Where we stand with the various movements

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

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

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

Pluralism and Authority in Religion and Science

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

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

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

Against dualities

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

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

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

Harmonizing Christ, Nietzsche, Cattell and Wilson

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

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

Natural and anti-natural religion

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

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

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

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

The forgotten or blocked natural purpose of virtue

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

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

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

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

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

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

On both Nietzsche and Religion lacking the Twofold Path

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

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

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

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

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

No changeless end

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

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

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

Resolving Nietzsche's mistaken radicalism

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

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

How perfect completeness in not full awareness of Godhood

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

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

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

The religious, philosophical, psychological and physical transformation necessary

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

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

Contrary thoughts to Kirk's view of the machine

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

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

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

Consciousness and spiritual awareness as dependent on physical bodies

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

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

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

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

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

The simple and complicated truths of ethnopluralism

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

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

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

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

On becoming essentialist

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transforming the spiritual to the supermaterial

“From fullness comes greater fullness” (Gus DiZerega)

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

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

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

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

Where is the focus of evolution today?

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

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

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

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

On the deep ecologists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The desire to transcend the living object

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

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

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

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

The thing itself and the structure of scientific explanation

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

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

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

Is there a best metaphor for the Divine?

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

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

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

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

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

When the identity of any people is taken away

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

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

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

Time and evolving objects

Is divine love, defined as unconditional love, at the source of the cosmos and at the source of all life, as we often hear, where unconditional love makes everything okay, including the suffering and misfortunes of life? This perspective seems to depend on defining Godhood more like “Time” that "exists" outside the real world, rather than defining Godhood as a natural living supermaterial object, or group of divine objects where time is seen as a secondary definition only, dependent on the actions of objects.

Living objects in the cosmos seem to be driven, activated to live and evolve, with all that goes with living and evolving. This activation we call the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood which is then shaped by outside evolution. This is what seems to be the true character, tone and direction of the cosmos, rather than an unconditional love which says that everything is okay.

Does this dynamic compare a personal maternal Godhood with a more detached paternal Godhood? Religion and philosophy often seem to confuse expanded definitions and descriptions with the object itself. This all seems to be more a comparing of sacred Time outside of life, with living objects in time evolving to the sacred. If Heidegger's Being is actually this sort of Time or Nothing outside of life, unconcealed or concealed, then modern philosophy is more of the same nonobject definition-as-God.

Less neurosis in coordinating culture with biology

There are physiological indications in biofeedback studies, begun by Dr. Elmer Green years ago, which suggest that when there is a clash between cultural values coming in from the newer cortex system and the goals, memories and drives stored in the more primitive limbic system of the brain, this can cause regulation problems in the hypothalamus, which controls or regulate most of the body's activities. According to behaviorists much of neurotic activity seems to stem from these physiological regulation or coordination problems.

We might this way define much of neurosis as the failure to adjust or coordinate our biological nature with our psychobiological nature, or the failure to coordinate real human nature and culture. "Psychobiology” would be as Freud defined it, anything that is cultural and not biological.

When we define human nature the way sociobiology defines human nature we can say the our cultures need to adjust and coordinate with our biological human nature, which means being kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection, and so on.

This seems to affirm much of what is called traditional culture, that is, paleoconservative culture, which I think is better defined as ethnopluralism. This would appear to be the best way of coordinating physiological or biological values with cultural values, leading to less neurosis and healthier people, and evolutionary cultures.

Meritocracy in the face of resentment and non-action

Nietzsche seems to have missed the importance of the non-action element in Christianity, whereas he saw it in Buddhism. The “resentment” Nietzsche saw in Christianity of the low against the high was largely St. Paul's work. Christ, like Buddha, was against resentment because resentment leads to action. The psychological challenge for St. Paul was to actively build a religion that was essentially against action, and so the resentment of the low against the high was applied. The demagogues of socialism use the same resentment of the lowly against those in high places. Let quixotic founders of religion be warned (a large group what?), the structure of your work is often used only as a slight reference by your followers when they build their lumbering superstructures.

It is the task of meritocracy not to let the demagogues live off resentment and non-action. Societies which can somehow enhance their best even with the natural resentment of human nature toward hierarchy and territoriality are going to be healthy and advance the most. People tend to like the fair play of meritocracy if it is pointed out to them, continually, in postive ways. People really don't like it when the less deserving are promoted over the more deserving. The problem here is that socialism and modern liberalism derive originally from imitating the values of the Involutionary Inward Path of the great religions, with their exclusive concentration on the Inward Path to the Father Within, the God Within, arrived at through ascetically blocking the natural desires of material life. This is where the Twofold Path can enhance life, meritocracy and evolution. The Father Within is seen as the symbolic-experience of real Godhood reached through material and super-material evolution. In the Evolutionary Outward Path resentment of the lowly against those in high places and the banishment of action do not apply, here meritocracy has a chance once again---and without meritocracy we may not reach Godhood.

Toward a new evolutionary therapy

Take the temperament theorists or the personality psychology of Cattell and Eysenck, and combine them with sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, and you have a good theory of personality.  But then moving beyond that I hypothesize a new kind of religious evolutionary therapy in the following way: ---

Alfred Adler (who positively acknowledged Nietzsche) postulated a single drive: “striving for perfection,” which is transposed in the theological materialism of the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) as the Spirit-Will, or the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood, the activating force within life, which is also shaped by outside evolution.

Rather than the “will to meaning” of Dr Viktor Frankl, or the “will to pleasure” (pleasure principle) of Freud, or the “will to power” of Nietzsche, or “striving for perfection” in Adlerian psychology, or the renunciation of Schopenhauer, theological materialism and EC psychology say that the primary motivational force in man is the  material Spirit-Will-to-Godhood.

