faced.

The universal rights position arises because, as E.O.Wilson has said, power is too fluid with our advanced technologies and the long-term consequences of inequities will be too dangerous to its temporary beneficiaries. This “fourth way” seems like the globally realistic best way to recognize racial and national differences while rejecting racial hatred and racial decline. We need a world order based on the affirmation of different stages of evolution for different people, all evolving in their own way, with the help of sociobiological institutions, and the Church, objectively helping all the states and different groups evolve.

The other three ways seem to be one-race imperialism, global corporation monopolies, or imperialistic global equality, all of which have unreal views of real human nature and unreal views of human behavior, and often require radicalism. I believe our evolution to Godhood is a religious requirement which makes our successful survival and evolution a sacred imperative. We need a practical and successful fourth way to survive and evolve out into the cosmos.

Making the sacred concrete in art

The narrative of art can find its power and meaning in the sacred narrative of evolution from the simple to the complex to Godhood. This is the engine that drives human nature and culture. Lacking these truths life, art, and literature appear less important.

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; un-serious or low art also affirmed the sacred but with less sophistication, which is okay for its purposes. The highest art affirmed Godhood, which was valued higher than human beings, although humans have to be included in the overall affirmation of the sacred since humans also evolve toward Godhood.

Religious tradition says that man is best understood as an embodied spirit, whereas the theological materialism reverses this and says man is best understood as the embodied material will to life, or Tirips, activating life to evolve to material and supermaterial Godhood while being shaped by natural selection and evolution.

Evolutionary realism seems best to affirm this view of the sacred, evolutionary realism is the ideal choice in making the sacred concrete. Definitions of human beauty relate to Godhood as the zenith of beauty. 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;” modern artists tend to communicate only with each other, or only with critics hip to their experimentations, as Tom Wolfe criticized so well. And the public has largely turned their backs to high art.

What would Nietzsche have thought of the rise of “Alexandrian” sociobiology?

According to Quentin Taylor and others, early Nietzsche hoped that the Germans could find a culture analogous to his beloved Hellenics (not copy it), and they could do this by doing as the Greeks did: preserving the values of real life over all the pseudo-needs of knowledge for knowledge sake, or by not spending so much time on gaining knowledge of the cultures that surrounded them, Persians, Egypt etc. This would mean bringing unity to diversity, or “harmonious manifoldness.” Nietzsche rejected the Socratic-Alexandrian and affirmed the Tragic-Dionysian believing that the Germans had gotten lost in Alexandrian specialization and scholarship, they were mere “pupils of declining antiquity.”

But what would Nietzsche have thought of the rise of “Alexandrian” sociobiology, which has done just what he asked for in modern times, organized the chaos of scholarship, found the values of real life, let go of the pseudo explanations of culture and life. Now what is needed, as E. O.Wilson pointed out, is for sociobiology to enter the humanities, which have become almost completely divided from real human nature and real life.

Science, specifically sociobiology, can save culture when it is also seen as an aid of our sacred evolution to Godhood in the cosmos.   This is where I part company with Nietzsche, as well as the Traditionalist School; science working with religion and art can unite the Alexandrian and Dionysian cultures. Theological materialism can revive myth-religion, but not in the way Nietzsche preferred, this time it is the Alexandrian which can save us,  in place of the Dionysian.  The God first seen inwardly is now the Godhood evolved to outwardly applying religion and science.

Uncamouflaging the Sacred

Someone said “Hope” usually requires a founding myth/religion. European and Eurasian intellectuals have gone back to the science-hating and progress-hating Traditionalist School. But William Hamilton said, according to Robert Ellwood, that America is the most worldly of places yet the place where the sacred can be realized because America has always believed that we can begin again.

 picture by Jim Coda ©

Ellwood points out that Eliade thought the sacred is camouflaged in the profane, and Freud and Marx thought the profane is hidden in the sacred. I interpret this seeming paradox with theological materialism: the formerly profane material world evolves to the sacred supermaterial world of Godhood. The two worlds have fought one another when they needed to be joined in the Twofold Path.

