Thoughts on the natural instinct toward religion and art ­(from the archive)

If the “classical” can be seen as not only ideal but scientific, relating to evolving material objects, and if the “romantic” can be seen as aesthetic and holistic, then theological materialism leans in the direction of the classical world, but it soars toward the romantic beauty of life evolving toward Godhood.

Romanticism was, among other things, a revolt against the constraining rationalism of the scientific Enlightenment, but then romanticism constrained rationalism too much, which was understandable because science tends to think something does not exist until it is proven to exist.

But we seem to need it all, intuition, religion, reason, science, art, because the truth and reality are found somewhere in the mix of these fields. We seem to have an instinct or a need to know what goodness, truth and beauty are, but more than to know, we need to experience these things, somehow physically.

With this instinct we create worldviews that affirm goodness, truth and beauty, and we want them to be real, we believe they are real. Why do we do this? Why do we need this? We seem to sense instinctively that the goal of our life goes beyond what we are. It is then that we begin to see the goal of our instincts as leading to Godhood, which also defines for us the zenith of goodness, truth and beauty, which we seem to both mentally and physically desire---this is seen in our preferences for beautiful people, places and things. We bring this romantic vision back to classical physical reality, back to nature, when Godhood is understood also as supreme success in natural survival.

We create a religious/philosophical narrative as a system of images and ideas useful in our instinctive transformation toward Godhood, that is, the sacred narrative of our material/supermaterial evolution to Godhood. It is a transformation away from the nihilism and hedonism of the secular age, but this time it is a naturalistic sacred narrative, related to the successful survival of life and beauty, not merely as an opiate of the people. It is real.

This religious narrative, or instinct, satisfies our natural instinct toward religion and art, and what seems to be an inborn, and sacred, desire to know and experience, goodness, truth, beauty and Godhood.