The interesting psychology comes in relating this primary drive socially as well as individually. All people, all groups have this drive to “perfection,” but how do we socially integrate them? Our answer, unlike Adler's socialism, is seen in the Ordered Evolution, Revitalized Conservatism, or Ethnopluralism suggested in the theological materialism of the TC.

Toward Evolutionary Therapy

The leadership role in theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church would be to understand the intentionality of the Spirit-Will, which the person is often unable to clearly comprehend, whereas, say, in Jungian psychology, the therapist's role is to represent the intentions of the psyche and to help see or understand the “Self”. The philosopher or Priest needs to take the side of the Spirit-Will, whereas the psychoanalyst takes the side of the Unconscious.

In “Evolutionary Therapy,” the philosopher and Priest would need to mediate a deal or balance between the Spirit-Will and the Soul-mind-body which the member can live with. “Befriending” the Spirit-Will could be a task which might involve uncomfortable insights. Egotistical human life and modern values may seem limited in the face of the long evolution of the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood which activates life, beyond man, beyond superman, beyond angels all the way to Godhood.

When the Spirit-Will is blocked, It turns away from its central path. The leadership “art” in theological materialism and the TC is to help “release” the natural Spirit-Will into the energy of the person and society, making the energy of the Spirit-Will available for the individual and for society---we can learn to use or turn the powerful force of the material Spirit-Will away from profanely hurting ourselves into helping ourselves, and helping our societies evolve, not devolve toward the profane, but evolve toward the sacred.

Meanwhile the Soul, which is the Zenith of the Mind and the ego, having seen or experienced the symbolic Father Within in the Inward Path, must maintain its task to intelligently help guide or “ride the tiger” of the Spirit-Will toward evolving to real Godhood in the Outward Path, the God first seen in the Inward Path---the Soul of the Inward Path needs to stop blocking the Spirit-Will. This is the desired balance. 

We need to befriend, not only the unconscious, but the Spirit-Will which activates the unconscious, and we need to correctly define the Spirit-Will and its direction.  The Spirit-Will is like a "Super-Id," which is a good thing, not a primitive thing.

We are not merely looking for the opposite of the ego, the contrary elements of our psyche, because Jungian androgynous balance is not the goal. The great goal of the Spirit-Will, the Super-Id, is the goal that lies beyond us, beyond the human unconscious, at the Zenith of Evolution to Godhood. Whatever parts of our psyche that seem opposed to the direction of the Spirit-Will need to be understood and synthesized and balanced..."

“I am because we are”

Here is an old African proverb that could affirm group selection: “I am because we are.” The “Great Man” theory of history? Although we do have have our vital heroes, why not the “Group Selection” theory of history? All history is biography? It is more the case that all history is the biology of group selection. Individuals stand on the shoulders of the groups they live with, which protect and advance them. Why does rational simplifying always have to be “terrible” simplifying? Group selection continues to be reported in the popular and academic press as leading to negative “cults” of ethnocentrism, or worse---ironically, or rather hypocritically, this is usually pushed by groups seeking dominance over other groups. The racial imperialism of nations in the past does not represent ethnopluralism, which sees imperialism as a counterfeit of human nature, against localism, variety, and slowing human evolution.

Territoriality and ethnocentrism are a basic part of actual human nature, it prevents chaos and promotes social stability. As anthropologist Roger Pearson said, territoriality helps localize and order the population so necessary environmental adaptations are able to accumulate over generations. Pearson once succinctly defined group selection this way: “ In the course of evolution, man generally collaborates on a group basis, and even though mutations occur in individuals it is the phylogenetic continuum, the breeding group and gene pool that transmits theses mutations to future generations.” ( Mankind Quarterly, 1991) One of our greatest scientists, E.O. Wilson, has recently reaffirmed group selection as the central unit of selection in his book “The Social Conquest of the Earth.”

Given human nature, this is the basis for thinking in terms of ethnopluralism as the most natural and workable social or political structure. In the case of the United States this can be gradually accommodated by our Constitution, with its natural separation of powers and states. Separations naturally happen anyway when groups are too large or too different from one another, and not always peacefully. Cooperative competition, concordant discord, is what we can best expect, given human nature---and what is wrong with that?

Some things I like about the pagans

The Spirit can communicate with pagan individuals not filtered through the central Church authority. Revelations aren't abandoned or closed (see Gus Dizerega). Perhaps this freedom to interpret was related somehow to the freedom and distance between northern pagans, even though the religious rituals were much the same. This independence seems to have carried over to the Protestant Reformation. Authority and secrecy in both the pagan and monotheistic religions seems not so much to do with “secrecy” as it is levels of knowledge which naturally separate those who understand from those still learning.

The Gods are part of this world for the pagans, and so evil and suffering is part of the world of the Gods, the divine is not required to be washed clean of all suffering and evil, or of all life, which has caused so much explanation, interpretation, and splitting of hairs in the monotheistic religions. The pagan view is not optimistic or pessimistic, it is both, or it is more stoic.

In looking at the Great Mystery of cosmogony the pagans don't seem to see the world as previously perfect, no Fall takes place, no Fall seems necessary unless you think the simplest unicellular androgynous life is perfect. The world issues from the Primal Material, activated from within by the Spirit, and then the world evolves to the complex world we know, with all its joys and sorrows. There seems to be no more proof from religious revelations or from science of a one time beginning to the world than there is proof of an endless world with no beginning. The new revelation is that we evolve toward perfection, toward Godhood, we don't seem to derive from perfection.