Friday, August 01, 2014

The way out of dualism (reblog from August 2014


Dualities seem to have begun with ancient religions, dualities between spirit and matter, mind and body---then came the later distinctions between the theoretical and the practical. This caused more problems than it solved.

Religionists tried to solve the dualities by saying that all is really spiritual. But it is the other way around: all is material or supermaterial. Even Godhood is supermaterial at the zenith of material evolution.

Many theologians and philosophers have said in effect that the world is no good, even evil, and that the world is not the real and good world of the non-material spirit. They prefer abstractions over the physiological messiness of real life.

Nietzsche tried to replace these theories of knowledge with the values of the passions, but they were the passions of an individualistic, goalless, will to power.

Modern science tells us how things work but removes values and morals and sacred goals from its equations.

Theological materialism includes the inward activation of life by the zenith of the instincts, by a Super-Id seen as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which is shaped by the ups and downs of outside evolution and selection.

Unlike modern science and philosophy, theological materialism retains religion but transforms it, which is the  conservative way out of dualities, and the deeper and healthier answer to modern nihilism.

We need sociobiologists more than biology-shunning sociologists, we need a philosophical sociobiology, we need a religiously-aware evolutionary psychology, and all of these can be attached to the goals of theological materialism, otherwise they seem limited and short-sighted.

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