Why it is not “playing God” to seek to evolve to Godhood

It seems that I harmonize better with classical science than modern science in asking why things exists and not only how things exists. Aristotle thought that nothing exists without a reason, a function, an end. I am never satisfied knowing only the correlation between two things, the sequence alone is not enough. As the excellent Claude Polin recently pointed out in “Chronicles,” modern science made a choice to view things only pragmatically, and then modern science terrorized anyone who asked why things exist in the first place. Phenomena alone is never enough, we need to know why phenomena exists.

The problem with the traditional religious view is that it thinks unless the universe has a Maker-God there can be no order in nature or in man. But there are natural bounds and order to nature and to human nature whether God made the order or not. Everything is not necessary permitted even if God is defined as dead. We may not be as free as either traditional man or modern man think we are. We have a determined human nature even if modern man doesn’t think we do, we are not free to do or become anything we please. Traditionalism gives us the freedom to “stray” from our own natural nature, which is then defined as evil. But our real freedom is limited by various determined choices, we have the flexibility to be mistaken about who we are and what we can do, which helped us in making survival over non-survival choices in the various environments presented to us by nature. And we can be mistaken in relation to survival in our cultural schemes.

There is a determined human nature, there is order in the universe, there is a goal to life, and a goal to evolution, and there is purpose in phenomena, but it is not defined the way either modern science, classical science or traditional religion define it. There is an activating force in nature and in life, a Will, or a Super-Id---here defined as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood---which is then shaped outwardly by the ups and downs of natural evolution and selection. We are evolving to Godhood, rather than from God.  Godhood is the zenith of success in natural and supermaterial evolution. Purpose is defined here in the philosophy of theological materialism.

Harmonizing with human nature and nature itself is what morality is mainly about, but human nature and nature include evolving in nature toward Godhood. But we are never all-wise, we are always searching to find out who and what we are and where we are going. The best and most recent sociobiological knowledge is telling us that human nature, affirmed throughout human history, has been, and continues to be, kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. This is basic human nature. Politics can then follow with an ordering among men, by including real human nature harmoniously in its programs. Not to do so has caused many misfortunes.

We are free to help nature and help life, including human life, evolve toward the Godhood life naturally seeks. This is not the great evil of “man playing God,” it is trying to aid nature in nature's purpose of evolving to Godhood, which is the why, and not merely the how, of life. We can include science and religion together but more in the fashion of classical science, which did ask both how and why. I affirm the goal of life and nature evolving in the material/supermaterial world to the Godhood first only glimpsed in the Inward Path of traditional religion. This is the way we conservatively include but transform traditional religion and modern science.