The various fields can come together in a total knowledge field, with science, religion and art joined in a new humanistic theology. How does this come out politically when the sacred and profane are joined? Independent regions and states protected internally and externally by a light federalism, not unlike the Founders wanted for America, can allow evolution to take place in variety, and with continuity, all the way to Godhood in the cosmos. Totalitarianism has not proved to last very long.

Conservatism considered hedonistically

When morality, ethics and political ideas are not working, conservatives can talk in pleasure/pain terms: do you want more pleasure or less? Thinking strictly in strategies of pleasure/pain, conservatism offers more over-all pleasure in the long-term, and progressivism offers more short-term pleasure. It's like diet strategies, there is short-term pleasure in eating sugars and high glycemic carbs, but there is more pleasure overall in staying fit and trim by not eating such things. Emphasizing the pleasure rather then the sacrifice makes good sense, especially for pleasure-seeking people.

Young people and immature cultures tend to think in terms of short-term pleasures, which is why they tend to need guidance regarding where the most long-term pleasure comes from. Young people like to claim that conservative societies are closed and not open to new things, but real conservative societies understand that the new must be brought into the old, gradually, in small doses, so as not to overwhelm and cause more pain than pleasure.

Conservatism offers very hard won wisdom based on the long-term experiences of large groups of people who have seen it all and know what ends up causing more pain and pleasure in the long-term. Progressivism tends not to want to see the long-term, so painful mistakes are made. Someone said that every new generation (and new immigration?) is a revolution which must be understood and synthesized by conservatives, or society will fall apart in continual revolutions.

What Truly Satisfies?

Attaining honor, power, wealth, fame, the love of women is the object of much of our lives, and although attaining them gives great satisfaction for those who do so, it never seems to fully satisfy. Why? Attaining Godhood in evolution is the highest satisfaction leading to all the other satisfactions.

Sex, power, etc. are on a continuum of satisfactions, one instigating the other and activated ultimately by the desire (Spirit-Will) to attain Godhood in evolution. Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, E.O.Wilson and others were searching for the highest purposes behind our mental and physical actions, eg. power (Nietzsche), sex (Freud) psychic wholeness (Jung), survival and reproductive success (Wilson).

Godhood is the final purpose activating the various successes in survival and reproduction. Ideally, when men and societies are balanced, each success in honor, power, wealth, fame, love will bring us closer to the sacred goal of Godhood, where the highest satisfaction in life and evolution is attained.

First Define Fate

Both animals and humans act by instincts but humans like to think they are better than animals with “free will.” Humans invent reason and then apply it to their actions and this really makes them feel free. But even if we seem to have more choices than other animals our choices are within a
determinism.

Instincts do not preclude the human mind or brain, the mind only thinks it is free and beyond the  instincts. Sometimes our knowledge gets in the way of wisdom. Reason needs to bring itself in balance with determinism and freedom so that reason can be of help in better understanding ourselves and our fate.

Sociobiology has supplied the best available knowledge on free will and determinism, finding that we (and our cultures) live on a biologically determined leash that allows us some freedom to wander, but we are eventually pulled back to our determined human nature, which decides what we can and cannot create successfully, with success being measured by whether we and our group, and our genes, survive or not. Our free choices are defined within this sociobiological parameter... I think there is also a sacred dimension to this determinism which I discuss below.

Nietzsche's presocratic virtue of “accepting our fate” needs to be seen from this sociobiology perspective, which can then help us define fate. The more we know who we are the better we can define our fate.

Religion and the sacred enter this discussion regarding our fate when we broaden the freedom/determinism subject to theological materialism. I believe that material life is inwardly determined to evolve to Godhood in the cosmos, but this determinism is shaped back and forth and up and down outwardly by natural evolution. We have some help or direction in that there is a Spirit-Will within material life, still unseen by science, which activates life to evolve to Godhood.

