Beyond the Cloud of Obscurity: Theological Materialism, Appearance, and the Thing-in-itself

Religion and philosophy have been "a cloud of obscurity," to use Schopenhauer's description of Hegel's philosophy.

Regarding appearance and the thing-in-itself, the differences reside only in gradations of material evolution, there is not a dual reality. A tree or a frog sees less of the real world than a human does due to gradations of the evolution of sense experience. A God, or Godhood, sees far more of the real world than a human does due to the same gradations of evolution.

This means that Godhood is not a non-material, spiritual, or mathematical Thing-in-itself beyond the the material world, Godhood is a living object, or objects, like a tree or frog or human which has evolved to be more or less the Thing-in-itself and Appearance at the same time. Appearance is in the same category as the Thing-in-itself and the Thing-in-itself is the same as Appearance, determined by the same gradations and levels of material and supermaterial evolution. Truth is also this way a living object (not merely an idea) with or having gradations of truth depending on the level of evolution.

The Will or Spirit, which I call the Spirit-Will or Will-Spirit, is not the Thing-in-itself either, it is the material activation within life which seeks to activate life toward Godhood and the highest truth by way of material and supermaterial evolution, working within outside evolution and natural selection, or later working with conscious selection by man in harmony with as much as can be known of the real natural world. The Spirit or Will is not the last refuge of those who seek or define a non-material source for the sacred, as Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche more or less did.

Ethics, right and wrong, and sacredness need to derive from the real world of material and supermaterial evolution and do so in theological materialism.