Friday, October 28, 2022

Nature's moral authority

Human nature has freedom, but within determined choices. Human nature was developed in Paleolithic times, and modern human cultures developed out of this Hunter-Gatherer human nature interacting with the environment.

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. Our real freedom is limited by various determined choices, but 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 a material 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. This purpose is defined in the philosophy of theological materialism.

Harmonizing with human nature and nature itself is what morality is mainly about. 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. Culture and politics can then follow with an ordering among men, by including real human nature harmoniously in its programs.

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.