To accept our fate means to bring ourselves, and our definitions of virtue, in balance with evolving to Godhood. The old virtues of temperance, prudence, courage, justice, and faith, hope and love, need to be balanced with our sacred evolution to Godhood. This we seek to do in the Twofold Path.

Religious additions to science

I cannot affirm “dualism” because I do not see a serious difference between matter and mind, or to put it another way, the material and the spiritual. What has been called spiritual is supermaterial. Godhood Itself is supermaterial and the zenith of material-supermaterial evolution.

Science seems to disavow dualism, minus the belief in Godhood. Science also does not see the vitalistic activation of the material world by the inward Spirit-Will, which seeks to evolve to Godhood, shaped outwardly by natural evolution.

Even so, I see a close working relationship with science, all of the material and supermaterial and even our evolution to Godhood can be empirically investigated by science.

But when reason and science think themselves superior to instinct and intellectual intuition, then they become arrogant and closed.

Reason and science are a method to test the instincts and intuition, riding the horse but not the horse itself, and then they can rightly demand that other scientists reproduce the same results.

The challenge is to discover what reality is, reason and science can balance with instinct and intuition in determining reality.

Comparing Nietzsche's theory of Western culture with theological materialism

I accept early Nietzsche's theory of Western culture, as excellently presented by Quintin Taylor, but there seems to be a bias against science, almost to the degree to where the Traditionalist School might wish to claim Nietzsche. But we must be careful not to mistake this because it was what Nietzsche called the “Alexandrian” that followed after Hellenic culture which Nietzsche most disliked. Still, the bias against science was there.

Both Nietzsche and Wagner wanted a return to presocratic ancient myth, ancient ethnic myth, which they thought of as a revival of the Hellenic culture they loved. The “orientalization” of Greek culture as a result of the wanderings of Alexander the Great was not acceptable to Nietzsche. Christianity was, for Nietzsche, more of the same orientalization of Western Hellenic culture. The revival of the “German Spirit” was a revival of Hellenic culture for Nietzsche and Wagner. This later led to Hitler's brutal attempt to create a revived Hellenic-German culture, although political correctness has tried to remove this Nietzschean influence on Hitler.

I do not think science has been decadent for the West, but it certainly has had problems fitting in with art, myth and religion. I believe that science needs to be attached to religion, and with more than a worship of pure science. Science lacks a religious cosmic end-goal, as well as a sacred activating force to life.  This religious cosmic end-goal, as well as the sacred activating force to life, are seen in  theological materialism.

The goal of material life and evolution is to evolve to supermaterial Godhood---evolutionary Godhood is an extension of the God first seen inwardly (the Father Within) by the great religions. This religious worldview stands in contrast to the attempted radical return to the ancient, presocratic, Hellenic-Germanic culture of Nietzsche, Wagner and Hitler. In the new religious process of the sacred evolution of humanity to Godhood, Ordered Evolution, Revitalized Conservatism, and sciences such as sociobiology, can work well with theological materialism, to actually combat the decadence of the West which Nietzsche saw but could not cure.

Theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church contain the stylistic unity and organic integration that Nietzsche thought genuine culture had to contain.

The religious metasystem breakthrough pattern for the future

An interdisciplinary view of evolution called “metasystem transition theory,” which has since been developed within the branch of systems theory known as cybernetics ( see the Principia Cybernetica Project by Turchin, Cliff Joslyn and Francis Heylighen), seeks to find “an overarching paradigm to reorganize all other paradigms within it, and therefore all knowledge and methodologies. Thus, the... goals are implicitly nothing short of the integration of evolutionary biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, computer science, physics, chemistry, mathematics, philosophy and culture itself....when possible, organisms socially organize to maximize adaptive output based on the simple law that teamwork outproduces individual output, and well-organized teams outproduce the lesser so. Single-celled organisms did it in forming multi-celled organisms, and humans are now doing the same on a similar scale. From this view, the history of civilization from the past five-thousand years has been a competition of evolving social systems. Social breakthroughs in ideas, institutions, religions, traditions, academics, infrastructure, government, economics, and so forth, provide the adaptive advantages that allow some systems to out-compete others in war, diplomacy, economics, technology. If indeed, complex organization is more adaptive, than individuals capable of interacting with such information-rich, abstract and dynamic systems will also be the well-adjusted...” 

