How to be conservative while immanentizing the eschaton

Three years ago I wrote here that theological materialism seeks to “immanentize the eschaton,” meaning to bring about Godhood in the immanent world and in history by way of material and supermaterial evolution. 

Eric Voeglin followed the old Christian attempt to separate religion from politics by waxing poetic about the dangers of immanentizing the eschaton. Separating the world into two worlds was the way religious philosophers eventually dealt with the impossibility of everyone living as ascetics. This demonstrates the Gnosticism of Christianity because the Christian definition of life and God is dual, material and spiritual, rejecting materialism as Gnosticism does, even though philosophers like Thomas Aquinas made valiant attempts to reconcile and rationalize living in the material world along with spiritualism and asceticism.

“Progress” should not be a dirty word for conservatives, that attitude was founded in the metaphysical error of defining God as non-material. Precisely contrary to Eric Vogelin's poetic phrase of rejection, “immanentizing the eschaton” is how we progress toward real Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution.

Real conservatism is the response of real human nature to change. Conservatism is not anti-modern, it is against radical social attempts to go against real human nature. But conservatism does not go deep enough into the biological origin of social behavior, which develops cultures and religions to enhance survival and reproduction.

Group-selection, which has been primarily ethnic selection, is the central unit of selection in human behavior, and then secondarily individual selection creates the complicated push and pull of human behavior, which was recently reaffirmed by the great E. O. Wilson.

Conservative's do not have to reject the Enlightenment, or the idea of progress, but they need to see the sacred definition of progress as the material evolution of life ascending toward Godhood.

Human nature can change, but only very gradually, progress happens by conservatively keeping the best of the past as we materially evolve toward supermaterial Godhood.

The Great Spiritual Blockade against our material evolution to supermaterial Godhood needs to be unblocked. The old internal experience of God can be retained but is now seen as the Godhood externally reached in material evolution.

Politically and culturally I believe this leads toward ethnostates and ethnopluralism, which harmonizes best with the group-selection and kin-selection preferences of human nature. That is, we need the separation of powers and states to move toward ethnostates, with ethnic cultures protected by some sort of federalism---the U.S. Constitution could this way be extended.

We can then avail ourselves of future international research centers designed to help all states and ethnic cultures immanentize the eschaton, with the variety which evolution prefers best.

Religion, philosophy, science, politics do not need to be separated, which has made both religion and politics spiritually and materially weak. The call is for variety, decentralization, ethnostates, ethnopluralism, federalism, and the religious philosophy of theological materialism as the best long-term means of evolving as many of us forward as possible toward ascending levels of Godhood.