The religious philosophy of theological materialism in the Evolutionary Christian Church fulfills such a  metasystem breakthrough pattern for the future. Kin, group, region, national, and world success in survival and reproduction have a hierarchy of values and morals, a hierarchy of ethics, while maintaining the divine goal of Godhood for all. We are capable of having cooperative competition to reach the goal, with independent small states protected by light federalism, guided by religion and science. Ethics toward group members, group government, other group governments, members of other groups, individuals in the Church, and the Evolutionary Goal of Godhood, follow in a hierarchy of values. And things change, as Raymond Cattell pointed out, circumstances may put emphasis on the primary survival of all groups, if the total existence of man is threatened. This is the real religious-sociobiological-metasystem breakthrough pattern for the future, a highly civilized social pattern---those who can affirm the pattern can evolve all the way to Godhood.

Perfection is possible but...

The collective wisdom of the ages says that humans are not perfectible and attempts to do so usually end up using coercion, which in any case does not succeed. This practical wisdom is mainly why the conservatives affirm the customs, folkways and thoughts of those who have gone before us.

But if enough time is allowed, and if conservative and evolutionary rather than revolutionary and radical paths are taken, humans can be perfectible. As Christian and Buddhist mystics hope for the perfection of sainthood, knowing such perfection is slow and difficult (accept for Zen which can be fast and difficult), so also the goal of evolving to Godhood or perfection in the cosmos can be affirmed. And Godhood itself is part of very ancient conservative beliefs, customs, folkways and thoughts.

We don't throw out capitalism in the West, we move to progressive capitalism, we don't throw out Christianity we move to evolutionary Christianity. The new is synthesized in the old with Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism. We gradually evolve toward the perfection of Godhood. Real conservatism knows that gradual change rather than fixed inflexibility is what actually conserves the old from destruction.

Half Religions and the Zenith

Reducing ourselves down in ascetic training to the Soul or the Spirit-Will is a reduction which often ends by calling all else evil, or at least unimportant. This tends to be what the mystics of the great religions did, and still do, especially evident in the East. Only the essence seems perfect to them and one with God. This is not complete.

Godhood has Body with Spirit Within, just as we do but evolved to a supermaterial level. We cannot reduce this zenith of evolution down to experiencing only the essence of God or the Father Within, that is only half a religion. The Spirit-Will requires and therefore activates the material world to evolve to Godhood. Even so, the Twofold Path honors both the inward and outward paths.

The Spirit-Will-To-Godhood continually seeks the zenith of things in activating material life to Godhood, which is shaped by natural evolution, eventually evolving toward the zenith of thinking and being what is true, the zenith of sensing and being what is beautiful, and the zenith of wanting and being what is good, which is Godhood.

A complete rather than partial religion

The God Within is an asylum and home for the mystics, but this is not the life which needs to evolve to Godhood. Both Christ and Buddha said that suffering is universal, and the way out of suffering was to rid the body of all material desires in the Inward Path to attain the God Within. Yes, suffering is universal but so is joy. The path of both joy and suffering is the Outward Path which evolution travels to Godhood in the cosmos. The Inward Path to the God Within needs to lead to the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood, then we can have a complete rather than partial religion in the Twofold Path.

After reading Thomas Fowler's essay, “The Global Warming Conundrum,” here are my thoughts

In macro terms the climate over the past 450,000 years follows a saw-tooth shape when seen on a graph, with samples taken from ice cores. Much cooler temperatures seem to be the norm, and there is a distinct cyclical pattern to the earth's temperature, with levels at the current higher temperatures followed by rapid decline, with the peaks of warmer climate relatively short.

CO2 seems to be related to temperature in a feedback loop that increases both: a warmer trend results in increased biological activity which produces more CO2, this speeds up warming and the temperature levels due to such things as the greenhouse effect, which then triggers global cooling again.

Human activity has in fact increased greenhouse gases and warming but the rise in temperatures could mainly be part of this larger macro cycle. The last 12 years we have seen cooling which was not supposed to happen given human warming activities. The huge cost of radically changing our living habits, our food and fuel habits, could hurt poor countries most who could not afford the higher prices of food and fuel, so we better be right about our predictions.

But even so, we should decouple the question of using fossil fuel and conservation from global warming, because there are enough good reasons to husband and conserve our dwindling fuel resources, to reduce pollution from burning fossil fuels, as well as reducing the vulnerability of importing oil from unstable regions.  This could please the global warming forecasters whether they are right or wrong.

How evolutionary religion can bond separate cultures and people, affirming federalism

Even if we admit that America was created as an Anglo-Christian culture, which it clearly was (see “America's Lost Sense of Community,” Modern Age 2012), it is far too late to bring it back for the whole nation, we are now too divided by religion, language, ethnicity, manners and customs.

Only Federalism written large, as more or less seen by the Founders, can deal with our non-homogeneity, by giving power back to the regions, back to the states, protected by a light federalism from within and without.

I agree with those who say that all great social institutions are born in religion. It was clearly Anglo-Christian culture which built Western civilization, including America, as L. Smith says in his essay, it was religion that provided the system of symbols through which the culture sustained itself.

But this culture no longer prevails and the Anglo Americans who largely created it have declined and been replaced by an immigration policy which brought in other religions, other ethnicities, or a secular culture (if such a thing can be a culture) of no religion at all.

I believe that only a federalism which affirms differences and variety can bring America together without the eventual secession of different people and states, but more importantly only a new or revised religion can hold federalism together. the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) is such a religion, believing that a variety of distinctive people is not only desirable but necessary for the overall evolution of mankind on earth and out into the cosmos toward Godhood.

Human beings are capable of cooperative competition, our differences need not destroy us, and evolutionary religion can be the bond, affirming federalism, holding us together as we evolve. The inward God seen in all the great religions can be the ecumenical bond, as we advance toward outward Godhood in the cosmos, as affirmed in the Twofold Path. I see no better civilized way to hold America, or the world, together while advancing in evolution.

Religion and Promethean Art

We can have a creative relationship between religion and art, which is what happened in Ancient Greece and Medieval Catholicism, and this can save art from the truly inferior modern art of the past 100 years. We will need to endure the long and heroic trials of our long evolution to Godhood in the cosmos and art will help us endure.

Nietzsche thought art and religion arise from the same impulse that nature employs to make our existence bearable and help us survive (and this was long before sociobiology). But our evolution to Godhood is not merely a powerful illusion to help us survive and evolve (although it can help survival), this evolution is based in material and supermaterial religion and science, bringing art and science together.

Our evolution to Godhood must be considered an even greater mission than creating individual geniuses, which Nietzsche thought was what made Greek culture great (see "The Republic of Genius"). Our evolution can bring new Promethean art into our evolutionary religion, which we do need in our devolving and degenerate world---our desperation may lead us to it. The primary task of our religion is greater than the Greeks, which certainly sounds grandiose yet is necessary, that is, the continuous evolution of great beings in great cultures all the way to ascending levels of Godhood, the Godhood first seen only inwardly by the great religions.

Ways of Knowing

Aristotle (science) can arrive at Plato (religion-philosophy) because the material world (Aristotle) evolves to Godhood (Plato). Plato represents the Inward Path and Aristotle the Outward Path, more or less, which defines the Twofold Path. But these two were never really separate because the spiritual is really supermaterial (Aristotle) and not the other way around (Plato).

Religion can be explained in the rational mode but the rational mode deals in generalities, as Frithof Schuon taught, and not in transcendent truths. But there can be room for both. Intellectual intuition is used mainly by mystics, but also occasionally by scientists, and it reaches a kind of direct knowledge of truths which can be later, at least partially, explained by rationality. Intellectual intuition often brings esoteric truths and rationality brings exoteric truths.

Sometimes “solitary ones,” called “Fard” in Sufism, obtain knowledge “spontaneously” without initiation, but they usually can't be spiritual masters because they didn't follow a set guru-group path to realization. Divinity manifests itself through each particular religion. I agree with those who say that a Primordial Tradition lives in every Orthodox religion, which I think is the basis for ecumenism, but this connection is exclusively of the Involuntary Inward Path and is missing the Evolutionary Outward Path.

The goal of the Jesus Prayer as well as the goals sought in Buddhism, and Sufism, and other religions, that is, Holy Silence, or Nirvana, or Fana, are not, as is thought, an integratiion into the infinite, they are experiencing the material inward Soul emptied of all material desires. This means that “turning the other cheek” is not meant as social action but is a turning inward to find the Father Within the Soul by ridding oneself of material desires.

The divine principle does not come from outside in, like the sun, or from God. The connection we have with divinity is the material Spirit-Will within life that seeks Godhood by activating material life, which is later shaped by evolution. The Spirit-Will is not God. All matter may be energy but it is supermaterial energy and not spiritual energy. The world is not double, not a duality with the material on one side and the spiritual on another side, they are the same reality defined as supermaterial and material and not merely spiritual.

Too much importance has been given by mystics to the Inward Path to the God Within while blocking the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood in the cosmos. We cannot reach God by being human and knowing, we can only become God by evolving to Godhood far beyond the human. We can know the Soul and Spirit-Will within, but they are not God. The Soul can only give us the symbolic experience of God if we rid ourselves of all material desires, and the Spirit-Will can only activate life to evolve to Godhood which It seeks.

On creating a new/old religious metanarrative

Existing religions tend to be against creative religious philosophers, political and religious tyrants are usually against “intellectuals” which is why creating new philosophies is often done in exile.

Religious historian Mircea Eliade said in “Ordeal by Labyrinth” that the sacred could be found at any time in new forms, even though he had no interest in bringing out a new form himself, which saved him a lot of grief---the charges of personal inflation, grandiosity, and heresy are common, although I don't think he avoided it for that reason.

Eliade said first comes the mystic who sees the new reality, then comes the poet who expresses what the mystic saw, then comes the historian who records the words of the mystic and the poet. And this happened time and again throughout human history.

Carl Jung talked about how when a culture based on archetypal symbols grows old, the culture dies, the religious symbols disappear (the death of god) and eventually are replaced by a new religious cult. This was more or less also said by conservatives T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk too, minus the “new” perspective.

the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) and theological materialism is out there now, with a new yet old myth/religion and it must fend for itself in the world. It has changed what both Aquinas and modern science  say about the origin of laws. Religious laws are an ordinance of nature seen with reason, science and intellectual intuition, for the evolution of nature and humanity to Godhood, made by those who care about humanity and nature, and then promulgated.

An evolving world that outlaws plundering imperialism of any type

Being born biologically different seems like an injustice only to those who hold the bogus views of modern liberalism. Variety and biological differences give us the chance for beneficial mutations to aid society and to advance our evolution toward Godhood.

It makes sense on many levels to reward those who are able to help society more than to aid those who do not, although we need to have equality before the law in initial opportunities when we start out---talent can come from anywhere---and we need to have a way to help the less fortunate.

If we are to have a world that respects different regions, different states, a world which outlaws plundering imperialism of any type, be it race, state or culture, then all groups need to evolve in their own way.  And they can cooperate in this evolution.

A world of thousands of small states, or ethnostates, cooperating under a light federalism, advised by sociobiology, guided by evolutionary religion, is the right and sure future for mankind. While no system will ever be perfect, all other schemes seem to lead to far more dysgenic wars and much more biological and cultural decline.

Since reason, science, intellectual intuition, evolutionary religion, and healthy nature affirm it, how long will it take for this worldview to rise? One hopes it will rise while the earth is still livable.